I have to tell you about my day. Normally I don’t bother with this kind of personal… diary? Memoir? I don’t know. But I must tell you anyway.
It’s Halloween, and that means dozens of little kids out with costumes, getting enough candy to make themselves horribly sick later. I was thinking not of candy and costumes, however – I decided to make a pilgrimage to IKEA, the haven of cheap Lego furniture.
I love IKEA for the same reason I like Lego – I like to make things, and making my own furniture is satisfying in a way I can’t really describe. But my closest store in Richmond is usually a complete nightmare of crowds, long queues, and absolutely no convenient parking, which somewhat spoils my enjoyment of wandering the IKEA showroom and dreaming of someday having my own freakishly tiny apartment with minimalist decor. But not today, dear friends! Today, everyone decided to do the Halloween thing, and I pulled up to IKEA in one of the prized spots near the door.
Off I went, for a pleasant, peaceful walk through the Market Hall, bag in hand, serenaded by 80s rock music. It was blissfully quiet, almost surreal. I wandered about, musing on whether to buy a new set of bedside lamps, sometimes wondering who the other occasional shopper was and what they were doing in IKEA, of all places, at seven pm on a Halloween night. Presumably they thought to themselves, as I did, “You know what would really go with the kitchen cabinets? Those little steel hook things for hanging up cups and towels. I MUST BUY THEM IMMEDIATELY.”
I settled on a bunch of boxes that were on sale, and strolled through the checkout with nary a queue in sight. As I drove back home, across the Knight Street Bridge, I was treated to the sight of fireworks going off all over Vancouver (although why, I’m still not sure. I don’t know why Halloween and fireworks are a thing here). I returned triumphant, having spent the trip blasting electronica on my car’s frankly ridiculous sound system, and to hell with whatever the denizens of South Marine Drive thought about that.
What I’m saying, really, is that you have to take pleasure in the little things, even if they seem stupid. That was my day, dear friends. Hopefully you too had a good Halloween, and got lots of candy. Tomorrow, the National Novel Writer’s Month begins, and I will vanish into my narrative cave until December.