Harrowing.

It's the only word that comes close to describing the past six days or so. True, none of us has been lastingly harmed and no blood was shed so perhaps you think me a tad dramatic. No, I say. Any week that involves two children alternating barfy episodes for the entire length of a 250 mile drive (the last of which I marked by pointing out to Braniac, "We're close enough to home that the wet clothes shouldn't be too bad for her and there's no point in changing her again since the car seat is thoroughly soaked in...whatever that is. Just drive.") AND a second 500 mile round trip, rendered pointless by a 6 inch snowfall that was repeatedly and erroneously in my opinion described as a "snow storm" but which canceled the meeting for which I had specifically made the trip AND getting stuck in said snow after the nice man who farms the 50 acres adjacent to what we're now calling "The Other House" plowed the 800-foot drive thereby covering the car with what might have been the entire snowy contents of said drive AND getting sick on the drive back from the second trip with whatever it was that the kids had AND promising and unpromising a friend that I'd babysit for her AND realizing that the guy who is coordinating work on The Other House has ideas about home repair and renovation that depart quite significantly from my own (one word: pressboard), well, I think it could be rightly called harrowing.

There was one quite amusing incident from the first trip that I've been so dying to share. I hope I tell it right, because Brainiac and I cracked each other up referencing the experience for the entire weekend. Really, just too funny. Anyway, we were at Ikea because, as I've mentioned, it's the law to check in with them when moving anywhere within hauling distance. And we're going through obediently following the big blue arrows on the floors and we keep seeing this same man - tall, bald, frowing with a deep furrow between the eyes - who's look of consternation is so encompassing, so total that it's nearly impossible to not notice that this is a man who does not like what he sees. Not at all. At one point, he stood in one of those faux kitchens and sighed, loudly and repeatedly. A fellow shopped asked if he needed any help.

"Any help? Any help?," he bellowed, "Why on earth would you think I need help?" Sir, all 30,000 of us here in the store think you need help, but whatever. We shop on. Finally, at the end of the route and just about heading into the little bistro area Angry Man corrals an Ikea employee and very enthusiastically begins telling him what's wrong with the whole place, "Young man, what kind of store is this? Why is there no inventory? You only have one of every item? How am I to buy anything?" As the hapless clerk struggles to answer Angry Man continues, "And another thing, why are there so few clerks? And why are these pencils so small? I don't understand the names of all the products - why not have names that make sense to your customers? What's this Ukbar?" and on and on. A crowd began to gather - Angry Man was really quite a spectacle - more or less stupefied by his rant. Angry Man finally took a breath and in that split second of time, one of the crowd managed to get a single word in:

"Newbie."

You can't imagine the mirth. The very idea of someone showing up at Ikea and so completely not getting the...I don't know, business model or something and becoming so utterly flustered by it. Well, maybe you had to be there.