I have to post something just to get the last post down out of sight a bit… I’m still thinking about it, worrying about it, and wondering how all that affects our AWC club account as well. Good thing I color my hair, or you’d see how much grayer Barky is from this stuff, in just the past few days.
Bought a pumpkin today, a nice Halloweenie one, kind of tall. I told the kids they were in charge of carving it. We’ll see if it actually happens before Halloween on Friday. The neighbors sent out the letter about trick-or-treating and I bought a bunch of candy today, too. Ouch, that stuff is spendy. Martin is going to a party with friends and he’s dressing as Kyle the Frankenteen from American Horror Story (which he is currently obsessed with).
It’s a bit of a stressful week at work as well because it’s fall break and both of my teammates are out of the office…one all week, and one starting tomorrow. The job requests have been coming in thick and fast, so I’m a little worried how I’ll manage to keep up. One of my other colleagues is supposed to help out as well, as back-up, but she has a pile of her own stuff to do, so not sure how she’ll manage to prioritize helping me. Today, I asked Emelie, who is on vacation the rest of the week, if they were going anywhere, like our other teammate, who is in Istanbul with her family. “No,” she said, “just hanging out at home, me and the girls.”
Then she added that they WERE planning an IKEA day later this week. “IKEA day?” I asked. “What’s that?” And she proceeded to horrify me with the plans they had: getting up early and going to IKEA for the ENTIRE DAY, just for FUN. She has three daughters and they LOVE the place. They go for breakfast, lunch and dinner, they have cinnamon buns at the counter, and spend time in the children’s play place. They go through the entire store and look at everything. She said they love it.
I said, they were insane.
We were just at IKEA. I don’t go there much anymore, though we have stopped in to get things when the kids’ rooms were renovated. My mother-in-law and another friend of mine also praise the food at the restaurant there, and while I have to agree it’s definitely decent food, the amount of screaming children in the seating area doesn’t offset any taste quality the place may have.
We were there because we needed to replace the broken kitchen chair, and because Anders’ mom needed a new lamp. So we had dinner there, too, and afterwards, we split up: Martin and I went to get the chair, and Karin went with her dad and farmor to the lamp department. I knew it would take them awhile, so I made Martin go through THE ENTIRE STORE with me. We actually had fun, and looked at everything. We saw a 25 sq. m. room setup with a loft bed that he thought was pretty cool, and I picked up Christmas wrapping paper (I restrained myself from buying any decorations, though it was close when I saw this one) and the Christmas tree glass ball wreaths were really nice, but too expensive.
It’s just not done to go out of IKEA with only the thing you went in for, right? I found 2 clip-on LED bedside lights as well, which is perfect, since our bedside lamps are pretty but useless. Since I still read a lot of “real” books, and not just on my Kindle, having a good bedside lamp has become more important. My old lamp light is so weak I have to stay on my left side, the bad-shoulder side, and it’s caused eye strain as well. Now, I’m all set!
I can’t believe how fast the end of the year is coming. It’s only 57 days until Christmas! EEK! I have bought exactly 2 presents so far, not including the one I bought for myself…I need to get busy. And I don’t even want to think about the rest of the stuff that has to be done at some point. I’m really hoping that my brother and his family might be able to come up for at least a few days. If it doesn’t cost too much, it would be so fun to have them here again!