She'll be riding on a hot-dog when she comes....

We've recently pulled out all of Geo's CDs and have started listening to more music. His kick right now is "Wee Sing Songs in the Car" and he just loves it.

The other evening, while I was making dinner, this CD was playing, and I was listening to my Ipod-- therefore not paying much attention to the songs. Geo came into the kitchen, laughing his head off, and told me the song that was talking about a woman coming down the mountain on a HOT DOG . We had a long giggle about that, and I was scratching my head trying to figure out which song could possibly be about a woman riding a hot dog.

When we sat down to eat, the CD was still playing and had started over again. Suddenly, Geo was laughing again and telling me "THIS is the song, Mama!". It was "She'll be Coming 'Round the Mountain When She Comes". And sure enough, the second verse starts with "She'll be riding in a hot-rod when she comes".

Much laughter ensued, and I tried to explain that the song was saying "hot rod" and not "hot dog", and what on earth a hot rod *is*. I just love the preschool malapropisms!

Yesterday we went to IKEA. You know, some days are just doomed to suckiness. Friday night, Geo slept like a log, but C and I had major insomnia starting at about 3am (my insomnia started as major hunger pains). Finally, C ended up on the couch, and just as I was drifting back to sleep, Geo woke up. Three times.

But, bleary-eyed we decided to forge ahead to IKEA, in the hopes that as it's technically still summer, it wouldn't be too crowded. Unfortunately, everyone else in the universe had the same idea we did, and the place was packed with screaming children, screaming parents, very pregnant women and, weirdly, people who seem to go just to browse and wander slowly through the store, as if it's a Really Fun Place. We had a List and a Plan and Measurements, so we powered through to the Closet section, then headed downstairs to pick up towel racks, a comforter, lamps and lampshades and Miscellaneous Other.

I am curious about how many marriages have ended because of an injudicious trip to IKEA. One minute, you're comparing the various merits of towel racks, and the next, you're thinking: "Who IS this person?"

But we made it through, picked up all the pieces of the closet, ferried out a shopping cart, a big cart full of closet pieces, a stroller and George and headed towards the registers. The lines were insanely, ridiculously long-- quite possibly the longest I have ever seen. The IKEA worker who had the misfortune to be directing traffic saw C pushing the pieces of the closet-- 6 or 7 items altogether, and pushed him into the "Caisse Rapide" line, before he realized that I, with a cart overflowing with stuff, was with him. This presented him with a problem, since the Caisse Rapide is for 10 items or less, but he called up to the person manning the automatic registers and told a big, fat lie-- that we'd been waiting in line forever (false), that I was pregnant (true) and feeling ill (false). Whatever; it worked, although if looks could have killed we would be dead many times over from the daggers shooting from the eyes of people in line behind us.

You'd think that making it through the registers would be the end of the IKEA adventure. You'd be wrong. Next stop required renting a truck to get all our purchases back to the apartment. This took another 1.5 hours of C standing in line (at one point, they distributed coupons for a free coffee because the wait was so long) while Geo and I got to enjoy a fifty-cent hot dog and some apple slices. Once C was at the truck with both carts, Geo and I headed to the bus stop (no place to install a carseat in an IKEA truck!).

The bus was another really fun experience, resulting in a seriously bruised finger when the stroller flopped open as Geo and I were trying to board the totally packed bus and I tried to close it up again by sticking my hand inside the mechanism. But we eventually made it home, by which time C had arrived, unloaded the truck and left again to return it.

When he finally made it home, we got started on building the closet. We had measured carefully; the height was fine, as it was 2.36 meters high, and our ceiling is 2.5 meters high; width: 1 meter, and we had 1.25 meters in the space allotted to the closet, and depth: sure! It'll fit just fine.

But it's actually really hard to put together a seven foot tall closet. We assembled it in the bedroom after piling boxes and clothes and sheets and towels in the bathroom. We stood it up and had a deep, dark moment of doubt. The closet was supposed to go in what used to be a closet but has been re-done to be a totally useless space, as far as I can tell. It's accessed through an arched doorway. It didn't look like the closet could be manipulated into the space because the width of the doorway was 100.2 cm, and the width of the closet was 99.8 cm.

Thankfully, I am married to an engineer whose sense of spatial possibilities FAR exceeds my own. And risking hernias and broken woodwork and even the possibility of forever being trapped in the closet space by a 7-foot armoire, we managed to get the dang thing into place. I have a funny feeling we'll be leaving it behind when we move, though as C points out, we got it in, we'll be able to get it out again. Sure, out of the closet. But out of the bedroom? Out of the apartment? I'm not convinced.