Swedish for “line-up”

I went to Ikea the other day. I know, I know – but I actually enjoy going to Ikea. Every summer I wait for the yearly catalogue with unbridled enthusiasm, and when it arrives, I am transfixed by its offerings. When I get to the store, I am in my glory and can wander joyfully for hours. I may not buy anything, but I get lots of ideas for home decorating projects that I’ll get around to someday.

Well, this was someday. I decided that I absolutely had to purchase a plain navy blue carpet for one of the rooms in my house. I had seen such a carpet the last time I visited Ikea last summer, when I picked up a few items for DD. I didn’t buy it at that time, because I wanted to think about it, to turn it over and over in my mind to make sure that I really wanted it. (I do this. It’s kind of the antithesis of impulse buying. The problem is that sometimes I ruminate for so long that the item I wish to buy is no longer available, but at least I’m usually spared the ordeal of returning something that I bought in haste.)

It was very nice to drive out to the store in the middle of the week, rather than on a weekend. Much less traffic. The parking lot had plenty of available spots. I was able to wander through the store at will, without bumping into fellow wanderers and their strollers/ shopping carts/ oversized shopping bags.

I quickly found the carpet I was looking for, and picked it up. It wasn’t too heavy or bulky, fortunately, so off I trotted towards the checkout.

I passed the candles on the way. I also grabbed a couple of packages of tealights, since I was completely out of those and I do like my candles. I was feeling pretty good about things, particularly about my efficiency and how single-minded I was being. No aimless meandering for me that day, I was on a mission. And my mission was very nearly accomplished. The checkouts were in sight.

Except that only four of the twelve checkouts were open. And each had a line-up snaking waaaaaay back, at least ten people plus their strollers/ shopping carts/ oversized shopping bags. It was going to be a loooooong wait.

My question is this: on a weekday, with the parking lot and the store itself half empty, where the hell did all those people at the checkouts come from???

Dreamy weekend

Let me tell you all about my weekend. You know you’re dying to know. And I, quite honestly, have little else to offer today.

On Saturday morning, DD and I headed out on a shopping expedition. We do this once a year, normally on Good Friday, and normally downtown so we can stay at a fancy hotel and treat ourselves to a nice dinner out as well. We don’t particularly enjoy shopping, either of us, so I suppose the hotel and dinner are like the payoff for going through the agony of a shopping trip. Or else it’s just another way to spend money. Not sure.

Anyway, this year DD was in the throes of her thesis and final exams at Eastertime, so we postponed our shopping till now. And we changed the venue. And we didn’t do the hotel and dinner thing. But it was almost the same.

We arrived home in the late afternoon, laden with full shopping bags and with much smaller bank accounts, and I hurriedly packed an overnight bag so I could head over to Porsche Guy’s place. From there, we headed downtown to finally see “Les Misérables”. PG drove like he stole the car, because he thought we were going to be late, but we arrived with time to spare.

Holy crap! What an amazing show! I just loved it! (Wow, that’s three exclamation marks in a row. I truly did love it, it seems.) And Irene, I actually understood what what going on the whole time. I never did finish reading the synopsis in the program from last week, but I didn’t need to. It was perfectly clear to me what was happening on stage at all times. PG didn’t have to explain a single thing to me.

The music, and oh, the singing! I’m not really a musical-lover, though I have seen “Cats” and “Spamalot” (the latter on Broadway, no less) and my all-time favourite movie is “Mary Poppins”. Yet I literally left that theatre humming many of the melodies, and I am still humming them several days later. This from a woman who can barely remember the tune of “Happy birthday”.

The fun just continued on Sunday. PG and I had tickets to a heritage house tour. This is an event for which people who belong to this heritage society and have renovated their heritage homes (and a heritage home around here is usually only a hundred years old or less. Western Canada is a pretty new part of the world, relatively speaking.) open them to the public. More precisely, to the public who has bought tickets. The owners disappear for the day, and there are numerous volunteers from the heritage society who look after their house while strangers parade through and ooh and aah over everything that has been done to it. I guess it sounds odd, but it really isn’t, and PG and I have been attending this tour for the past six years (well, except for last year because I forgot which date it was scheduled and neglected to buy tickets in time).

Some of the homes we visited were really lovely, with period furniture and beautifully landscaped gardens. Some were a work in progress. One was an apartment that had been rented to an acquaintance of mine over twenty years ago and I had been in it before, so it was great fun to see how the current owners of the building had fixed it up (it was quite a wreck twenty-five years ago, let me tell you! ).

A favourite moment for me came when, in one residence, PG spotted a ceramic sleeping dog in a corner. It looked so real! Then I saw it breathe. And open one eye slowly. It was real. Then I realized what kind of dog it was. “Look!” I called to PG in delight. “It’s a weepette!”

Only people who read Jaywalker’s blog Belgian Waffle would understand that. Nobody else in the room did.

Then we went home and I slept through the Turkish Grand Prix Formula 1 race that PG had recorded. Yes, yes, I know that Jensen Button won. Again. Ho hum. F1 sure is boring this year.

We went out to dinner rather late for a Sunday night, around 9. We had to go out mainly because PG didn’t happen to have any real food around. We had also gone out for breakfast and lunch earlier in the day. Three meals in restaurants in one day = zero cooking = happy me. And I only had to pay once! I arrived home late in the evening, with a doggie bag of leftovers for my lunch at work today. Another win!

Of course, this morning I awoke at the ungodly hour of 5 am, but at least I was singing “I dreamed a dream in time gone by …”