King of IKEA

Big day for our marriage on Sunday. Even bigger than last Sunday. Which was our wedding anniversary. Which I forgot. But was saved due to the fact that I wasn't the only one who forgot. Actually, for some reason that didn't save me. But we'll get back to that some other time. Most of you have probably seen that movie, starring Robin Williams, where the priest gives a series of tasks to a couple. To see if they are really ready to be married. Sweden has it's own version of the marriage test. It's called the "IKEA asembly" test. We needed some new furniture. No way around that. As a bare minimum was somewhere to store the 300 pairs of shoes that apparently one simply has to have. And we picked IKEA. The nearest IKEA store is in Haparanda, on the Finnish border. About an hour and a half away. It's a day trip, fighting with 17 million Finns. Or thereabouts. And the hire of a trailer for a day. If anyone ever wants to start up their own business in Sweden, hire trailers. You'll be the richest guy in town within a month. But we're moving offtrack here. So, after studying the online IKEA website ( which is pretty good, I have to say ) we discovered that some of the furniture (möbler) we wanted, was out of stock at our local branch. As a bit of a joke, we checked out what it would cost to buy the stuff online, and have it delivered. Turned out that it was actually about 200kr cheaper than going to the store. And, they had everything we needed. Ok, so I missed out on the thrill of shopping trolley wars. But one learns to live with sacrifice. 10 days later, 2 burly chaps arrived at the door of our second floor apartment, in the snow, with about 200kg of IKEA boxes. Bless their little socks. Don't know if they were looking for a tip or not, but I did give them advance warning to leg it before our senile cocker spaniel woke up. I think they appreciated the gesture. Anyway, back to Sunday. First up, we had "the talk". You know the one. "This is IKEA furniture. There's going to be moments when we think that the world as we know it is about to devour us. There's going to be times when one of us will wish the the world devours the other one of us. Just remember that, I love you. And that our wills are in the bank vault". 3 hours later we had a bedroom dresser ( byrå). It looked pretty much like the picture in the catalogue. And apart from a backwards drawer that needed pulling apart and reassembled, and a nail that got away from me ( only to be rescued by our trusty canine ), our marriage is still relatively intact. Tonight, it's wardrobes (garderober). I'm not expecting the same merciful ride. But at leat I now know where my will is.