Today a giant IKEA is opening in Utah at the southern tip of the valley, quite a few miles from our house but closer than California, so I’m not complaining. Oh, the prayers that are being answered with this IKEA. I’m pretty sure God is quite fed up, and now that we have our IKEA he’d like us to shut up already. But I’m thinking that if an IKEA is possible, why not an H&M? Or a Crate and Barrel? Maybe if we pray hard enough we could get a CONTAINER STORE. Do you have any idea what I would do inside a Container Store? A lot of things, I tell you, a lot of dirty, nasty things that I have read about in Martha Stewart Living.
I’m just a tiny little itty bit excited about this IKEA and have been eagerly keeping up with the building’s construction: the clearing of the land, the erection of the walls, the paving of the four-mile-long parking lot. Each time something new was added to the building I’d hurry home to give Jon the update with so much enthusiasm that he’d be forced to roll his eyes. It’s just an IKEA, he’d say, not the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Maybe so, but if the Second Coming is at the top of the list of Important Things in This World, IKEA is not a distant number two. Followed closely by bendable straws.
This morning I woke up at 4 AM and was unable to go back to sleep, probably because it was over 100 degrees in our bedroom and Jon, who was sleeping in flannel pants, had wrapped himself into a cocoon with every cover on the bed, but I’m not going to get into that right now because the temperature in this house is a very sensitive issue. The only thing I will say about it is that both of us are on the verge of booby-trapping the thermostat so that if someone touches it an ax will drop out of the ceiling and lodge its blade squarely between their eyes.
I couldn’t go back to sleep because it was so hot, and while I was lying there I remembered that today is IKEA day, and for a couple of hours I daydreamed about the first thing I want to buy. Something I can’t pronounce, for sure, and then when I finally fell back asleep I had an actual dream that the Mormon church had been asked to come into IKEA and dedicate the building before it opened. There was a huge gathering of men and women in the parking lot, all dressed in their Sunday best, and my sister had been asked to give the opening prayer. “Dear Heavenly Father,” she said in her thick Southern drawl, “we thank you this day for these fine furnishings that are offered at super value savings.”
That should give you just a tiny peek inside my psyche.