D-Day

Monday

We woke up early to take dad to the airport. He carried on the conversation all by himself on the one-hour ride there and said so many funny things. It’s refreshing having him around…he’s really jovial and cackly (there’s not really another word to for it!) and though his gross exaggerations may aggravate me, I have to admit they are pretty funny and he is much more knowledgable than I had previously thought in high school. He knows his stuff, whether about politics or Iraq or trucking (duh, it’s his job!) and I ought to give him more credit, because he’s a pretty cool guy.

Colleen and I crashed the party at Ikea for the next two and a half hours and had a blast looking at pretty Swedish furniture and dreaming about all the cool things she could one day have in her apartment. The store is intruiging…sort of reminiscent of a Home Depot only ten times as large and with two floors devoted solely to display of the assembled furniture in fake “rooms.” The furniture isn’t all that expensive, either, compared to Target and mainstream department stores.

The catch is you have to assemble everything yourself. We would spend the remainder of the day assembling (and cursing at) a stubborn floor bed frame, a bookcase, a table, and four chairs while unpacking boxes. We pretty much finished the kitchen and started on the living room by the evening and punctuated the process with a mid-afternoon Starbucks and venture to Target and Bed Bath & Beyond, and a late night run to get Chinese food. We ended the day with a giant celebration of Colleen’s birthday. (Giant celebration= watching 2 episodes of Arrested Development, Colleen’s birthday gift from Joe). That show is really growing on me. I like Tobias dressed as a British housekeeper.

The day was quite enjoyable, though. I really like using my hands to build stuff. It’s not every day that you assemble an apartment’s worth of furniture, and I guess I’m looking forward to when I can furnish my own apartment, then my own house, then hopefully my children’s bedrooms and what not. But that is far away in time and space. For now, I’m enjoying this.