The Ikea Cometh

Mother of God.

We knew that heading out to the brand spakin' new IKEA three days after it opened would be a fairly popular idea, but HOLY SWEDISH MEATBALLS.

About three exits early on the Interstate large flashing signs indicated what lanes IKEA traffic should be in. I sort of thought this was amusing as traffic was zipping along at a regular jackass pace, but then we reached the actual exit and I realized it was no joke. The entirety of the Centennial police force was out, hating their lives and using orange cone glow sticks to bat away their dignity.

Like, seriously; every five feet or so there was another cop decked out in a fetching hot yellow vest with sweat pouring down their face. Or tears. Because really? This is what they joined the force for?

One of the things I've realized in Denver is that when a place is popular or receives a good review in one of the local magazines, it still remains accessible. Snooze notwithstanding.

When I lived in Manhattan should your favorite local sushi place get written up in Time Out or worse, the Times? Forget about it. There's no point in trying. Or, good God, when JCPenney's opened in Herald Square? Oy. That was even worse because it wasn't even just the curious literate faction mobbing the place, it was anyone with eyes.

So, I was a little surprised when we were ushered through a series of traffic cone gauntlets only to watch the behemoth store pass on our right even though all the signs suggested parking was that way. As in, the direction where there is no blue and gold warehouse blotting out the horizon.

We ended up getting spit out back on the main road. Confused, Irreverand Husband and I thought that we'd just been had. Were all the parking lots full?

As we passed cars w/ Missouri and Montana license plates, making me wonder if people had really trekked that far just to visit IKEA, we momentarily thought this was more than we bargained for and we should just head home... but the promise of cheap furniture whose assembly will no doubt test the strength of our marriage was too strong.

We finally found a spot in an office building lot that was whoring itself out for the weekend. Score.

I've seen a lot of mobs in my life; that time I was accidentally in Times Square when Puerto Rico declared it's independence... or wait, that can't be right... I don't know, something happened that was monumental and there were gobs and gobs of humans just spilling out into the streets wearing flags like capes, or when I was at Cedar Point the day the Millennium Force first opened, or when Justin Timberlake was allegedly spotted at Hershey Park the day it was teeming with *NSYNC fans waiting for the concert.

That was all nothing, mere handfuls of interested parties gathering, compared to all the greater Denver-ites who've been poised for this, ready to pounce for over a year, victims of the clever advertising barrage promising an amalgamation of affordable housewares.

In the warehouse's shadow there's a (now) small furniture store, with an inventory consuming merely half the strip mall, ironically called "WOW!"

Poor thing.

People streamed past it as the blue and yellow steel testament to human consumerism loomed large. Pilgrims in the quest of promised salvation from the bitter worlds of Pottery Barn and Pier One.

And... we were no different. We recently bought a town house (oh yeah, update! I'm a homeowner!)(I have a mother fucking mortgage!)(Yes, as in MORTGAGE) and have left all 24 boxes of books we moved unopened with the sole intent of waiting for the local vernacular to hum with silly Swedish consonants.

**********

It is now three weeks after the fact and as I sit here listening to my husband and father-in-law's curses and damnations punctuating eerily dentist-like drill noises I still believe it was all really worth it.

I'm getting closer to my dream of having a Beauty and The Beast library...

one Billy bookcase at a time.

One Chapter's End

I can’t believe Borders is going under.

I’m a cheerleader for The Shop Around the Corner et. al., sure, but Borders was somehow so special to me growing up it’s sad to see it go.

I haven’t been in its aisles in a good oh, 5 years, which speaks to exactly why it’s bankrupt (not because I spent THAT much money, but because I’m sure there are others like me, seduced by kindles or libraries), but I feel as though my favorite merry-go-round is getting demolished to make way for a drive-thru liquor store.

It’s perverse.

I remember in the early 90s when they first started to come on the scene. A part of me at that time recognized that having such an expansive inventory and attention to comfort was revolutionary as far as book stores went, mostly because my mother would constantly say in italics, they have couches there.

Couches! In a store! It’s as though they’re asking you to browse instead of chasing waylaid shoppers out with a broom.

My first Borders was one shopping plaza away from where I took dance lessons. Often in an effort to have me actually engage in physical activity and attend said lessons my mom would offer a post-ballet trip to the book store. The book store that has two floors. Boom. Nerd-dom was born.

Climbing the stairs to the childrens’s section and sitting on bean bags paging through the latest Babysitter’s Little Sister book was my slide down the birth canal and prompt nesting in the afterbirth.

Yeah… that was a weird metaphor.

Beyond demonstrating the finer aspects of bribery, my mom’s offers to take me to the bookstore were one of the few bonding experiences that didn’t end in tears, whining and door slamming. And then whatever I would do.

We would part ways, browse to our hearts content, pick a few titles and ultimately meet each other at a couch in front of a fireplace. A fireplace in a bookstore.

The only other bookstore I’d seen a fireplace in was the conservative Christian “Loaves and Fishes” branch that would in future years use the feature to make Harry Potter conflagrations.

Borders wouldn’t do that.

This was also one of the only venues that I could bring myself to ask for something. Most kids want all kinds of crap that’s presented at their eye level and is bright, shiny and clearly going to change their lives forever.

I really wasn’t like that. I had this sort of guilt thing with consumerism and spending money and worrying that the My Little Pony I fought for was going to render us homeless. (It totally wasn’t. We’ve been upper middle class my whole life.)(I was just weird.)

I rarely asked for things. And I nearly never outright asked for things.

But at Borders, when I’d sigh and say, “I wish books were free…” and slyly look out the corner of my eye, my mom unfailingly asked “Why, were you wanting something? Go ahead. It’s a book.”

She never said no to a book.

I have since adopted this philosophy. And as such have a ton of books that I haven’t yet read, but that I needed to have at some moment in time.

I try not to ever pay full price for a book and never buy a hard cover, the only exceptions being new Jennifer Weiner novels and the occasional YA book that peaks my interest. I mostly go to used book stores, the library or a great new place in Denver called 2 Buck Books. Which yes, is technically a used book store, but you don’t understand. It's so much more.

I am also one of those people who will go to Borders/Barnes&Noble, what have you, find titles that are interesting, and ultimately go home and order them from Amazon or put them on hold at the library. So. In many ways, my generation's habits are at fault for kicking this conglomerate while it was down.

Well. Goodbye, Borders. I’m sorry I grew up to be so cheap.

"They may be bitches, but they are skinny bitches."

I gave up coffee nineteen days ago.

And just this moment I successfully walked away from a coffee percolator that looked suspiciously as though it were about to drip the sweet nectar of consciousness into my favorite mug.

I can't imagine how it became so precariously perched. Maybe it had something to do with me putting it there.

Yes. I was about to throw nineteen days worth of withdrawal jitters and obtundent lecture attendance to nurse once more at the teat of blessed caffeination.

But I didn't. I walked away and came to the keyboard instead.

My very sweet and ridiculously gorgeous cousin decided she and I should have our own personal book club spotlighting the "no nonsense tough love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous": Skinny Bitch.

It reads like something I would write if I were a hungover drill sergeant on my period paging through science fiction (read: REALLY, REALLY CRANKY) and had no regard for my readers' capacity for human emotion. There's a certain, "C'mon you fat, lame fools, stop wrecking your body and wasting my time," tone to the prose. The sarcasm leaps off the page and lambastes any preconceived notions of decency regarding my diet CLEAR OUT OF MY HEAD. The only way it could be more effective is if the sharp wit could come to life and actually slice the fat off my booty.

In short, the narrative manhandling scares the ever loving shit out of me. They aren't kidding when they say, "no nonsense."

I have read only Chapter One.

There were so many things within the "Give It Up" chapter that I need to work on I don't think I yet deserve to go on to the rest of the book. Or rather, I don't know that I can take the shame onslaught that will inevitably result if I read on and have to sustain more acerbic slaps to the face as I confront the truth that my diet suckity suck suck sucks.

So, because I want to keep reading the book, but don't feel I can face the authors again until I've made some changes, I gave up coffee.

I realize as a member of both the medical profession and the Starbucks generation this effort amounts to sheer blasphemy. But the Skinny Bitches say that coffee's acidity goads the body to produce fat cells to emulsify the coffee. The fat cells surround the uh, absorbed coffee, or what I envision as little piranha like Pac-men, and bar their destructive jaws from hurting the body. Now, this is all well and good, Go Body! with its adaptive mechanisms and all that, but I sure don't need extra fat cells circulating about.

Particularly if they're coming from something as second string luxurious as coffee. I'd rather save my fat cells for cheesecake. Or pizza. Mmmm... pizza...

So... I don't know how effective this has been, because it's but one small change I've made of about eighty three thousand I probably should, but that first week I gave up coffee... I WAS pretty bitchy. I assume that means it's working. I had half of the skinny bitch-dom down.

Since parting with the dark roasted temptress I have also been getting fewer headaches and I've started sating my hot beverage cravings with all manners of tea that claim to be antioxidant laden. Overall these seem like two positives and... perhaps more valid measures of the authors' advice.

To those of you who wonder why I'd listen to a book that makes me feel awful about myself I'd like to point out that I am a medical student. Masochism is how I roll.

In all honesty though, there's promise of applicability. It cuts the crap and speaks to me in chick-lit language I can relate to and be influenced by. If you're still looking for a stocking stuffer for someone who won't be offended if you say, "Oh, the title made me think of you!" I highly recommend it.

I'm sure there's a carnal metaphor waiting to be fleshed out in this post, but frankly I'm too mellow and tired to work it.

I have done absolutely nothing school related today. None. Zero. Zilch.

It's an unusual feeling after a week of cramming and the past nine weekends of frenetic studying for those accursed Monday exams. We don't have one this Monday. This week's exam is on Wednesday followed by a two day, Thursday and Friday, final exam experience. Only one more week of this course and I couldn't be happier.

Don't let it stress you out that I whiled the day away in decidedly non-academic pursuits when I have all that this week... because I'm not. Oy.

Sitting down to blog today was difficult, not from a lack of time stance, but from lack of substance. I mostly spend my days either bitching about school or talking about people, which equals boring and superficial and thus, not potential Internet fodder.

I went to the library yesterday and obtained three books which I will probably not have a chance to read before they're due. I just couldn't help it, it'd be so long since I basked in the narrative of non-textbook books I had to check some out... just in case I can steal a moment here or there to spend with them.

My original purpose for going to the library was to pick-up a short memoir I requested online: The Diving Bell and The Butterfly. It's a book that was repeatedly referenced here and there in our lectures because it was written about ten years ago by the editor of French Elle. The relevance to neuro? He was locked-in while writing.

He wasn't a hermit or recluse in the traditional sense, nor was he behind penal bars as the term "locked-in" may suggest, but rather due to a lesion affecting his brainstem he was completely paralyzed and incapable of speech though cognitively alert. Pretty much trapped in his own body, AKA the most horrifying situation I can think of. He retained volitional control of one eye and developed a system with what must've been a very patient individual wherein he blinked out the book, letter by letter.

I'll let you know how it goes.

So anyway, I went and picked it up, and in so doing was helplessly drawn in to peruse other titles that ultimately teased me into reading their synopses. Two jumped into my bag and insisted on being brought home.

On deck after the locked-in one: She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb and Queen of Babble by Meg Cabot.

Mmmm. Fiction.