stereotypical single woman

I had intended to spend this year’s Labor Day doing absolutely nothing that even resembled work. This summer has been so hectic that I decided I deserved one weekend to just sit on my ass. Between the summer semester, some outside projects, and my vacation last week* I’ve been more than productive enough to justify 3 days of sitting around, drinking, eating, and watching movies with Mr. Codejnki and friends. And Saturday and Sunday were great, we basically did just that. But Monday turned out a bit differently than we had planned.

Bright people that we are, we decided that we wanted to go to Ikea on Monday. And not just any Ikea, but an Ikea located smack dab in the middle of three major universities. On the weekend thousands of students were moving into dorms and first apartments. During a large sale. Do I really need to elaborate any more?

Amazingly we made it through the store without killing anyone else (or each other.) I had picked up a bookcase and some odds and ends, spending more time window shopping than anything else, while Mr. Codejnki basically took the “buy out the entire store” approach. After we managed to finally check out we dropped my stuff off at my apt,  checked on the boys (who are currently viewing me simply as a maid that occasionally shows up to feed them, refresh the water, and clean the shitter), and headed back to his place to spend the rest of the evening assembling furniture and turning his house into an Ikea showroom.

Things went well at first. I actually like building things, and I’m no novice to DIY furniture, so I make a very good assistant when it comes to assembling one of absolutely every freaking thing Ikea carries. We were  moving right along, making record time and discussing what we wanted to do for dinner, when we opened up a DVD shelving unit and let out a simutaneous “oh fucking hell.” You see, Mr. Codejnki has good taste, and we were assembling a large quantity of the light birch finish shelving for his living room, however this particular box contained a unit that cold only be described as “Retina Searing Red.”

For a few minutes we tried to rationalize keeping it. We were tired, the box was destroyed, it could work, right? But reality set in and we realized that it may have cheap furniture, but dammit, it was going to be matching cheap furniture. So we load it back into the car and head to Ikea for the second time that day. We were dreading it, the place had been a fucking zoo. This was going to take fucking forever. The only good thing that was going to come out of all of this was that we were going to be having meatballs for dinner.

We were pleasantly surprised. Not only was customer service very understanding, but the place was absolutely deserted. I cannot recommend this enough, if you are going to go to Ikea during a major holiday weekend, go after 5:30 pm. You will not be run over by freshman stocking up on beer glasses and Lack side tables. You will not see children having temper tantrums when forced to leave the play area. You will be able to find you signifigant other without using your cell phone. You will even be able to make it through the store, while seeing everything, in less than two hours.

After triple checking the code on the new shelving unit we made our way home, put it together, and collapsed. It was way more work than either of us had planned on, but on the plus side I now get to visit Ikea without actually having to go to the store.

This morning I decided to put my bookcase together, but my assistant was not quite as helpful as Mr. Codejnki’s.

However, unlike Mr. Codejnki’s assistant, mine were willing to risk life and limb testing the load capacity of various shelves themselves. Thus sparing me the need to risk damaging any precious items that may be housed in the bookcase, so we’ll call it an even trade.

* I spent a few days in Seattle. It was beautiful and I had a great time seeing my sister and brother-in-law. However the whole point of the trip was to fly back with my nieces, who happen to be 11 months and 3yrs old, so that they could spend some time back in MI. All of us survived, but it was the longest eight hour trip of my life. I am now convinced that if I have to fly with children that young ever again it is in my best interest to stock my carry-on with enough alcohol and drugs to help sedate all the other passengers on the plane for the duration of the flight. Seriously, it’s the least I can do to make it a little bit more bearable.