|
My Profile
Because I can't bear to eulogize Doug - 2008-08-19
|
10:33 p.m. - 2005-05-30
What didn't we buy at IKEA? Gosh, we went nuts. Hmmn…list little to big or big to little? Or just this and this and this…yeah, that'll work. Scented tea lights. A big watering can. 2 quilts- one winter weight and the other summer, a duvet and sheets for Wolf's bed. Roman shades for Wolf's room. 12 servings of flatware- a mistake, the soup spoons are HUGE and the teaspoons are wee demitasse spoons. Yes, I looked at them before I put the boxes in the cart, but the weird spoons didn't look that weird in the package. Funny curly wrought-iron garden trellis spikes. 3 cotton rugs for my bathroom. Plug bars and cord wrappers for the myriad of electronics slowly taking over my house. A shiny chrome 'retro-diner' style wall clock for the kitchen. A small alarm clock that allows you to record the wake-up message. I'm going to put the horn solo from Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy on it at full volume and then hide the clock in Alex's room. My elder son doth think ye olde homestead is a rest home. He has another think coming. Rubber ice-cube trays that make X and O shaped ice. 20 royal blue plastic bins for the new shelves in Wolf's room. Real wooden slat Venetian blinds for my office to replace those nasty smoke stained always crooked mini-blinds. A super bendable flexy goose-neck lamp. It clamps onto a shelf edge and is exactly what I'd been needing here at my desk. To read and transcribe Mike's contracts and such I have to turn on the overhead light. Glare. Awful, awful glare. Now I have a nifty bendy light I can point right where I need it. A computer desk for Wolf's room and a swivel chair to go with it. The desk was the reason for the trip. Wolf is inheriting Alex's old computer. It's a dinosaur in computer years, but still enough machine for an 8 year old. We'll have to upgrade by jr high, but for the next couple school years it'll be okay. The intermediate school doesn't say having a computer at home is a requirement. That would discriminate against poor people. However the homework and projects assigned make it clear that if the kid doesn't have a computer in the house, he's doomed. Of course there's my computer. But it's just that…mine. Go ahead, call me a selfish cow. I am NOT sharing my computer with the kids. Been there, done that and it sucks. There's some more piddly stuff that I can't remember. Then there's the dresser. To the left of the check-out is Ikea's bargain basement, the As Is department. A lot of the stuff was in such bad shape you had to admire their gall for trying to sell it at all. The dresser is in pretty good shape though. There's a long skinny crack down one side, but is otherwise sound. It's a tall chest of drawers about 5' high and 20" square. The drawers are on rails with bearings and roll in and out like a dream. It was stupid cheap, considering. We couldn't even buy the wood to make a stack of shelves in the same dimensions for the same money, let alone build a lovely dresser with smooth moving drawers. So. The dresser was already assembled, it was a former display model. Hence the crack and the stupid cheap price. But how to get it home? We paid for all the other stuff and hauled it out to the Exploder. (Our name for the new vehicle. Along with being a play on its actual name, when we bought it the tires on it were those exploding Firestone ones.) Mike was Mr Tape Measure today. He fit everything in the cargo hold and measured the available space. Just as he'd measured the dresser before we left the store. Wahoo! The dresser would fit! Back inside. Bought it. Rolled it out to the Exploder and crammed it in. Sucker is heavy. I was dreading unloading when we got home. The stairs. Those 17 wretched stairs between the driveway and the front door. Fortunately Mike had found a furniture mover's hand truck at the junkyard this winter. Strapped to the mover's cart the dresser went up the stairs fairly easily, but we dragged it as far as the foyer, looked at the inside stairs which are narrower, steeper, and turn 90 degrees near the top, and left the dresser right where it was. That's where it'll stay until Alex gets home tomorrow (the house party is running over-long). Since it's going into his room anyhow, he can bull it up the stairs. With a guiding hand from Dad, of course. Must go to bed now. I'm whupped. ~LA
|
