I would rather be dragged to hell than to IKEA!

Please God. Hear my prayer: Strike me dead, shoot lightening from the sky directly onto my skull severing it from my spine causing my legs to cease walking and halting any forward progress I might have been making toward a return trip to the nightmare and nausea-inducing, hyperventalation-producing, crowd-infested, insane blue and yellow box from hell that is IKEA!

Last night I was all snotty superciliousness with Fred when I said I wanted to go to IKEA. IKEA was the apex of modular Nordic furniture. Clean lines and cheap prices. What's not to like? We will find lots of ways to store our stuff. There will be oodles of frames and boxes and modular Danish things. Yes, yes, honey, I will look it up on the web and confirm that there is actually stuff there I like. So I went to the web. And I did a search. And I found stuff that I liked. And Fred and I spent this morning on a very exciting measuring conversation about exact and ideal heights and depths and widths. I should have known better. It was too good too be true. I could see all the cabintry. I could see the wonderful modular framing on the walls for my perfume bottles. It was so pretty.

Then we got to IKEA. It was packed. People were pouring into the parking lot, jamming up to find a spot. We found one right away. Like it was meant to be. More people were pouring out of IKEA with packages and trundling carts filled with boxes to be assembled at home. Many wore glassy expressions, but I didn't pay attention to that small detail.

We walked through the door and as we did I was chattering away happily vomiting up all the IKEA hype, "Fred, they have a day care center here. Fred, they have a restaurant here. Fred, you can find a your one true love here." OMG. Where did I leave my brain? Inside the door you are assaulted with signs everywhere, telling you 50 different things. Evidently there are different ways to buy things. Like, what? You have different ways to buy things in IKEAland? Can't I just say I want it? Why do I have to fill things out? Why do I have do decide these things now? I'm confused now and I haven't even gone 5 steps in your frigging store!!!!! So we go up the escalator. I get a map and a pencil. I figure it's a good start. I want bathroom cabinets. But the map shows the label for bathrooms and then the map doesn't show a place for bathrooms. So I ask the great yellow shirted one, "Where is the bathroom area?" Blank look. "See this label here, Bathrooms? It doesn't have a corresponding place on the map. I want to know where the bathroom cabinets would be." Blank look. Followed by. "Probably downstairs." She's standing by an elevator. So we go to get into the elevator. She says (and I swear to God this is true), "That elevator doesn't go down." I look at her. "Ok." She points to the stairs. So we take the stairs. I look at Fred. "Unless we are in an alternate universe, that elevator is going down." Fred said, "Perhaps it is on a really big loop."

Once we get downstairs, I consult the blue maze map of the first floor and determine the strange zig zag pattern we need to walk in order to find the bathroom cabinets. We find them and not a one of the bastards is suitable. I am near tears. The entire store is filled. FILLED. FILLED to the FRIGGING brim with people stuffing crap into bags and carts. They are all crowding the maze path and impeding the exit. I am finding it very hard to breathe. I start to walk very quickly through these pokey people. Then we turn the corner to what seems to be the exit, but it isn't. It isn't the exit. Where is the exit? HOW DO YOU GET OUT OF THIS NIGHTMARE BUILDING? I actually said that in a rather loud voice. One of the yellow shirt people had to point me to a door. A door that didn't have exit plastered over it, I might add.