The light that pierces night,
The dark fog parted.
A beacon of yellow sun,
Blue sky’s brightness.
I am lost no more,
Looking up, my compass.
IKEA

My order was set for delivery between 1400h and 2100h on Friday. Had I known I would be working from home, I would have chosen the early block. Luckily, they arrived at 1530h and unloaded the stream for boxes and components into my empty living room. One of the delivery people asked me “Bist du Amerikanerin?” and when answered in the affirmative told me he thought so, my German has an American accent.

There is no IKEA store in Albuquerque unless you count the unmarked, sketch-looking warehouse where you can have some items shipped, apparently (I just found out about this right now, googling to see if I had missed one), so I have only encountered the icon of Swedish build-it-yourself furniture and meatballs in media and popular culture. No, I have not tried the meatballs yet. It took me 3 visits to get over the overwhelm enough to actually order the furniture.

The overwhelm crept in a bit when contemplating all the boxes of unbuilt furniture. I was supposed to go to dinner in a couple hours so I thought maybe I would start on the bedside table, it must be simple, right?

It was not. I ended up leaving the box half open, the instructions on the floor, and went to dinner at Mexican Pink in Kaiserslautern (such good tacos), and leaving the construction for Saturday.

I started with the IVAR shelving unit in the kitchen on Saturday Morning. The instructions wanted me to make friends in order to build these taller pieces, but I am stubbornly independent and used things like the door, the walls, and the kitchen drawers to play the role of a buddy helping me hold things up. I very quickly discovered that the tiny hammer in my tool kit was far too wimpy, and went to the hardware store in Landstuhl real quick to get a normal claw hammer, and a drill.

After getting the shelves set up and in their proper place, I populated them with some of my kitchen things and pantry items, and was very pleased.

After a lunch break and a pause to go to the BX for a few kitchen organizer items, I went upstairs and tacked the EKET nightstand that had intimidated me so on Friday. I was Jack’s complete lack of surprise; it was really quite complex to put together. I was really happy to have the drill at some point – they wanted me to use a screwdriver, however I do not have the strength of 30 men in my hands and was having trouble getting everything as tight as it should be.

I became overly ambitious after the EKET and decided to get started on the PAX, the wardrobe I had custom designed on the website. It was a feat of strength to get the boxes for it up the stairs, they were quite heavy. I got the thin side with the closet door and single drawer in, and put together the closet shell of the wide section, but had started making dumb mistakes and my muscles were starting to complain a bit too much, so I called it quits before assembling the drawers and shelves for the wide side.

Sunday dawned to freezing fog. The grocery store parking lot being empty made it eerie and almost liminal. After making coffee, carefully stretching my poor, stiff body, and starting some laundry I tackled the 4 drawers and shelves to complete the wardrobe. Everything looks really nice, and I am happy to have my clothes no longer stacked on the floor. Sensi seems to approve of the wardrobe, it makes her eating area a bit more secluded.

The fog persisted into the mid afternoon, and the sun came out just in time for a lovely sunset. There have been some really gorgeous sunsets over here with the winter sun dipping into the southwest horizon, magnified by the atmospheric lensing. Germany is really beautiful.