Shopping Madness

I have experienced the shopping madness which is IKEA Saturday morning one week before Christmas. Normally, I wouldn’t even go to IKEA on a normal weekend but circumstances were such that we had to go today. What circumstances could possibly get me into a shopping mall a week before Christmas (‘cause we all know how I love to shop)?

Well, the circumstances are that our heat installer czyli plumber is finishing our central heating today and we will be able (knock on wood) to spend a warm and toasty Christmas at our dacha this year. And seeing as Christmas Eve is next Saturday and we don’t have any (well, almost any) furniture in our house and we don’t have any days off next week, well, you see why we had to go to shopping for furniture today.

Luckily, I planned ahead and thank goodness I did because it was a mad house…and we had to take the girls with us. Bless their little hearts, they were so well-behaved. First we stopped at JYSK – just as crowded as IKEA, but with only one cashier – to buy a trundle bed for the girls. Then off to IKEA for some more furniture. Chamstwo nie było. I made a list ahead of time which you can do from the catalog or better yet print out online and we shopped terminator style –locate and hit- throughout the whole store. There were plenty of helpful shop assistants. The lines at the check-out weren’t too bad. The bill was pretty high though - it was very Lisbeth of me.

Surprisingly, we didn’t see anybody we knew except for one employee of IKEA (Misiu used to teach English at IKEA). We usually see somebody we know no matter where we go – I even ran into an old school friend on the subway in NYC once. I suppose anybody I know would have more sense than to go to IKEA a week before Christmas.

Now all that is left is to clean our housek (blah), put all the furniture together (blah) and do the grocery shopping (don’t worry, I have a list). I bought the children’s presents 2 weeks ago so they only need to be wrapped (oh, wrapping paper) and put under the tree. THE TREE! That’s another thing to take care of…

Just an aside, this year my girls are pretty much getting everything on their Christmas lists. Now, just wait a minute, I am not spoiling them. They just have incredibly short Christmas lists. Why? Because they think you can only get one thing for Christmas. Finding all their gifts (well, except for one thing from each of their lists – I have to leave something for their birthdays) took some doing. And let me just say this – for name brand toys SMYK is a rip-off. Baby Alive, Rosie’s dream doll, costs 299.98 at SMYK and I got it for 148.99 at Auchan – in the same mall. The same goes for Legos. SMYK does, however, have nice “Smyk” brand toys for a reasonable price.

Of course, I spoke too soon. Misiu just called to say the heat isn’t finished (it’s almost finished) and the plumber isn’t answering his phone. It can’t be worse than our last plumber who made a huge hole in the wall and then killed himself, God rest his soul. Heat or no heat, we are blessed.