Ikea Did Not Fix My Problem

Dear Ikea,

I am stumped, flummoxed, and generally uncomprehensive as to how I managed to spend half of my Sunday and over one hundred thirty of my dollars in your never-ending consumer madhouse and yet still have dirty laundry on the floor of my apartment. The mind reels.

It all began with the pre-Ikea beverage stop, during which Boy 1 managed to frival away the majority of his allowance on a Mega-blok Halo mini-figure and I started the day strong with a cold can of Starbucks expresso. If anyone can explain to me why I will drive miles out of the way to spend only a dollar on my diet coke at McDonald's but gladly throw down almost three bucks for iced coffee in a can, I would be glad to hear it. But I digress.

En route, I mange to also drop off an overdue library book which I had checked out weeks ago under the unrealistic impression that I would have an opportunity to read anything other than student papers and my Facebook feed. Consider my late fee as an act of negligent philanthropy.

Finally, at the stroke of 10:15, we arrive in your parking lot an amazing 45 minutes after our ETA. Fabulous. It appears that every single person in Orange County (and their mom) also decided to visit Europe's most difficult to assemble furnature emporium on their Monday off of work. Things just keep looking better and better.

Inside, my eldest child steadfastly refuses to enter Småland, the children's jail/enclosure built especially for him and the children of the three million other upper-middle class women who have decided to attempt to organize their belonging this weekend. "I want to stay with youuuuu, Mommy," he cries. Fabulous. He loves me so much he won't leave me F alone. Awesome.

So, I progress, with the toddler, the big one, and a cart with a giant yellow bag into the abyss that is Ikea, Costa Mesa. We start at the cafeteria, where they refuse to provide Coke products but have an abundance of free butter and thirty-nine cent dinner rolls. The big one agrees to share the food he wants to order before it is purchased, refuses to share while it is warm enough to eat, then offers his picked-over remains up gladly once nothing on his plate is any longer eatable. We are clearly on a roll of our very own at this point. I forget exactly when I offer the little one a butter-filled dinner roll extravaganza only to remember mid-digestion that he is supposed to be off of dairy. The hits just keep on hitting.

(To be continued....)