Things I Learned This Week

Well, I learned many things this week. About the Harlem Renaissance. How to cook stuffed chicken. How to use an ear candle. I learned that if you accidentally go to Deseret Book during the Priesthood session, you will get 20% off everything, but you'll have to wait in line at the check-outs for a half hour. I learned that you should never, ever, EVER leave the house without a book, because the one time you do, you will end up having to wait at a Jiffy Lube with nothing to do. I re-learned that the Billy Blanks' Ultimate Boot Camp workout dvd is probably the hardest workout you (or at least I) will ever do.

But maybe the most important lesson was learned on Monday, the day I decided to re-do our second bedroom to make it into a home office for David. When I tell you this lesson began at Ikea and ended with a few too many leftover pieces of hardware and general frustration, I imagine you will say "ahhhh..." and be able to imagine what lesson it is that I learned. But I will tell you anyway.

Here is the lesson:

DON'T TRY TO PUT IKEA FURNITURE TOGETHER BY YOURSELF, ESPECIALLY IF THAT FURNITURE HAS DRAWERS INVOLVED.

I have heard many tales of frustration with Ikea assemblage. Marriages breaking up over a Smogerlaanden and such. But when David and I made our maiden voyage to the big blue-and-yellow box of happiness right after we moved into our first apartment, we had no trouble putting anything together when we got it home. We actually thought it was pretty fun. So I just assumed that I was immune to this particular brand of frustration. I thought it was probably only for people less handy and skilled than myself. Not so.

The problem was, I wanted to have the whole thing done by the time David got home at 7:30, and I didn't want him to see it until it was all done. Kind of like Trading Spaces, only I'm no Ty Pennington. Clearly. Matt let me leave work a little early so I could rush up to Ikea and buy a filing cabinet and a few other little things, hurry home and throw the room together, and, I don't know, maybe have dinner on the table by the time David arrived. That was plan. But when David got home, I wasn't ready so, in my stubborn pride, I shut myself up in the room and wouldn't let him come in until it was done. Which happened at 12:30 a.m. The reason: putting together drawers is freakishly hard. At one point I was squatted over the filing cabinet, holding a drawer in place with my calf and trying to screw the flurgen onto the kiiiinjvloblad. Hearing my grunting, David called out from the living room: "Are you sure you don't want any help?" I did. But of course, I couldn't let him see his New Home Office like that, with packing styrofoam strewn about and un-assembled furniture. So instead I made him wait in the living room for 5 hours while I struggled. In the end, with 2 leftover screws (hopefully unessential) and a few drawer-bottoms inserted wrong-side up, I finished the room and, taking a look around, realized it really wasn't all that exciting. But David humored me for the big reveal, pretending like I had given him a pony or something. And, indeed, he is working in there right now.

Here are the pics (please help with my decorating self-esteem by pretending, along with David, that it's cool):

David's desk and our new filing cabinet.

Another picture of the devil cabinet.

Closet o' guitars (there are three more just out of range of the picture, begging the question, why do we have so much stuff???) Also, David's extensive collection of ties.

These are those business cards we letter-pressed for David.

An unscripted moment of David using our giant chalk board.

All right, so that's actually really unimpressive. But now you know what 1/4 of our house looks like, so you can probably picture the rest (hint: it looks pretty much like every LDS meetinghouse built in the 70s.)