Typical

Why living with my husband is so much fun:

On Saturday, I had a home study visit with a family in Buckhead, a neighborhood in north Atlanta. I dropped Jamie off at a nearby Starbucks so he could read while I met with my family and afterwards, the two of us headed down to Ikea to look for bookshelves. We needed bookshelves for two reasons: one, we have a ton of books and have kept them in boxes in what will soon be the nursery since moving here in '08; two, we (rather, I) would like to create a playroom in the main living area of our house to keep baby toys in. Now, in my recollections, Jamie and I had discussed the need for two different sets of bookshelves and our trip to Ikea for that purpose. Apparently, we had not.

We get to Ikea and decide to eat lunch first. We spent $8 on two meatball plates and drank water - typical for a Hotalen "date". We shopped for a couple hours, debated over shelves, selected (or so I thought) the best shelves for our purposes, wrote down the important identifying info and headed to the merchandise pick-up area to get our shelves, pay and head home.

But in typical fashion, once we got to the merchandiser pick-up area, Jamie, bless his frugal little heart, couldn't commit to any shelves. We hadn't shopped around enough. What if there were cheaper shelves at Wal-Mart or Target? Finally realizing his hormonal wife was going to lose her mind if we went home emptyhanded, he agreed to purchase the shelves for our home office area only, not for the toy room. Now both thoroughly cranky, we pay and head out to the car. Only to discover that our purchases do not fit in a Camry - no way, no how. So Jamie decides the only logical thing to do is return them and forget about it. And we head home emptyhanded. And, on my part anyway, pretty irritated.

And that was Saturday.

Sunday, Jamie decides we'll go ahead and do some comparison shopping and if we can't find any cheaper shelves, we'll return to Ikea. Guess where we wound up? Now Ikea runs a special from time to time where you can eat for free if you spend more than $100 on furniture. When you checkout, you present your cafe receipt and the price of your food is deducted from the price of your furniture. Jamie, never one to miss a deal, decides to take full advantage of this offer. Remember our $8 meatball and water meals from the day before? This time, we spent almost $30. On food. For just the two of us. Jamie was hilarious. He got a softdrink and an orange juice; a meal, a salad, a dessert. He insisted I load up as well. Anything I'd ever wanted to try at Ikea, go for it! After all, it's free! You have to have witnessed Jamie's tightfistedness firsthand to really understand how funny it was to watch him but trust me, the amount of food was obcene.

We got the shelves for the office area, but not the playroom knowing we could never fit them all in the car. We'd brought the Saturn this time, hoping the station wagon would give us more room. It worked, but it wasn't easy! The boxes stretched all the way from the back windshield to between the front seats. My job all the way home was to keep them from falling on Jamie and making us crash when he turned left. We drove home laughing about how ridiculous this was. And once home had a fun time putting them together and getting them up in our new office.

Two full days spent shopping at Ikea...oh, Jamie, you keep life interesting!