Yesterday Mags and I headed to IKEA in an effort to do something else in my wee apartamento. She's been steady pointin' at all the wall space informing me that I gotta put something on them before she goes crazy, so yesterday I made the attempt to appease her.
I need everything as far as I'm concerned. Side table, desk, new dining set, rug(s), linens, mirror, wall decor, yada. I also need someone else to pay for it and since that ain't fidna happen, I'll just keep rattling off all the stuff I need while Mags keeps rolling her eyes and informing me what I need to do with a little piece of every paycheck.
Yesterday's quest had us looking for baskets a shelving unit for some linens. Because I have my mother, I presently probably have enough bath towels to get me through 2 weeks with 2-a-day showers & hair washings. Having already mentioned I live in a STUDIO apartment I'm sure you recognize that there's probably little storage space for towels, sheets, etc. We have in our mind the unit we're interested in --
"Did you measure?" Mags asks as we drive along in the rain.
"Uh, no. Did you measure? You're the one looking at it all the time. I mean, I've looked at it and it's not that much space, probably as long as my arm and it can't stick out too much. We should turn around."
"No, no, no. I'm not going to be doing all this rippin' 'n runnin' in the rain. I'm already tired. We'll just go and get it and if it doesn't work, we'll find some other place for it because you need everything."
She knows she's been around me too long because we're starting to stress the same syllables with the same amounts of sarcasm, which is kinda funny ... at first. (It's like the first time you discover your shadow as a kid, and you skip with it, try to hide from it, etc., until you find yourself trying to outrun it and you know, it's always right there, sorta mocking you ... at least mine was, all tall and skinny. Crapper.) Anyway, we get there and we go to the As-Is department and wouldn't you know it? It's our lucky day. There's the unit we've had in mind and it's on sale for $55!
"Hey!" Mags says. "Get a cart. We're gettin' this."
"But it's dark brown/black. My other one is white."
"It matches. Danita, you need to learn to coordinate the stuff in your house the way you coordinate your clothes. Everything doesn't have to be the same color. That's so boring. White, white, white. Get something black. You need some black in your life."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I say, immediately feeling seventeen all over again.
"Oh. Here we go. Ooooh you get on my nerves. We're getting this. Get a damn cart please. I swear, you look so into every little thing."
I cannot stop looking at her in a series of faces that look like this:
I'm skeptical. It's dark and my space is small, but she keeps pushing that 55 dollar thing and I frankly find it hard to argue with that. $80 vs. $55?
"You can buy some paint and paint it, you know."
"But why can't I just get the one that I know I want?"
"Because it's white. I'm so sick of white. I sit in there and everywhere you look almost it's white. White walls, white table top, white bed linens, white shelves, door's white, everything is white. It's enough to make you go crazy."
"Then maybe I should get you a white coat," I mutter not-quietly-enough under my breath.
I give in. It's raining and I'm already annoyed with the fact that a) she insists upon loading it now and THEN coming back into the store to look for the rest of the stuff because she doesn't want to be pushing the crazy cart around with the heavy thing on it and b) I'm annoyed at the mere thought of hauling it into the building. But though it pains me to admit, I am happy that I saved myself some money. A couple cans of paint and I'll still have money left over to do something else with ... sweet enough.
You know that mug did not even fit in my car. We try the trunk. We try sliding it into the backseat. We try the trunk again. Picture me in the rain trying to figure out how to tie my trunk down -- the one trunk in America that apparently doesn't have that nifty latch thingy that you can run the string through and/or around and fasten it to the locking portion of the trunk. Round and round I go with the string like a 2-legged arachnid desperately spinning something tragic.
"Well it ain't gonna fall out," she says reassuringly. And then, bless her heart, she begins apologizing profusely for insisting that I buy it. "I know you don't like the color, I just figured we couldn't just leave it there and it was such a good price and you can always paint it."
"Well, but now we gotta go home because I'm not leaving it here so someone else can just snip the rope and take it. And I don't want it to get any wetter than it already is. So we gotta go home and come back for the baskets and for you to look around at the other stuff."
Awesome. I love driving. Right?
We get home and here's how it works. There's door #1, closely followed by locked door #2, followed by a couple of steps to the elevator and then my apartment on the 4th floor. Well there's hardly enough room in between doors 1 and 2 for us to get in and for me to set the thing down and unlock the door and Mags is still holding her end up shoving me into said door #2, which clearly can't be opened when one is smashed upon it.
"Would you hurry up? It's cold!" she says to me.
The following sentence is me, pitch-perfect, from ages 15-17. I start off with an attitude and it escalates in both attitudinousness and pitch.
"Can ya wait a dern minute? I can't open the door if I'm blocking it. Are you trying to kill me? What are you dewing? Put the damn thing down."
Seriously. You know I love no one else in this world as much as I love that woman, my mama, but there are flickers of moments, just like this, when I see myself snapping in such a way that I become pretty certain I probably shouldn't have children.
With the help of some friendly neighbors -- who agreed that despite the tedious nature of transportingfurniture, "you just can't pass up those good IKEA deals!" -- we get the thing upstairs only to find that, of course, measuring totally helps.
It's blocking the bathroom door and we're pretty certain I'm going to ram into it every.single.time I go in that direction because I refuse (lard ass though I may be) to move sideways through my own living space at any given time. And since Mags isn't keen on hearing resounding "Gee dee-its, effin' outta-my-ways" at random hours during the night, we move it to a pretty, white wall space in the dining area where I'm absolutely sure I'll be mouthing the very same thing both night and day. PLUS, it's too dark.
Mags sighs and shakes her head in such a way that I swear the ghost of Ralph Kramden has inhabited her body. "I swear, if you don't shut up about this dern thing I'm 'onna ..."
"Well, I'm painting it." I start producing swatches that are really just random items I'm picking up around the house -- how about this lilac color on my nail file? Eye roll. This yellow post-it? "Please sit down." The blue from the pen ink? "Please sit down and shut up." How 'bout white like the friggin' wall?! "This would be a lot funnier if you were ... funnier." No? "No." Silver like the TV stand? "Silver, Danita? Silver? More silver? Silver and white, huh? That's all you can think of." Gold? Gold like this lock for my suitcase.
"Gold is good."
And I love her. We work the dickens out of each other's nerves, but I love her because she's about the only person that can tell me that I'm going to spend my money on something that she knows will work out; because only my mom immediately finds greenery to accent the new acquisition when I'd have just left it to the dust; and because, despite my attempts to be all independent and visionary, her opinion still and will probably always matter the most.