a story about how I bought a couch today

I hate when people post materialistic blog entries about things they buy, but this is the most exciting thing that has happened to me since... hmm, yeah, it's been a while. And I am trying to keep the blog energy on high for 2006.

Anyway, I have been very impatient to get a couch. Sitting on the floor with Oscar all the time was starting to have a negative effect on my self-esteem. So this was the big weekend. Yesterday I made my parents go to three separate furniture stores and look at many, many couches and weigh their various virtures and shortcomings. Then I made the couch salesman talk to me forever about microsuede. And finally, I decided on a couch. And then we came home, and measured the doorway. For various geometrical reasons, the couch has to stand on its end to get through the entryway, and the couch (which happened to be the smallest couch at the store) was 83 inches long. And the doorway is 80 inches. How I was filled with despair, because no couch would ever fit, and apparently that is why the people who lived here before had to use ropes to hoist their couch up over the balcony, and why it had to be sawed apart to get it out.

But then! The glorious light of IKEA shone down upon me! For you see, IKEA sells couches that come in four big boxes. Oh IKEA. So smart.

Sadly, I don't live 20 minutes from IKEA anymore. Now going to IKEA is a major expedition which involves driving for over an hour and crossing an international border. It also involves: buying many things without considering volume issues because if we have a pickup truck and everything is in a flat box, how could it not fit?; spending 45 minutes rearranging twelve giant heavy boxes so they stick out as little as possible and strapping them down in such a way that it is obvious that girls who don't really know how to tie appropriate knots did it; and worrying the whole way home about (1) the Mikael Corner Desk Unit slipping out and causing a massive laminated particle board highway disaster (2) getting into trouble at the border for driving with improperly secured IKEA products. As well as various other delightful things involving receipts, taxes, duty, and whatnot.

But anyway!

It was all worth it for you, Lund Bjuv.



Oh, right, also I had to put it together. But actually it wasn't that bad. Who but IKEA could make a couch that comes in four giant boxes?


Oscar wants to sit on Lund Bjuv.
I don't think so, Oscar. Lund Bjuv does not even have all his cushion covers on yet.

Anyway, my life feels much more complete now.