IKEA

I don't know where to start today. I have so many lame ideas to bore you with, that I don't know which one has the most, least potential. Lets throw a dart and see where it sticks... IKEA it is!

The day after Thanksgiving Mandy and I went early morning shopping. Came home took a nap. We had never been there, so I then suggested IKEA. Gotta see what all the hullabaloo is about right? If all the other sheep are bleating about something, you gotta see the experience so you can bleat about it too. Here I go... BaAaAaAahH!

Things look fairly normal on the outside. Giant blue building that says IKEA on it. I've seen similar. They usually say Costco or Sam's Club on them. No big whoop. Entering we found a day care and free lockers for bulky items that you might not want to haul around the store. Did they think I was going to Sweden to look at this stuff? Pfffft! I'm no rookie. 45 minutes tops we were going to be out of there. I am not the dilly dally sort. I walk in. See what I want. Buy it. Go home. I know the game. The longer I am in a store, the more expensive it is to get out.

We rode the escalator up. I found maps, carts and a living room set up like I imagine you would see on a TV set. This living room was full of people. There were people stretched out on the couch, lounging in chairs and plopped in lounge chairs. They were all watching TV. Maybe they thought they lived there. I don't know. I swear there was a woman baking in the kitchen and another serving hors devours. "This is a strange introduction" I thought.

On the other side of the wall from the IKEA squatters was another living room set up. I wouldn't say I really have a style, a particular genre of design that I completely subscribe to, but I suddenly realized I liked a large portion of what I saw. The kids came running into this little room and bounced on the couches. I started slowly gazing around the room at each item. looking at the price, reading about everything. I spent a good 10 minutes in the first room. The kids busied themselves bouncing on every couch testing for comfort and deeming each one their new favorite based on merits of squishiness. Shelby came running by, tripped on a rug and fell right on her face, narrowly missing a coffee table with her head by a few hair widths, bounced up and said "I'm OK!" off to test the next couch.

We spent the next 2 hours snaking through the displays. The kids tested every chair, bed, pillow, sheet, door, surface, texture and color, labeling each one with their different levels of approval. The ones that met the highest standards were brought to our attention. "Mom! Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, DAD, dad, dad, dad, dad, mom, dad, mom, dad, mom!" Until we relented "WHAT??????" "Um, look at this. This is so awesome!"

Finally we got to the end. There was a woman there painting faces and making balloons for the kids. Walker had her paint flames on his face and make him a monkey balloon. As we all know, fire is cool and monkeys are funny. Shelby got a butterfly painted on her face and got a cat balloon. The cat had a mouse in it's paws, but Shelby insisted it was a tiny baby cat that was pink, had big cute ears and had a long skinny tail. It was her balloon, I figured she could think what she wanted. Besides, my interpretation was so barbaric.

The kids were getting hungry. We decided to go cafe that was located downstairs. There was one upstairs but had stuff like meatballs and salad that didn't meet the approval ratings of the kids. We took the elevator down and I realized something. We had only seen half of the store. The upstairs. There was still an entire level that we had not seen. We double timed it, sped past the kitchen stuff, past the group of people that were actually Swedish. One of them pointed to something and sounding just like the Swedish Chef on the Muppet Show said "Yah! a gorkensporgen!" and they all laughed. One of the men from the group stepped forward and holding his arms out in front of him in a hoop shape like he was lugging an invisible 55 gallon barrel, and repeated "Yah! Gorkensporgen!" as he laughed. We continued on to the checkout stands making the second half of the store in one hour. Start to finish 3 hours.

At the cafe we bought the kids a hot dog meal that was only $2 for 2 hot dogs, bag of chips and a drink and a cinnamon roll that was only $1. Now here was my favorite part (other than the Swedes laughing about the gorkensporgen) the meal came to $3 even. Either they didn't charge me tax or they have figured that into the cost. My brain loves even dollar amounts. That's why I spend the extra 30 seconds meticulously jabbing the gas pump trigger until I get a nice even dollar amount. That' seemed just like something IKEA would do. Make a nice clean dollar amount, because it is simple and who really wants to search through their pockets for 32 cents for a gorkensporgen?

The Christmas Speed Bump

Of the short list of things I dislike, I hate, loathe and despise Cache Valley radio stations. They range from sadistically arduous to listen to, to horrifically annoying. Country is off that scale for me. Although, for reasons I can't explain, I love Bluegrass, which is like the redneck, Southern, inbred, kinfolk to Country.

Occasionally I will stumble across a song on the radio that I like. A glimmer of hope slowly kindles within me and then the next song comes on, I shriek in horror, yank a fist full of hair out of my head and quickly turn the station. In process of trying to find something on the radio last week, I stumbled across something I liked. It was the glassy smooth vocals of Frank Sinatra. I ignored the fact that he just happened to be singing a Christmas song. I hoped it was just a coincidence. I hoped to hear a song by Sammy Davis Jr. or I wouldn't even mind a Michael Buble, something more of that genre. The faint gleam of hope flickered to life inside of me. I smiled and listened to the song to the end, held my breath for that brief second before the next song came on, and -- JINGLE BELLS!!!! This time I ripped out two handfuls of hair from my head and quickly changed the channel. It is a good thing the kids were not in the car. I would have certainly startled them when I shouted "JINGLE BELLS? WHAT THE HELLS?" (incidentally, if you can rhyme a rant, it makes you feel nearly twice as satisfied) Don't get me wrong. I love Christmas music probably more than the next person, but come on! The corpse of this years Halloween hasn't even cooled. We just finished patting down the last shovel full of dirt on its grave and I turn around and there's Jolly old St. Nick? Shove off blubber butt, you've been eating too many chocolate chip cookies and now you are starting to crowd out the best holiday ever known to man -- Thanksgiving. You got the WHOLE month of December to yourself, you don't need to be elbowing in on my turkey day with your sweaty palms and your Ho-ho-hos.

Those pilgrims might have dressed funny and shot funny guns, but to their credit, I hear Calvin Klein was very much into wearing belts on your hat that year. They sure knew how to make a tradition. Thanksgiving has everything. First, you get to have a big dinner with all of your family. Not only is "turkey" a fun word to say, but it is delicious. Then you have mashed taters, olives that you can put on your fingers, pumpkin pie, sometimes you get ham. top that off with a nap in front of the TV playing some football game, wake up have some more pie, shove celery sticks up your brother-in-law's nose who is still sleeping on the couch, until he wakes up and screams at you and says he hates everyone and he wishes he would have never come to this family's thanksgiving dinner and he slams the door as he storms out and we all laugh, because his keys are still on the couch where he was laying. You just don't get better than a holiday centered around eating really good food with your family and naps. That's really the best life has to offer.

You will have to understand when I see Santa hip bump a pilgrim to the side as he settles up to the Thanksgiving table, that I don't hate the jolly old soul, I am just afraid that if he gets near that pie, there won't be any more for me when I wake up from my nap.

In a lineup of the holidays, Thanksgiving is much like it's puritan founders. Simple and neat. Christmas is the same holiday just pimped out and blinged up. You gotta warm up for something as grand and spectacular as Christmas. You can't start out full stride on a marathon like Christmas. You gotta practice. Get your pacing right. Get a feel for the eb and flow of things. You gotta make your brother-in-law apologize before you put his name back on the Christmas list... or before you give him his keys back.

You don't have to be funny

"You don't have to be funny" was the only thing Mandy said to me when I told her I needed to think of something to blog about.

She is right. I don't always have to be funny. I just got back from the hospital where I went and saw my father in ICU. I just took a glance at my funny-o-meter and it is dipping way down in the red area where it has a picture of a sad clown.

Why fight it. I am just going to shoot from the hip and pour a little bit off the top of whatever is swilling around in my head.

A week and a half ago he went in for open heart surgery. A little less than a week and a half ago, he planned on waking up and saying "Son of a bitch That hurts. Someone bring me a Mountain Dew before I get cranky." A week and a half ago, the doctors lost him three times on the operating table.

I went to see him last Saturday. He looked horrible but I was optimistic. Today when I went to see him he looked better, but I am less optimistic. He has made progress every day. Baby steps of improvement. But, baby steps on an escalator that is moving in the opposite direction. For every day that he lays in ICU he atrophies a bit more. He looses more strength. The road to recovery becomes longer and more perilous. If by Thursday, he still needs to be intubated, they have no choice but to give him a trachea tube.

Tonight he looked pained and weathered. His brow was furrowed. When my sister and I walked in his room he twitched his feet and he shrugged his left shoulder so far forward, that I almost expected to see him sit up. Yesterday he was opening his eyes when visitors came to see him. Today they have sedated him beyond that point.

The thought has re-occurred to me several times that while he was on the operating table, the veil between this life and the next, most certainly became very wispy if not completely withdrawn. I am sure his parents and his sister were there to greet him. I am sure returning back to a badly damaged and pained body is difficult. A transition, I am not convinced would come without a lot of hesitation.

I no longer know what to hope for him. A recovery that means he spends the rest of his life being cared for in a nursing home or having 24 hour hospice care. I don't know if I want that for him. I know how he feels about that. My sister who is a nurse went to visit him last week and mentioned the long recovery that would possibly involve rehabilitation in a nursing home. at that utterance all of his monitors went off. He did not, and does not like that idea at all. That man loathes any indications that he was aging. He turned 79 last Saturday. He spent the day sedated, with a breathing machine doing all of his blowing in and out for him. There's a good chance he had no clue it was his birthday.

A week and and a half ago, I had no clue he was going in for surgery. He didn't call us to let us know. My sister found out and had called us. A week and a half ago I also wasn't as patient with my children as I am now. A week and a half ago I didn't listen as closely to other people as I do now. A week and a half ago I didn't stop as long to admire a cloud formation or notice how crisp the morning air is.

I don't know what is the best thing for my father. I don't know what the future has slated for him. The best I can do is hope and pray. The best I can do is see that tomorrow I am a better person for what I have seen today. The best I can do is give my funny-o-meter a few rapid succession taps on the glass, to see if we can get it back up into the green area that has the picture of a dancing clown, because he has been set on fire by a circus chimp... because, as we all know, chimps and clowns on fire are probably the funniest things known to man. Well, that and fart jokes.