Bound

Let’s begin with realness: IKEA is a place where relationships go to be tested. Everyone goes in expecting a hand-holding hour of domestic imagination…but somewhere around the fourth time a screaming child bumps the umlat-y name of the nightstand you wanted clear out of your brain, you’re just done. It’s those floor arrows and their dictatorial path, man. Sometimes I come out of there and just walk across the parking lot in a defiant diagonal.

But this trip was so much better than the normal despair-inducing ones. I’m pretty sure it’s all about planning. As in, here is our mission: we will walk in, find three mirrors of large-ish size, and walk out. We will touch and/or look at no other things. Does that work? Um, of course not. But it does mean that you are only pulled off your pre-determined path by things you truly need (like a coffee table…we’ve been eating our pho in a very precarious situation since August). And you end up reaching your destination with enough brainspace intact to make necessary design choices. Good ones, hopefully.

We were initially going to go with something a lot smaller, but then…they didn’t have anything a lot smaller. So of course I was like, “Giant mirrors?” and M was like, “I think that would be a statement,” and then he paid for them while I wondered where my husband developed a Project Runway-worthy vocabulary.

I’m going to need some of that artistic moxie to finish this room, though. I love the way mirrors reflect light and openness, but now there is nowhere to hide and the giant blank wall behind my head needs some help. It currently is home to the giant poster board scrawled with my friends’ champagne-fueled vacation ideas; something I obviously cherish, but do not need to publicly display until the end of time.

(As to why that blinding light was on at 8 am? No idea. Apparently, trying to juggle the two computers off to the left has fried the environmentally friendly part of my brain.)