July 11: Post-buggabugga IKEA trip

 It is only appropriate that I make a post-buggabugga trip to IKEA. I've visited IKEA before and during buggabugga, so I should go after as well.

Here is a brief summary of my buggabugga trip to IKEA.

I was at home one night when Ash called me. There was a bathroom shelf at IKEA that she desperately needed to have. I knew that "let's do it tomorrow" are words that are not in Ash's vocabulary. When she wants something, she wants it now. So we clambered into the car and drove to Montreal, which is where the IKEA that had her shelf was located.

IKEA stores are roughly the sizes of football stadiums. Everything IKEA sells is named for something Swedish. So there's the FJADWARD sofa and the ROXETTE pillowcases and the ABBA plastic ice cubes. The shelf Ash wanted was the HGKHJGDFKSVLSLWFGL shelf (pronounced Hugo, what a strange language Swedish is.)

In the IKEA, everyone was wearing masks (IKEA sold the masks as JSFDJF masks.) The IKEA was eerily empty. I had never seen an IKEA that empty before. However, it still smelled the way all IKEAs smell, which is 99 per cent sawdust and one per cent Swedish meatballs.

The funny people at IKEA knew we were coming to get a HGKHJGDFKSVLSLWFGL shelf and they decided to have some fun with us by shuffling it through a bunch of departments. At first we were told it was in the bathroom department, then we were told it was in the shelf department, then we were told it was in the bathroom shelf department, eventually we found it in the Swedish meatball department and everyone got a good laugh out of that except me. Then we ate at McDonalds.

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One Christmas, I received an IKEA day bed from my mom. Here is a picture of me after I assembled it:

When I was halfway through the assembly process, I realized that I had made a fatal mistake and had to start over from scratch. This happens 100 per cent of the time whenever someone endeavours to build an IKEA product.

By the way, not everything you buy at IKEA was packaged in Sweden. There was a factory in Brighton, Ontario that used to make something for them. Also, IKEA has a full-time employee whose sole job is to come up with the names of everything. This person has to find a Swedish mountain or berry to name a couch after. It's too bad IKEA isn't Canadian. I could totally do that job. You'd be able to buy Moose Couches or Rocky Mountain Dressers or Saskatoon Berry Deck Chairs.

And I just want to say that I love my IKEA day bed and I like sleeping on it more than my normal bed. Also, IKEA makes awesome plastic plates and bowls and glasses; they are my preferred dinnerware:

I have other IKEA stuff in my house too. The window blind in my bedroom is from IKEA. Several of the storage containers in my magic room (which also happens to be my bedroom) are from IKEA. I have an orange briefcase that I bought at IKEA. The orange briefcase currently holds one deck of cards, some paperclips, and a paperback copy of the James Bond novel, Live and Let Die. Oh yeah, and two dressers.

Although I am sure I will wind up in an IKEA at least once more before I die, I doubt it will be anytime soon. The reason is that I don't NEED anything from IKEA. In fact, there's nothing that I WANT from IKEA. But when I do make my return to the big yellow and blue beast, I bet it will be sans mask and with hundreds of IKEA shoppers looking for pillowcases and meatballs.