the underwear drawer

hello, blue couch

See, here's the difference between me and Joe. When I have time off from work, all I do is sleep and loaf around and watch the "Real World/Road Rules Battle of the Sexes" marathon on MTV because I'm lazy like that. Joe, on the other hand, is a whirling dervish of productivity, not unlike the Tasmanian Devil, only less destructive. He did our taxes. He organized our closets. He cleaned out the file cabinets. And yesterday, while I was on call, he had our new Ikea furniture delivered and assembled it all himself. He is like the Bionic Man.

Aside from getting the above storage system in a pitiful attempt to organize our lives, the main reason we needed to go to Ikea is that we needed a new couch. Thanks to the Coop Dog, our old couch was neither looking nor smelling very good, and after giving up the idea that five gay men were going to descend upon our home, renovate it and give us all new furniture as well as a sassy new take on life, we just decided to bite the bullet and buy a new couch ourselves. As for the choice of an Ikea couch, I know their stuff is kind of cheap and not very sturdy for he long haul (the dining room chairs that we bought there are just about falling apart--remind me not to invite any fat people over), but we figured that with a teenaged dog and a new baby, we probably shouldn't get any furniture that isn't basically disposable after 5 years.

We were originally going to order this one model of couch in a dark, espresso-colored brown (not sold online, so I can't link to a picture, nor can I remember the name, though knowing Ikea, it was probably the EKSKUNDGROBEN couch or something like that) not only because it looked attractive, but we figured that the brown would really camoflage the poop stains well. Only when we called the Swedes, they informed us that the brown couch was sold out, and that the only choice of color for that particular couch model was a very light beige (OK, but kind of 70's looking) or white. A white couch? How can they expect anyone to maintain a white couch? There would be a person-shaped dirt print on that couch within weeks. So at the last minute, we went with EKTORP couch, in blue. I would have preferred the green, but again, out of stock. Dear Ikea--order some more couches. And also, FedEx me a plate of those Swedish meatballs, would you? Thanks.

The blue looked relatively innocuous on the website (click on the pull-down color menu to "Hillsand Blue," and you can see it's depicted as a subdued navy color) but when it came, it was...a little more blue than we had anticipated. I mean, this is a BLUE couch. You walk into our living room, and it screams, "BLUE!" Not quite a Cookie Monster blue...but close. I thought the dog's bed was blue (seen in the lower-right hand corner), but next to this new couch, it looks positively greyish.

See? Also in typical Ikea fashion, they seem to have forgotten to include the legs for the couch in the "assembly required" package, so we're still waiting for those to come. Meanwhile, the couch is sliding all over the floor. The blue, blue couch.

Currently reading: "The New Yorker." Did you see that Chris Ware illustrated this week's cover? Cool.