..and one ikea youtube video from about 7,910 options

Here's Spike Jonze's take on an Ikea commercial....

from the 149,007 ikea images on flickr

weekend wonderland

We went to Ikea. Again. On a Saturday. I suppose Sundays could be worse, but Saturday at Ikea is one of those little hells on earth that you come across every once in a while, and vow to avoid for ever more. If you must go, there are about a million less people on a weekday.

But J. needs me and my car and neither of us can do a weekday. Just a short while ago she needed "things" from Ikea, and now she's moved up to the bigger room with the balcony she needs more things. She is my daughter. This is what I do, now that I don't do the meals and the washing and the nappies and the sleepless nights and the school run and the stories.

J. knows her way around Ikea and when to get the bag and when to get the trolley. We join the throng and we shuffle along. Children run amok and climb and disappear and need to be shouted out for. There are always people arguing in intense and angry voices, saying things like, "It's not my fault", and "Look can we just do it and get out of here," and you know they know they'll be leaving with those flat boxes and a million screws and flimsy instructions.

Not us. We just need smaller things. Laundry basket, mood lighting, plates, maybe a doona cover. I resist the scented candles, I have a cupboard full already. But, hmm, could use some vases. J. says I should get some of the in pieces and boxes furniture and get a handyman to put them together. I resist.

At the checkout, the queues are astounding. "We may as well accept that this is just how it is,"says J. "And just wait, calmly."

We get through, eventually, and rattle over to the brown paper and wrap our breakables and J. realizes what I know already. That she will have to wait in the loading bay and I will have to get the car. Tricky Ikea, there's no getting out with your trolley.

I remember where the car is, yay is me. But I can't find the pay station and have to hail down a woman leaving to ask where it is. Back upstairs, she says, and adds a sincere apology. Up I go and join a queue and there are mutterings and rumblings as people realise this is a cash only point. I hope the validation from Ikea means I don't have to pay anything and I don't, but I sweat anyway.

Back to the car. I drive around looking for the way to the loading bay but can't find it, and anyway I mix up the exits for cars and feet. So I take pot luck and throw the car out an exit and it's totally wrong, but there is a way of redeeming this mistake if I drive on into the dead end, u-turn and drive back. I hesitate at the intersection and the car on my right flashes past in front of me to turn left,the driver swelled with road rage.

I take my chance, drive ahead, u-turn, cross the intersection again when the opportunity presents itself, and drive back towards the car park. Now, between the line of traffic behind me and the line coming toward me, I must u-turn again into the bay. It is done. Eventually.

Now the loading bay, which is chock-a-block with cars backing and filling and driving off. Looking for a space. I cannot see J. but chugging along I see my space and I indicate. drive forward, reverse on an angle. I see J. wheeling the trolley forward and I flip open the boot, get out and we load up. Back in, waiting for an opportunity to move forward and out of this place as cars and people and trolleys swell around me.

"Well," says J. in a satisfied, content sort of way, "that was pretty stress-free and easy, wasn't it?"

Would for the 2 a.m. feeds.