Reasons I'm Not Looking Forward to Renting a Truck and Picking Up a Bed Tonight

The only thing missing from our apartment that we really need is a bedframe. We left Adam's old one in Berkeley, where it's probably by now been peeled apart and smoked. We picked out a new frame at Ikea that's probably the same one you have in your homes, given the speed at which it goes out of stock. But it's in stock tonight, and the truck's been reserved.

While I kind of notoriously have no sense of direction, there's not a doubt in my mind I couldn't navigate Ikea with my eyes closed at this point. We've been there, I think, four times since this move--the combination of Adam not coming from a land of Ikea and my joblessness means that the lure of cheap furniture is too strong to resist. It's gotten a lot nicer since my introduction to it in my first apartment out of college, but right as I'm getting comfortable in the store and convincing myself that adults shop there, too, I come across that table we all had two of (or four, if you were really classy and arranged them all together in the middle of the room so it looked like you had one big table):

Yeah, you remember that. It's called the Lack, and it's still $12.99. Inflation hasn't hit Ikea since 2003, but the Lack does come in several more colors now. I think my only option was "Birch Effect."

So, anyway, the other thing you don't realize about Ikea is that even though it IS incredibly convenient that all their furniture can be dismantled into teeny, tiny pieces and put into a box that you can strap to the top of your Volkswagon, those boxes are super-dense and your average 130-lb woman stands little to no chance of being able to haul them up four flights of stairs herself. And, frankly, that's usually my only contribution to the furniture effort, because I look at directions and my eyes start to cross and I usually end up going to bed crying before the project's complete.

Luckily, Adam sees the construction of furniture as a pleasure. Whereas my previous favorite Ikea assembly quote came from a former roommate's boyfriend, who, on their second date, decided he'd rather stay behind and assemble my bed than go out to dinner: "It's like Legos!," my new favorite comes from Adam, who, upon seeing the first page of instructions for our new bookshelf, gasped (sorry, Mom): "Aw, man, I'm gonna jizz in my pants!"

I did decide that there was one Ikea item I could handle entirely on my own: the mirror. It's just a wall mirror--the cheapest full-length one they had. Whereas my dear roommate doesn't seem to mind if his shoes are compatible with the length of his pants, I do, and, besides, the mirror is literally one one piece that gets stuck to the back of a door. I didn't think this could be difficult at all. BUT LOOK!

Four illustrated instructions. I have omitted nothing; there are no additional written instructions. I had to make them up.

.
Knife it off. Got it.



Find Silly Putty. Pet lovingly. Shape into wave, add tiny surfboard.


Stretch as far as possible.


Corn dogs make the sun rise.

This is just a MIRROR. And that's why I won't be participating in the assembly of the bed.