I see ya. I need ya. IKEA.

When the IKEA opened in Frisco last August they said that the first 100 people would get a POÄNG chair. I didn’t know what a POÄNG chair was but I knew I needed one. I thought, “Since I’m a freelance writer and don’t have to report to a cube at 8:30 a.m., I can be there when it opens and be one of the first 100 people.” It opened at 9 so I thought I could get there at, oh, 8:15 or so just to be safe.

Luckily, I checked the news the night before. Apparently, if you were the very first person you received some amount of money to spend in the store so this woman had abandoned her family for several days in order to camp out there. And she wasn't even the biggest loser in this ordeal. The people behind her were even stupider—they camped out just for the POÄNG chair which, turns out, looks like this:

It’s okay but I guess I expected something that included an umlaut to be, I don’t know, more exotic.

So I didn’t go to IKEA that day or the day after that or the day after that. Actually, I had no plans to ever go until Tips from Thea invited me to come along with her yesterday. Motivated by a need for patio chair cushions, I tagged along.

When we stepped into the Swedish super store our eyes widened. I got that euphoric Costco feeling but unlike Costco, the feeling never faded. You see at IKEA, they force you to go on a “tour” of the store so you can’t just run in and say “Where are the patio cushions?” and grab ‘em and go. You have to savor each section which was not a problem for TfT and me. In fact, she was in tip heaven:

“Oh, I’ve always wanted one of these,” TfT would say, holding up a square red plastic thing-a-ma-bob.

Intrigued, I would ask, “What is it?”

“It’s an ice cube tray that makes your ice into different shapes. It’s also good for making jello.”

“Oh,” I would respond, “I need one of those.”

And that’s basically how we spent the next couple of hours: oohing, awing, and saying things like, “I don’t know what that is but I need that.” OR “I never knew I needed that until I saw this great price.” OR “Trash cans for $1.99? I need five. $.50 hot dogs? Wasn’t really hungry but now I need them.”

As we moved to each new section TfT said, “I’m excited when we get to new stuff but then I’m sad because it’s almost over.” I know how she felt; we had to find ways to circumvent the tour and revisit our fave sections. Sure we had to go against traffic but the $4.99 patio chair cushions were worth it.

And so were the six juice glasses and pack of 100 straws. Oh, did I mention they were bendy straws? I totally needed them.