Warning: Ikea Furniture May Be Harmful

We're now getting around to furnishing the Guesthouse in preparation for the Holidays and M's 40th Birthday Party. Kim and Ev were given the reigns to plan the layout and select furniture from Ikea and I was tasked with figuring out how to get it from Palo Alto to Kingsburg - a task that saw me renting a van, driving it up to the Bay Area while visiting the office in San Mateo last week and returning with a full load of boxed, put-it-together yourself furniture that evokes the essence of Scandinavia.

Oh, and a mattress. The mattress was fun. It was slightly too big to go in horizontally or vertically and proved a bit too challenging for me to lift and twist and push it into the van all on my own. Fortunately, a friendly fellow Ikea shopper offered his assistance and between the two of us we managed to cajole it in and get the door shut. Thank you, Sir. I wish I had asked you your name so I could make this shout out more personal, but your help was invaluable and your girlfriend/fiance/wife/mistress was cute so there's a double whammy for you. :)

It should be noted that shopping at Ikea for large furniture items on your own is really not that easy. The picking up of items off the shelves is fine, it's transferring them to your waiting vehicle that causes the problems and ends up with sore backs, stiff arms and legs and a general sense of 'I wish Michelle had come with me' so she could help get the items that we needed, prevent any spontaneous purchases of things that weren't on the list - a bookshelf, night lights - and double-check that I'm getting all of the right stuff and that I'm not going to drive 200 miles to find that I've got the wrong doors for the tv unit (relieving the mental stress involved in such a shopping trip is just as important as dealing with the physical aspects).

But more importantly than all of that - it is important that you follow the guidance and instructions those good people from Northern Europe have provide lest personal injury should result. I draw your attention to this particularly nugget of wisdom that is imparted pictorially at the very beginning of the instruction manual:

No, not the man taking a confident stance and exclaiming that 'all you need is a screwdriver', but the second diagram that says you should always collaborate with someone who has a pencil behind their ear and no discernible male or female body features.

Really, these guys know what they're talking about as having ignored that crucial second piece of advice, I managed to inflict the following life-threatening injuries upon myself during the construction process:

On the left you will see the results of a nasty pinch, with a blood blister developing on the index finger of my left hand. Notice the redness of the surrounding area - it's like it's shouting to let me know that it hurts. It needed to be lanced (technical term for "pricked with a needle") to relieve the pressure.

And on the right, an excruciating skin slice just below the knuckle on the index finger of my right hand. I may not be able to wash dishes for a few days lest it sting and get infected.

Anyway, I share this information with you now as a public service to help the people that I care about avoid serious injury at the hands of Ikea. Had I been aware of the dangers I would have most certainly sought the help of a second person - one that didn't grin at me inanely and take a stance of superiority and know-it-all-ness as depicted by the strangely sexless individual in the picture in the instructions.

Or, on second thoughts, perhaps I wouldn't. Sometimes it's nice to be able to point at something and say that you did that through hard work and your own blood, sweat and tears. Except, of course, while there was blood and sweat there were certainly no tears. At least, none that I'm admitting to.