My $200 Kitchen Remodel; or, a love song to Ikea

This past weekend we had our first adventure in a while - and by that I mean a trip to somewhere new, not normal weekend chore-related trips, and not being at home. Because sometimes we have home adventures like we did for Valentine's weekend. But since winter hit, we haven't had many trip adventures. Anyway, we drove south of Boston (James was excited to drive through the big dig tunnel, but less excited when it actually came time to do it and it turned out to be stressful driving!) and checked out the John Adams house in Quincy. We originally planned to go inside and all, but then we found out it's closed for the winter. But we still wanted to see it, so we went. Then we drove out to Nut Island, which is actually a spit of land that juts out into the Boston harbor, because we wanted to see the ocean. After living in El Segundo, we got used to seeing the ocean almost every day! Now we never see it. And now it's on the wrong side. Oh well.

Then, the main adventure of the day -IKEA! I love Ikea. I love just walking through all those living rooms and kitchens and stuff. Although by the end of it, it's pretty overwhelming. There's an awful lot to look at, especially in the downstairs part that's all stacks and stacks of dishes and lamps and whatnot. Anyway, we didn't really have anything in particular that we were looking for, except I was interested in seeing their selection of duvet covers since the designs are always changing and I thought it'd be nice to add a new one into the rotation. And we found a pretty one! And some other little things, but the main score of the day was the occasional table.

We were inspecting Ikea's selection of bar stools, because my latest brilliant idea for improving the kitchen was for me to have a bar stool to perch on while I hover over the stove. So we were looking at them, and I was pondering the logistics of having this random stool in the kitchen, taking up valuable space, and wondering things like "How often would I actually use this thing?" and "Exactly how lazy am I?" when my gaze wandered over across the aisle to the display of tables. And we don't need tables, so I wasn't really interested, until I noticed this couple our age inspecting this strange, long and narrow table with drawers and shelves underneath the table top.

And suddenly I was so over the barstool idea, because this table was my new obsession. "This isn't just any table," I thought - "this is my new countertop! This is going to transform my kitchen." And James was still contemplating the bar stool and talking it over with me, I interrupted him and said, "I don't care about the bar stool anymore" - which must have surpised him, as I'd been worrying over this concept, going back and forth between the different stools, for a while - "I'm interested in that!" And I led him over to the table.

The occasional table, as Ikea called it, although I have no idea why. I mean, this thing is solid birch and heavy, it's not like you're going to be folding it up and storing it away because you only need it once in a while. James and I traded a few jokes about needing the table for the occasion that you have no counterspace, or the occasion that your kitchen is outdated and you have no place for your stand mixer and food processor and toaster and toaster oven etc etc etc, and the occasion that you need more shelves and drawers because yours are pure chaos. And so we contemplated this occasional table, because we certainly have occasion for it. It was $200, and I thought I was over-reaching to ask for it. So I was completely thrilled when James said, "Okay, let's do it."

So we picked up our flat-pack box of occasional goodness, which was enormously heavy and quite long, and as we pushed it toward check out we hoped that we'd be able to fit it into our car. And it was a tight fit - we lowered the back seat and fed the box in through the trunk and we had to pull the front seats up a bit to have enough room. But we were able to squeeze the box in and we didn't even have to drive the hour back home with our knees pressed into the dashboard, so it's a win.

And when we brought the box into the house and saw that it wasn't longer than the space that it was going into and I got all excited, and I was tired because that thing was dang heavy, I may or may not have crushed my loving husband's fingertips a little bit when we set it down. Maybe. But just a teensy bit. And he said it didn't hurt, which made me love him even more.

First we quickly set up our other Ikea acquisition, a TV stand to lift our TV up off of the hearth and make it look more like it belongs where it is, which is sitting in front of the fireplace. Okay, yes, this means it completely blocks the fireplace so that we can't ever cuddle up in front of a roaring fire... but there's no other place to put the TV and I don't think we'd use the fireplace all that much anyway. So we got the TV stand to make the TV look more like we mean for it to be there, and that it's no accident that it's hiding the fireplace. Plus, it'll give us a better way to store our cable box/TiVo/DVD player/Wii mess. Now the TV seems to dominate the room a lot more, but when we're laying back on the couch, our view won't be obstructed by anything on the coffee table.

Then we went out to dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant, because it was eight months since our wedding and we wanted to celebrate a little.

When we came back, we immediately tore into the occasional table. I organized the millions of scews and bolts and other mysterious metal bits while James organized all the wood. We got about halfway done when we were forced to stop because Ikea had drilled a hole that was too big in diameter for the screws we were given, and we had to go to Home Depot to get a bigger scew.

And that was frustrating because we were all excited.

But the next day, after a trip to Home Depot (and AC Moore and Shaw's, because if we're going to go out, it makes sense to run all of our errands at once), we finished the table and put it in place. It fits perfectly, and it has totally transformed the kitchen.

It's like we got the kitchen remodelled for $200. It more than doubled our counter space, it let me bring all my pots and pans in from the office, where they were stacked on a utility shelf, and I was able to tame some of the insanity that was going on in my drawers that were bursting with stuff. I can look outside while I work, which I just love. And it feels a lot roomier to work over there, because I don't have cabinets hanging overhead and crowding me. Plus, the table is right under a ceiling fan, so it's the best lit workspace in the room. It looks a lot more grown up and attractive than what was going on before - we had a cheapo bookshelf full of cookbooks and things (which is now hiding in a corner of the living room) and three folding tables that were holding the toaster, toaster oven, and food processor. It looked very college dorm-y, and the folding tables were wobbly so I couldn't use them as workspace. This new setup looks like it could be in Martha Stewart's kitchen. Well, not really, but I love being able to see all my pots lined up neatly on the shelves.

So, in sum: I love Ikea, and I don't hate my kitchen anymore.

Valentine's Day weekend

The last couple of weekends have been wonderful - but then, most weekends are pretty great, because not having to go to work is fantastic. Valentine's Day weekend was a long one for me, since I was able to use "flex time" to take Friday off. It was lovely, even though James had to work. I took the car in for an oil change, and I did some chores around the house so that we wouldn't have to worry about them over the weekend. When I picked James up from work, I gave him a bouquet of yellow spray roses to kick off our weekend of romance - it really surprised him! Friday night we got a pizza from our local pizza place and had pizza and beers and watched the Olympics - simple and good.

Saturday morning I woke up earlier than James and made my granola, which was a yummy way to start the day. Saturday morning was awesome because I got a delivery from UPS - a heart-shaped box of Sees candy! That was such a great surprise. It was from James, of course. Sees, as far as I know, is only available in CA and it is the best chocolates I've ever had. Then an hour or so later, there was another delivery - flowers! It was so exciting to get an arrangement of flowers like that. I'd been hoping for a bouquet from the grocery store, so a vase of perfectly arranged flowers blew me away. It's really a whole different ballgame compared to grocery store flowers (which of course are nothing to sneeze at!) and it was so sweet that he planned all this. I felt so loved. I gave him the heart-shaped tin of Ghiaradelli chocolates that I had picked up for him on Friday, and a sweet Hallmark card. We spent the day doing our weekend errands so that we wouldn't have anything to do on Sunday and we could just slob around and hang out, which is what I really wanted to do.

We spent a good portion of Saturday priming the bathroom, and we painted it Sunday morning. That room was so ugly. The tile is a gross 1960s pink and unfortunately we can't do anything about that (yet!). But it only goes halfway up the walls, and the top half was wallpaper that had been painted dark, gross brown. We tore down the wallpaper a while ago - probably in the late summer or fall. It was a huge chore since the wallpaper had been painted. Then underneath, we discovered that the drywall was all dingy, stained from the wallpaper glue and riddled with a lot of nail holes that had gouged out pockets of drywall. And that's how we lived with it for a long time! You just stop seeing it after a while. Then all of the sudden we realized how ugly it was, and we had to fix it, and by Sunday late morning, we had lovely, smooth, nicely painted walls. We used a shade of off-white that has a bit of peach shade to it, to go with the horror tiles. Almost any other color would have clashed.

Valentine's Day was a delicious slob day. We didn't even leave the house. I just wanted to relax and hang out and just be together, so that's what we did, and it was wonderful. We watched Olympics, played with our Wii, watched a movie... it was very relaxing. We made dinner together - steak with rosemary-blue cheese-walnut butter, sauteed beet greens, a salad of baby greens, candied walnuts (which I candied myself, having no idea what I was doing and making it up as I went, and it worked really well!), dried cranberries, blue cheese and beets that I sliced and cut into heart shapes. Aw. With a balsamic vinegrette. A salad with cranberries + goat/blue cheese + candied nuts is my go-to fancy salad. I meant to make potatoes but totally forgot! But I did make banana bread muffins from scratch so it was okay. And we made molten lava chocolate cakes for desert, and they were so yummy! I think I prefer eating in to going out to a fancy restaurant - the food we cook is just as good, and it's a lot cheaper, and it's just us and that's lovely.

Heaven and hell

I've come to realize what would be my hell. If hell exists, and it was personalized for everyone a la What Dreams May Come, I think for me it would be sitting here at my desk at work, endlessly entering data and - here's the key - never getting to see James again but knowing that he's in the building, but I can't leave my work to meet him for lunch or for going home time. And I'm endlessly waiting for the going home time, and it never comes. And it's enormously stressful work, of course, and I'm freaking out the whole time. And it never ends, and I'm always lonely for James.

Thank goodness I actually do get to go home, because otherwise hell would be a bit too much like real life.

My heaven, I think, would be being in bed with James. And I don't mean sex - at least, not exclusively! That would get pretty tiring for an eternity, hehe. No, I mean laying snuggled in bed with James, on sunny mornings when we don't have anywhere in particular to be, or at night before bed, when I snuggle up into the crook of his arm, lay my head on his chest, and he reads me to sleep. Those are the happiest, most comfortable parts of my day. But of course doing any one for eternity would get miserable, so we'd have to be able to do other things too, like walk along beaches or visit with our favorite people, because their heavens would overlap with our heaven (a la The Lovely Bones).

Dark thoughts

I've been feeling rather existential-crisis-y lately.

A family friend recently passed away at the ripe old age of 92 or something, after a full and active life. He stilled lived at home with his wife (of 65 (plus?) years!) and he died suddenly after a heart attack, so there was no prolonged illness or gradual weakening and fading away. And then I learned this week that a professor I had in college passed away last year. I googled her and found out that she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and within a year she was gone.

And I know I'm probably being way too sensitive about this, but for some reason these deaths really got to me. (I wasn't even close to either of them!) Both died rather suddenly - the professor well before her time - and both left behind loving spouses. And that part really gets to me - leaving your spouse behind. Or being the one left behind. It really scares me! And the unbearable fact is, it will almost inevitably happen to me. Unless James and I die together in some accident (which is obviously not the ideal way to go), chances are one of us will go first. I can only hope that it will happen a long, long time from now, but that certainly isn't guaranteed. And I can't even begin to contemplate the sadness of being left behind by your true love - being all alone after you have known such happiness and such love. And being the first to die, knowing you're leaving your true love behind - that also seems too horribly sad to be possible.

But it's not just possible, it's inevitable. It is a fact: I will die. There's no escaping it. Everyone I know, everyone I have ever met, will someday be dead. And that freaks me out. I suppose it should be somewhat comforting that we all face it, you know? It's not just me, I'm not alone in this, it's one thing we all have in common. But it's not comforting. It's hard to imagine not existing. It's hard to imagine life going on without me.

This didn't use to bother me.

Two things have changed since I was younger and never gave the thought of death more than a sidelong, disbelieving glance (well, three, I have gotten older!): I lost my faith and I met James.

Maybe "lost" isn't the right term - I doubt that it's floating out there somewhere, waiting for me to find it again - I guess outgrew is more accurate. When I was little, I went to church and Sunday school every week because that's what you did and I didn't question it. I believed in God and Jesus and all of that because that's all I knew. When I was in high school, I went through a period of religious revival and awakening, became a bit thumpy and was "born again" - but it all felt hollow. The more I dove into the religion, the emptier it felt.

My mother believes the Bible is an all-or-nothing deal; you can't pick and choose what you want to follow, and that makes sense to me. But then there are certain things about the religion that I just cannot accept: that gay people are sinners, or abortion is wrong, or the earth was created in a week. And so if I can't accept some of it, how can I be a part of any of it? And then there was the growing feeling that the people in the church were putting on shows for each other - raising their hands as they sing and swaying around - it all felt performative, like they're just doing it to show everyone else how religious they are. And then there's the question of evolution - can you believe in that and the Bible at the same time? If you're a stict reader of the Bible, the answer is no. But evolution is a well-established scientific fact. There is overwhelming evidence in support of the earth being older than 6000 years, and that life evolved from microbes in some primordial sludge, and the thought of God putting these fossil records into rocks as he created the world seems so contrived, trying to bend scientific fact to fit into the religious mythology. And what evidence is there for Christianity? A book written by Bronze-age tribesmen that says it's true. And using the Bible for proof that the Bible is true is such ridiculously circular logic, but Christians like my mother fail to see that.

And so I couldn't really believe in Christianity anymore, but I clung to the idea of there being a God out there somewhere. Or some kind of vague force or power or whatever. And maybe there is, but it seems like chances are there isn't.

So if there isn't a god, then there isn't a heaven. And that's where the fear of death starts burbling up. If there isn't a heaven, if there is no afterlife, then when we're dead, we're dead. Our heart stops beating, our brain stops functioning, and we stop existing. (But how is that possible?! My mind rebels against this. My thoughts, my personality, my me-ness seems disconnected from my body somehow. If I lost an arm, I'd still be me. If my body dies, would I still be me?) The thought of not existing is just so damn depressing that I understand why people started believing in heaven in the first place. It's just so wonderful to think that after this life, we'll have another, eternal one, without any suffering, and we'll get to spend all of our time with all of our favorite people. That sounds so much more pleasant than decomposition.

And then there's James. Before I met him, I didn't have this completeness and this happiness that I have now. I can't help but sometimes be afraid that it will all be snatched from me at some point. It absolutely breaks my heart that at some point this love affair will have to come to an end. So I love him fiercely every day, I tell him how much he means to me and how lucky I feel to have him in my life, and I try to savor all this happiness we have now. Because what else can you do?

I don't feel this way all the time. I very rarely do, in fact; I mean, that'd be a really painful way to live everyday, dreading death. But sometimes, it just hits me, how real it is. How inevitable. And it just makes me sad.