Things I learned on a trip to IKEA

It takes a Google Documents spreadsheet, six index cards, an iPhone, and a calculator to buy bookshelves, a TV stand, and a futon. Rather, it does if you’re me. Rational people will likely get by with less.

When you’ve printed the Google Spreadsheet that you and your wife hashed out, with catalog numbers and expected cost, be certain to leave them on the printer tray in your office. Then, for extra fun, realize your mistake as you pull into the parking lot, an hour away from home.

When you use the iPhone Google Docs interface to pull the shopping list up — and find it to be fully usable, even over EDGE — be certain to revel in that “holy shit, I’m living in the future” moment.

Mumbled announcements over the PA are indistinguishable from Swedish.

How to tell the difference between the fake workstations and the real office that I accidentally wandered into: The real office has paper and crap all over the desks, like real people have.

You do not steer five hundred pounds of bookshelves on a cart. You make polite suggestions. These will sometimes be ignored. I apologize to everyone whom I nearly ran over.

There is nothing quite like coming home, unloading a truck, taking sixteen ibuprofen, and staring at a bunch of flat packs. The certainty of wordless puzzlegram instructions and innumerable opportunities for self-injury fills the heart with a special kind of joy.

Going to IKEA alone is a stupid idea, but at least I didn’t have a teenager along. My sympathies to the poor soul in line behind me. And thanks for helping me stop the cart before it squished that old lady.