April Letters - #2

Dear IKEA store of Minneapolis:

The Nobel Prize is the least they could do for the incredible geniuses that designed you and all of your contents. Your store is a work of art, a masterpiece of ingenuity.

The endless ideas we get from your perfect displays of assembled rooms. Literally, hours go by without a care in the world, just wandering from display to display, contemplating which child we will sell to afford this beauty.

Copious notes are scribbled with the little pencils you provide, measurements are jotted down with your paper tape measures, not to mention the wish lists we create on the space provided on the back of the map.

The map! What would we do without the map? If there is one little, minor thing I could find to complain about, it would be the necessity of the map. Without it, you start to feel like a rat in a maze searching for the ever allusive cheese. Personally, I don't mind the wandering through the maze because at every turn there is another thing to take note of, something to add to the wishlist, however, my husband needs the map like a crack addict needs the rock. Without the map, he starts to twitch and shake due to the feeling of having no idea where he is or where he is supposed to go.

In the last week, we have wandered your glorious floors for a total of 13 hours. This was accomplished on two different days, but 13 hours no less. Tomorrow we will venture to your big blue and yellow store again and make our final purchases to complete the furniture in our newly carpeted basement.

After a month of walking through regular furniture stores and not being able to find that perfect combination to fit our strangely configured basement, let alone be able to afford anything we thought was a possibility, we made the hour long trip to you and low and behold, there it was. The furniture we thought didn't exist and at a price half as much as the inferior stores. Of course, considering the size of my wishlist, it might have been cheaper to just buy the other stuff and be done.

I see many more trips to your store in our future, just as soon as I start my 900 Sexline business so as to afford the extensive wants.

In my quest to make a smaller footprint on this world and to reduce the amount of 'things' we accumulate, you've ruined me. I want one of everything that you have and if that makes me a bad person? The shoe fits.

I'm anxiously awaiting our time together tomorrow and am saddened that it will have to be a quick, in and out trip. My husband has learned to limit my wandering and has threatened to put blinders on me, like a horse. I've promised to walk in, get what I've come for and walk back out. But don't worry, I'll be back. We still need lamps and that oh, so cool framed print of the spring forsythia bush, that will be lovingly placed above my fireplace, come hell or high water.

Sincerely,
Angie