The Slick Adventures of Downtown Girl

Rocket Scientist

Sunday, July 15, 2007 | posted by Kate | permalink | |

IKEA Queen
You know how it goes--you spend a day at IKEA, wandering around and collecting the items you need for your house at awesome prices. A cart full of THAT much STUFF from say, Target or Bed Bath and Beyond would be hundreds of dollars. Hundreds. Easily. But at IKEA? No biggie! Loves it--potholders, fluffy throw blankets, shoe racks and closet organizers--oh, my! Just everything I need for my new (spacious but empty!) place.

The furniture, though? Reasonably priced but not assembled and quite another story. Lugging the boxes around on those big flat carts and then getting them into the car? Exhausting. Lugging the boxes through the building, battling my elevator doors that kept trying to shut on me and eat me? Yikes. Getting it all home by myself made me do a little happy dance.

The IKEA packages say "easy assembly." I strongly disagree with this packaging statement. Let me present to you the following: My computer desk is now known to me (secretly, of course, and now to you) as my 4-hour desk. As in, I spent four hours trying to put it together before success*occurred.

*By success, I mean it didn't collapse or lean in at a weird angle when I did the following:
A. Move it
B. Put weight on it (as in, not breaking when a fly lands on it)
C. Find some other part that belonged on it that needed to be added somewhere.
D. Any or all of the above

Obviously, this IKEA furniture was engineered to be easy for NASA ROCKET SCIENTISTS to put together. Admittedly I feel a little sheepish, seeing as how I'm, oh, you know, starting medical school and all and the furniture had me beat**. The desk IS together though and I only have few scratches and bruises. I am a stubborn woman.

*By had me beat, I mean I said the following words during construction:
A. Shitballs, motherfucker
B. Are you fucking kidding me?
C. Oh, shit, it's upside down!
D. Do I have any more vodka in the house?

Enter Prince Charming (now with 90% more family approval!)
Luckily...R rode to my rescue when it came to putting my bookcase and TV cart together. There was a lot of hammering and screwdriving going on when he did those, so, I should probably thank him for the fact that I still have all of my fingers....since I was not the one who had to wield such tools and construction skillz.

My family continues to rave about how much they love him, about how I should stick with him ( I think my grandmother said "latch onto him"), about how wonderful he is. Frankly, I am not sure how to handle them loving him so much!

It isn't that I don't think he's completely awesome, or that I thought they wouldn't like him, I guess I just have never seen them react so positively and be so openly excited about someone I'm dating. I suppose it is about time, though, right?

Love until Later,
Kate