How Do You Say "Oh Well" in Swedish?

Not that I really needed one, but I'd been looking for a reason to return to IKEA ever since my first trip out to Stoughton a year ago (following The Great Clean-up of 2006). After all, who doesn't love IKEA, with its aisles and aisles of cheap but cool stuff? And its good food? Well, today I finally had a good enough reason to go. For what feels like a year or two, I've been looking for a DVD tower big enough to hold the 200-plus DVDs in my collection, and nothing I've seen has been good enough. IKEA had something in its catalog, the Bertby, which I thought was nice and would complement my other shelving. So, I made the trek, and since I left Brookline around 11:30, it only took me a half hour to get there. (That's the secret to going to IKEA: aim to get there as close to noon as possible, otherwise you'll be sitting in traffic.)

So as not to bore you with my shopping travails, I'll just say the Bertby was not what I was expecting it to be. I didn't want something that had to be hung on the wall, and more importantly, it wasn't nearly big enough. I almost decided to buy a Billy (in black), but I felt like I was settling and didn't want to lug it back to Boston only to be disappointed. So, I wandered around the store and, about an hour later, I was still empty handed. (Though not empty stomached; of course I had some Swedish meatballs and a cinnamon roll.) And that's basically the point of this posting: I was surprised that I could go to IKEA, spend about two hours there, and still buy nothing. Not a set of new pots for $9, not a cute stuffed dog for $7, not even a mouse pad for 79 cents. I almost replaced some stuff I bought a year ago, like the rug in my bedroom, but opted not to.

Instead, I left bewildered, but confident in my ability to hold back and not buy unnecessary items, tempting though it might have been.