IKEA confessions

I spent Saturday putting together a Leksvik china cabinet that I bought (gulp) 17 months ago. It's been sitting, unassembled, in its long, long cardboard box next to our dining room radiator--a probable hiding place for the mouse that has made its home with us, and a shameful reminder of my tendency to bite off more than I can possibly chew. (Of course, the shame factor has been multiplied by Astrid's tendency to ask, just about every other day, "when are you going to make that cabinet, Mama?") Before my spring break in 2007, I bought both the china cabinet and a long buffet. I put together the long buffet within a week of purchase...it was a blissful-ish winter afternoon, just Leksvik, me, and The Godfather, Part II. (If you look closely at the photo, you may see a buffet that looks sorta, kinda [well, not really very much] like the one I made that day). Somehow, my mojo completely left me after I finished putting that thing together--thus the IKEA box that would just not go away.

I am proud (*so* proud) to share the credit for our "new" china cabinet with my Ryobi lithium-ion powered screwdriver. This was definitely the most complicated IKEA construction I've attempted, and it took me half the time I expected it would--with no blistered palms, either.

Now we just have to get rid of our falling-apart old cabinet (scavenged from a moldy basement in Highland Park, NJ in the early 1990s), so that we have room for our tall, extremely well-constructed Leksvik china cabinet.

Check back in about 17 months, OK?

"Screw everything," she said....

I haven't gotten to try it yet (it's charging) but I do have my new power screwdriver. Elliot accompanied me to a doctor's appointment today, after which we hit Target (no good electric screwdrivers, or at least none I felt excited about, but they did have Pokemon cards....what a shock!). From there, we hit Home Depot, where one of the workers provided us with a nice wheelchair for Elliot. I don't think I realized how tired he would get from the limping and hopping he had to do before we got to Home Depot---he was *so* pleased and relieved to be able to take trip through the National Park that is Home Depot sitting down.

I don't know how other women feel about those "power tools for girls" that used to be advertised a year or two ago (actually, they're probably advertised all the time on HGTV and other cable channels, but we don't have cable). When I saw pink and light purple power tools at Michael's (I think), I nearly barfed; I also suspected (don't know if I'm right) that they weren't as functional as the kind of tools one can buy at a real hardware or home improvement store. Shopping at Home Depot today, though, I lifted the various electric screwdrivers and drills they had, and with every one, I found myself thinking, "Wow, this is heavy! Don't they have anything a little lighter, sized for a woman's smaller hand?" That's when I realized that there apparently is a market for girls' tools--though maybe not pink and lilac colored ones.

Anyway, I am prepared to love and cherish my bright green Ryobi electric driver, with its lithium ion battery. I will screw everything in sight with it.