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The One with IKEA


Des Moines was deemed too small and insignificant the consumer-fest that is the great IKEA. Although I confess to a love of wandering Pottery Barn, aside from the play kitchen I gave Katy for Christmas (because it was on sale), I really was too intimidated, and at the time too poor, to make any big purchases. Will was the one who loved dish-ware and cookware and dreamed of the perfectly outfitted home. Well, kitchen and patio anyway. And, I find it a tad insulting to be told by an entity, that basically sees me as a cash cow, how to decorate my own home. Those catalog layouts of living rooms and kitchens and scary clean children’s bedrooms are like the pictures of hairstyles that women take to their stylists. They look good on paper, but not on your own head. I have never seen a living room that looks like the display or the photo from Better Homes and Gardens unless the home’s occupants paid someone to do the decorating for them (and then paid someone else to keep it clean and tidy as well).

Phoebe: That fan kinda looks like ours. And the birdcage and the…wait a sec! This is our exact living room!

Rachel: No! No! No! No it’s not! No it’s not! Come on! Phoebe, ours is totally different! I mean we don’t have the… (Looks desperately for something different.) We don’t have the…that lamp! And-and that screen is y’know, on the other side.

Phoebe: Oh my God. This is where you got all our stuff, Pottery Barn! Oh my God!

Rachel: Okay! Okay-okay look—no I did, I just wanted this stuff and I know how you feel about Pottery Barn. Just… Come on don’t be mad.

Phoebe: No-no-no, but I am mad! I am mad! Because this stuff is everything that is wrong with the world! And it’s all sitting up in my living room and all I can think about is how I don’t have that lamp!

* Season Six of Friends: The One with the Apothecary Table

There comes a time in everyone’s life when furniture is needed and in our case it was a desk for Katy, cd/dvd storage and a bookcase. And thus began my introduction to home interior conformity on the grandest of all scales: IKEA.

The IKEA store is located in South Edmonton Common which is an outdoor mall so poorly designed for traffic that walking from store to store is impossible. The IKEA building itself is mammoth. There is a restaurant and a child-minding area on site. The top level consists of display after display of rooms laid out on a track complete with arrows on the floor and “street signs”. There is even a map with places to write down your selections for easy location once you reach the warehouse at the end of your visit. They even supply you with a pencil, and I think that the fact that it doesn’t have an eraser is no accident.

Deer in the headlights is my initial reaction. There was just too much to look at and I was glad that I took the time to locate what we needed on the company’s website before we went. My second reaction was want. I wanted the perfect kitchen and the storage options had me drooling for the day when we have a walk-in closet to put those lovely shelves and sliding drawers. My third reaction is disgust with myself. How can I hope to simplify my life if I am lusting after granite countertops (Will you settle for Corian, my husband asks, with an under-hung sink?) and a walk-in closet that could double as a small bedroom (or even a whole house in some places in this world). With horror I realize that I could easily become an IKEA slut.

We escaped though with only those items we came for (and okay a bag of multi-colored clasps for sealing opened bags of food – damn that perfect product placement) and so my virtue is intact for another day. Dodging the consumerism bullet requires full-time vigilance however. It is easy to slip into the mindset upon which mindless shopping is based. Want as opposed to need. Too easy by far and the people at IKEA know this. 

First Contact



I wrote to Will’s mother over the weekend. She had sent a birthday card to Katy, and it was forwarded to our new address. Typically, the letter inside was addressed to my five year old but actually meant for me. The things she writes are calculated to induce guilt because she sees herself as the ultimate victim of Will’s illness and death. I can understand her discounting how everything has affected me, but she discounts completely how it has changed Katy and her life too. Katy is simply an accessory from her grandmother’s point of view. 

I knew the card was coming. I knew I was going to have to reply and finally clue her ,and the other in-laws, in about the changes in my life. What I wrote was fairly matter of fact, and I told them only what they needed to know about Rob, the move, and our life here, and that wasn’t much. I don’t know why I feel I need to protect us from them. But even Will’s father’s family seems tainted to me now. Though they could be selfish and indifferent, they were never cruel. I know what they say about marrying a person’s family, but I don’t believe that any tie to another person or group of people allows them free and easy access. People need to earn the right to be a part of your life. No one is exempt. I have a brother who I kept at arm’s length or better for many, many years because of his self-destructive behaviors, and I still give my youngest sister a wide berth because of her self-absorbed ways. 

I set the record straight with Will’s mother. She knew the boundaries already, I think, but now they are spelled out. I didn’t put them forth in anger, although I am still angry with her about the many incidents that took place those last three months and especially that last weekend. She knows she can write but is on notice about the appropriateness of the content. If she is writing to Katy then it needs to be the types of things grandmothers write to their little granddaughters and not veiled messages for me. I will not put up with the intermediaries she has used in the past to avoid having to speak or communicate with me directly. And, I included some photos of Katy. It was the right thing to do even if her grandmother has never done much more than use her as a prop in the elaborate drama that she prefers over living a real life.

I wish I could feel more empathy, or even pity, for the woman, but I don’t. Even Will had a hard time with that and his main reason for keeping contact amounted to not much more than guilt and obligation. Still, she was his mother and I will do this much for his sake. It’s really him that I owe this too. 

By Any Means Necessary


Gwen Stefani is one of countless female singers these days who can’t seem to sing while clothed. Nakedness is a prerequisite for success if you are a woman in the entertainment field it seems, and there is no shortage of young, and not so young woman, happy to oblige in the name of feminism. That’s a rant for another day however. Today I am having problems with religious faith. Not mine. I know what I believe and what I don’t. No my issue is with the faithful who find that in order to remain faithful and in good standing, they must alter the behavior of others. Ms. Stefani performed in Malaysia recently. A country that is over 60% Islamic, they naturally have a telephone book thick list of rules and regulations that women in particular must adhere to regarding dress lest they force some good Muslim boy into sin. Couple of observations here before I continue, first of which is that sin, as the good Sisters of the Presentation taught me, is an individual’s choice. That old Flip Wilson punch-line “The devil made me do it” was just a figure of speech, and second, if men are so weak that the sight of a women’s arms or neck or hair can plunge them into the abyss maybe they should be the ones walking around heavily veiled. Basically Stefani was informed she would have to follow the country’s strict rules regarding female performers and that her usually skimpy wardrobe and provocative performance would not be permitted. Her spokespeople responded with a press release confirming that she would comply. My question is why? Why do women comply with what amounts to the tenets of someone else’s religion when they visit these countries? It’s respectful? Is it? Is it respectful to force me to comply with the rules of your religion? I have my own religion, thanks very much. Are you going to respect that? And the answer is of course, no, because as most reading people are aware if you aren’t Muslim in a Muslim predominant country you are treated as second class at best and persecuted at worst. Tolerance is a way one, non-reciprocal thing. 

The second thing that prompted me today was a seemingly unrelated article I read about pharmacists in the state of Washington who are suing for the right to not stock their shelves with the perfectly legal Plan B emergency contraceptive. Pharmacies in Washington are now required by state law to provide Plan B. A small group of pharmacists contend that this is a violation of their rights and that the state cannot force them to provide birth control to women if it is against their religious beliefs. My first question for these conscientious objectors would be if they require men to provide proof of marriage before they fill Viagra scripts, but beyond that what happened to the concept of living your faith? It seems to me that instead of forcing the circumstances to change, a person of faith would come to the conclusion that they needed to change careers in order to  uphold their religious beliefs. Jesus certainly never told the disciples that following him would be easy. As a matter of fact, St. Paul does almost nothing else but spout the “sacrifice” line as a matter of course for the early Christians. Of course, the Christians of way yore were willing to be eaten by lions or crushed by stones rather than compromise their faith in God. Today’s Christian’s hire lawyers and cry, “That’s not fair! I should be able to be a good Christian AND keep my really good paying job. I have a gas-guzzling SUV and a no money down mortgage to pay, and after all, I am right, and these fornicating women should just be grateful that I am here to prevent them from burning in a lower level of hell than they are already heading for.”

It seems to me that it is hypocritical to say you are faithful to God’s word, as you understand it, and yet need to cheat in order to actually be faithful. Because that is what it is. It’s cheating. God, at least the one I know, expects you to do the hard work yourself. No shortcuts. No rules aimed at controlling the actions of others (who interestingly, but not surprisingly, always seem to be women). And the funny thing (if you’re not the female being victimized) is that these people really think they deserve to be admired for standing up for their faith. Admired for what? Being weak? Not having the balls to give up something you like for something you believe in? Hypocrisy is not admirable.