1. Gorilla in the mist; 2. IKEA ho

1. Happily, the gorilla appears to have dissipated, at least for the moment--or at least, she's wandered off--perhaps to forage for more food. What, the organic bananas I bought at ShopRite® weren't good enough for ya? It was sooo just like the Milarepa story about how he shows up and his cave is filled with various demons. He tries all kinds of dharmic tricks and nothing works until he sits down and says, "All right, looks like we're going to be shackin' up." At which point all but one of them leaves; so he just walks up to the one biggest, ugliest, meanest demon and sits right in its mouth: "Go ahead--eat me up." That's when the last demon vanished.

Also, I had a pleasant birthday. Forty don't mean shit. So much for that milestone.

2.

Ikea had become so successful that, while still functioning as a retail outlet, it was also a museum. People visited these furniture hypermarkets as theme parks devoted to the Ikea Experience just as they would sample the Industrial Experience at Ironbridge, or anything else from the Experiential repertory of Heritage Britain. The difference was that at Ikea you could buy the experience as it was happening, before it became history; you could experience history as it was being made, take it home in flat-packs and install it yourself. --Geoff Dyer, Out Of Sheer Rage

Is it "IKEA, ho!"--like, "Westward, ho!" ?

Or am I an IKEA ho?

I leave it to you to decide. Here's the rundown on Monday's pickin's:

Plucked up one of these: Now of course I have to fill in some text or this is going to look pretty crappy as a post. The action started at a comfortable hour of the morning Monday. I had taken a vacation day for a planned IKEA raid with Jo to celebrate my birthday. No whining spouses. None of this: "That's not what we came here for." "Why are you looking at that? We don't need that." "My feet are tired." "Blah blah blah." "mwah mwop mwah mwop" (Peanuts adult sounds).

Scored me 2 of these:
Actually only the first set of 3 were in the pink-white-yellow scheme--the other 3 were green-blue-purple. It appears that the Jellybean starts a 'collection' of some other kind of small, trippable object about every 4 days--it's hard to keep up. At least she no longer insists on gathering a small rock at every outdoor place we visit (though I seem to remember her wistfully gazing at an utterly mundane red pebble as little as 3 months ago).

Sagaciously selected one of these: Recently I learned that not every child on the planet is horribly obsessed with plush toys. Well, isn't that special. But as it happens my child's plush toy fetish is just something I have to cope with as a parent. Her greed knows no bounds. She was pretty excited with this purchase, which will allow her to sort her 'friends' more or less by species or at least genus.

Snagged two of these:
Still on the theme of Jellybean organization. Many are shocked that our entire family room is pretty much her playroom--until recently she spent close to zero time in her bedroom. She's a lot like I was when she was a kid--overimaginative on the fearful side, and at the age of 6 still doesn't like to be too far from my (or Howie's) side--such as on a different floor of the house. In any case, most of her belongings are in the family room, and all of this containerage is in an attempt to contain her ever-burgeoning stuff. Because as my most faithful readers might remember, I am attempting to incrementally exert my dominion over this house. Hail Jilbur!

Chose two of these:
A relatively new strategy on the same topic: it finally occurred to me that even when her piles and piles of KiddieKrap is put away, it still is not joyful to behold. These furnishings have doors, and doors do not reveal what is behind them.

Scooped up one of these:
This is supposed to be a toybox, but guess what? it has nothing to do with the Jellybean's stuff. This is to hold 2 blankets--the extra, in-case-we-get-cold fleece; and the one that keeps Howie's knees from bruising each other in bed. 'Cause he's a Slim Jim.

That's not entirely all, but tragically IKEA does not have images of every little item they stock on their website. But fill in the rest of the picture with a festive meatball lunch, and you have a pretty good picture of how we spent the day.

Comments

[Suzyn]

I bought a colorful and graphically pleasing step stool at Ikea. When asked why I purchased it, I could only respond, with a sincere and amazed heart, "I had to buy it, it was TWO BUCKS." This logic was quite sensible to female friends and totally baffling to most males.

[Mme.Paquin]

Oh, I love it. I imagined David Attenborough narrating: "The Species Shop Ikea". "The female will pick up color swatches and try and match them."

Happy birthday, Jilbur! Forty is the new 30!

[Lee]

All you bought were boxes and hangers. There must be something there for a joke, but I'm too tired to dig for it.

[jilbur]

*sigh* My life is just a joke for you, isn't it, Lee? It's not bad enough that my life is so desperately mundane, a trip to Ikea registers as 'news.' I have to entertain you, too?

[Jo]

Oh, Jilbur, they've got you too!

[Melissa]

Dear God I'm trembling with the jealousy. My last trip to Ikea was in New York last May, but I had to shop lightly because everything had to get back on the plane.

I don't know why Ikea is so afraid of the Enchanted Mitten. It's not right.

Happy Birthday and happy shopping. The promise of organization always makes me want to have sex.

[pam]

Happy Birthday, Jilbur! Forty was a piece of cake. It was 41 that made me want to take inventory, dammit. Still not all the way back from the grumpy place. Maybe a trip to Ikea ...?

[Mollie]

whhhhhhuuuuuuuhhhhhh *shudder*

Well, we just came off of an extremely harrowing Ikea tilt-a-whirl ride that involved chartered buses, ferry rides, frantic shopping, pleading with the management to just let us BUY THE STUFF and please don't make us yank it off the shelves in the warehouse since we had to be back on the bus to the ferry in five minutes and that's barely time enough for you to just take the imprint of our juicy credit card, overbuying by about 60%, taking delivery and paying impressive freight charges, spending 3 straight days screwing the shit together before realizing that the pile of things not yet assembled were totally unneccessary and therefore had to be returned, spent the next 3 days on the phone with deliberately obtuse "customer service" people at Ikea trying to arrange for transfer of the goods to be returned, spent the next 5 days coming up with new curse words to accompany the word "Ikea," and finally, finally, had the excess picked up and freighted back and their value reinstalled on our bank account.

No matter what I can get there for two bucks, my husband will NEVER allow another MOLECULE of Ikea into this house. Never.

And there are these nifty plates I really want to get...

[Mollie]

P.S. We do love our black leather "Karlanda" sectional sofa, though. Hee.