NAW, GIRL!

"Has the house come in yet?"

I have heard that question approximately one hundred times over the past couple of weeks. My response is always the same. "Naw, girl."

Last night it happened again while I was eating out.

As I was walking by, I heard a friend say, "Has the house come in yet?"
So the habitual response came out of my mouth- "Naw, girl." Except as I was walking back to my table I realized that I had been speaking to a male. And I called him a girl. Oops.

Eight weeks. That is how long we have been waiting on our house that would only take five weeks to arrive. Maybe God is helping me develop patience through this experience. Patience has never been an attribute that I even remotely have claimed to possess; however, I think I am faring well. I haven't even been ugly to anyone. Persistent, yes. Ugly, not yet.

I have to throw that yet in there because our lease in the awful house will be up at the end of the month. Oh, and I also might have scheduled a trip to NYC during the time we are scheduled to be out of the house. Sorry, Matt. In my defense, the house was supposed to only take five weeks to arrive, and I thought we would be totally settled in by the end of May. I was wrong, but I think misinformed is a better adjective.

To pass the time and try to get excited (again) about the house, I decided we should take a trip to IKEA to pick up a few things. Being that I am a planner, we took two cars. It was either that or rent a U-Haul to drive our purchases back. You see, I had already shopped online, measured every aspect of the tiny house, made a list of what we were buying, and drawn the rooms in the house to scale with the new purchases. Yep. Because I am a planner. You should see my NYC itinerary!

We dropped off Carys at Nana's -because no 5 year old wants to spend a day in IKEA- and headed to Frisco! After resting overnight in a super budget friendly hotel (at least it had free breakfast- with waffles), we were ready to go!

Well, I only thought I was ready. I had my list. I had my goals. But then IKEA. If I had to pick one word to describe IKEA I would choose overwhelming. You look at the store map and you are all like- I got this! Then you start walking. And walking, And walking. Then you realize IKEA is the size of Magic Kingdom. Then you walk some more.  And the longer you walk the more people there are in the store. And although there are arrows on the path showing the people which way to walk, people are darting to and fro, hither and yonder, forwards and backwards. The people are everywhere- like ants in an ant bed. I wanted to get a light wand and direct traffic, but Matt held me back, calmed me down, and said, "We should get some lunch." I agreed and followed the arrows on the path to the restaurant. On the way, I only took out two toddlers, one texting teen, and a set of newlyweds who were too busy gazing into each others' eyes to notice the hangry mother of three behind them on the path of destruction.

Now, let's talk about food for a minute. I am the person who orders the same thing every time I go to a restaurant. If I want to try something different, I convince Matt or one of the kids to order what I want to try. Why? Because if I don't like what I get, then I am going to leave hungry. Chamie plus hungry is a BAD combination. So why I was feeling daring on this particular day is beyond me, but I was. So I asked the nice IKEA café worker, "How are the meatballs?" And he responded with, "They are the best thing we serve." So I tried them. After the first bite, I thought- well these are not too bad. And with every bite I took from that moment forward, my stomach started feeling worse and worse. The kids tried the meatballs. Their looks of disgust only confirmed what my stomach was trying to say. Then I burped. And then I tasted the burp. And then I continued to burp and taste those meatballs for the rest of the afternoon. Take it from me, don't get the Swedish meatballs at IKEA. Just don't. But before the day was over, I would learn that my daring meatball feat was a blessing in disguise.

Since I was still hungry, the remainder of the IKEA trip was trying even though I managed to keep it together. In fact, we even took a few breaks here and there just to sit and watch the ants. 

Finally, five or six hours after we first entered IKEA, we were finished shopping. Next came the fun part...loading the cars.

Tah dah!!!  Somehow, we managed to fit it all in. I even think I could've bought another piece of furniture or two if I had really wanted to. We managed to make it home from Dallas even though the return trip didn't go as I had planned. I will save that story for next time when I fill you in on how those nasty burps blessed my family.  

The car has been unpacked and we now lots of IKEA furniture assembly to keep us busy until the house arrives "any day now." Pray for my patience as Matt and I put together this Swedish furniture that contains thousands of tiny parts and pieces. Dear mercy, let there not be any missing screws.