You know those big, yellow bags they give you at the entrance to IKEA? And the free pencils? (Oh, am I supposed to hand those back? Sorry.) Well, they should be giving out distress beacons. A GPS might come in handy too. Hell, I’d even settle for a map. Especially at their new store in Tempe. What am I saying? It’s not a store, it’s a maze, a metropolis, a monolith. Full of cheap things in bright colours. So, of course, no-one is going to give me a distress beacon or a GPS or a map because they want me to get lost. That’s the whole point. They want me to fill the emptiness of my big, yellow IKEA bag with stuff I didn’t know I needed until I saw it. The “storage solutions” section always gets me. I wander around goggle-eyed thinking: yes, yes, this is where I’ve been going wrong – my house is a mess because I don’t have enough plastic boxes for everything. But no matter how many plastic boxes I buy or how many pretty colours they come in, it’s never enough. The house reverts to its natural state: an absolute tip … Anyway, so Sprog 2 and I got lost in IKEA yesterday. It’s just the two of us this week. Husband is at work. Sprog 1 is at a future veterinarians’ camp (none of that malarky in my day). After dropping Sprog 1 at her schmancy camp I had a revelation: we were only 20 minutes away from THE NEW IKEA!!!!! Just around the corner, really. So I dangled the carrot of a new toy box at Sprog 2 and she jumped at it. Sprog 2 loves new things. And she loves bright colours. So IKEA was heaven for her. She was in charge of the big yellow bag and egging me on. Of course we needed an apple cutter. Yes, some bird placements would be lovely. Oh yeah, mumma, now you’re talking, my toy doggie definitely needs a raincoat and dog basket. We even found what we went there to get: a toy box. And hallelujah, it was pop-up one. No allen keys! Callooh callay! I’m still a little scarred – physically and psychologically – from making her IKEA wardrobe last year. Fortunately, Sprog 1 loved her fish ice cube tray, as we totally forgot to buy her something (as you must do) until we arrived at the cashier, which didn’t leave much to choose from. And there was no way I was going back in. I might never have found my way out again.
DIET LOG: Two bites of Sprog 2’s ginger biscuit at a semi-trailer-buffetted cafe on Princes Highway while waiting 45 minutes for IKEA to open. What was I thinking, expecting a retail metropolis to open at 9am like smaller, garden-variety stores do? It would also be nice if they made it clearer that the IKEA cafe actually opens at 9.30am, as it would have saved me a lot of diesel fumes.
WHAT THE SCALES SAID: 69kg
TONIGHT’S DINNER: Hosting Sprog 1’s vet camp buddy for a sleepover. Homemade salmon fish fingers and chips should hit the spot.
housegoeshome 
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