As we prepare for a move deeper into Midwestern suburbia, my dearest has started behaving rather oddly. Not that she was not a bit odd to begin with, as is undeniably the case seeing that she remains attached to me. However, I am seeing signs that I think ought to worry me.
Like most inhabitants of the civilised world, I have heard of IKEA. I heard of IKEA long before it made its ways to these here shores. My mother had access to one as early as 1979. I know enough to instantly tell that the MALM bedside table on craigslist is their lowest grade of particle board and probably belongs to a poor college student from Chicago because that's where the nearest store is located. My textbooks live on an ENETRI (discontinued) that I bought (on craigslist) from a slightly better-off grad student.
I have even been to an IKEA myself--two in fact since the one in Bolingbrook does not carry the same range of stuff that the one in Schaumburg carries (why do I know this?). I have even bought stuff directly from IKEA. The last bill, I think, ran to something like $1600. You could say that I have experienced a Swedish Furniture Encounter of the Third Kind, though putting it that way gives me uncomfortable visions of the ÅNES probing my ånus at night when I'm sleeping on it, to the tune of ABBA's "Money, Money, Money."
I have nothing against buying stuff from the richest men in the world, as long as it's not Bill Gates. An octagenarian Swedish furniture billionaire by the name of Ingvar Kamprad sounds fairly non-threatening and is as welcome to my hard-earned money as Carlos Slim is, and they both have a chunk of it. I will consume their products as long as these products satisfy my needs as a consumer. Which I suppose is how they came to be billionaires. Plus, none of them can take it with them anymore than I can. Anyway.
After being in a rental for four years, last month we got an accepted offer on a house. The following weekend my dearest started making noises about another trip to Chicagoland. (I fear the day they set up shop in Indy.) Word had spread that there were special one-day offers to be had. Of course you know that "word" spreads more easily when you go looking for it, which suggests that someone had been browsing the IKEA web site--purposefully even. I exercised the veto power of the Man Expected To Drive, not being about to put the kids in the car for six hours, no matter how many POÄNG we could buy (limit: two per customer while stock lasts) and how many PUTT-I-PANNA and KÖTTBULLAR with lingonberries they could eat.
Ten days ago we submitted the paperwork that could put us in debt for most of the rest of our lives, assuming that there is someone who will give us a wad of money today in return for cartloads of money tomorrow. The economic climate is good, the government subsidy that comes disguised as a "tax rebate" is sizeable, and the only way we'll get this loan is by having the federal government guarantee it. Socialism, American-style. Not half bad when you're on the receiving end of it. In fact it feels almost like we're in Sweden, just without the tax rate. Excuse me, I feel an umlaut coming on...
Today I found a sheet of paper lying on the NORDEN. My dearest has been making googly eyes at the room on the north end of the new house. It has a large window at each end and is plenty big. She shall have it, certainly, or she'll turn the rest of the house into a library. Now about the sheet of paper. It is very clearly a scale drawing of the room. There's a door and there are six-foot openings in each end where the windows are. But does it say "computer desk" or "bookcase" or even draw anything like that? Heck, nej!
I look at the scheme and realise that I am hopelessly outclassed. I will carry her books in the best romantic schoolboy fashion but what chance do I stand against a BILLY who will patiently and tirelessly hold hundreds of them for her for years to come? And there are BILLYs end to end. An orgy of BILLYs. And if she gets tired of BILLY, she has "5-6" (that's what it says on the paper) BENNOs lined up. Should those, too, fail to satisfy her, she has made provisions to take care of that EXPEDITiously.
I'm not saying that IKEA is all bad. As a cook, I'll admit to ogling the self-cleaning convection MUMSIG while I'm writing this. But this is not about me. It's about the mother of my kids. She is no longer mine. She has succumbed to the IKEA nesting instinct and is a woman in a trance. The 2008 catalogue has taken up residence in the bathroom. Before I know it, she will be in that new room of hers reading Anne Rice by the light of the KVART, sitting in the lap of OLLE or HARRY. I know because they've been circled with black marker on pages 86 and 88.
The writing is on the wall, gentlemen, and you'd do well to read this as a cautionary tale. I can see the blue-and-yellow solid beechwood juggernaut heading my way and I am as powerless as the monks of Lindisfarne circa 793 A.D. It doesn't look as though it will be going away anytime soon. I think I'll hide behind the PAX/KOMPLEMENT for the next five years and hope it doesn't spot me.
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