I am Seema, hear me roar!

Today, ladies and gentlemen, I built a chair. Yes, yes, I did. Now some of you playing the home game might say, "Well, that's no big deal, I build chairs all the time." Those of you who are impressed that I built a chair without inflicting any bodily harm on myself might lose that respect when I tell you it was from IKEA (especially my brother and Bjorn, who apparently have furnished their entire living space from IKEA; just to clarify, my brother and Bjorn do not live together). As for me, I've never built anything before. Except a wheelbarrow. But that doesn't count because I was helping my dad and iirc, I screwed something in backwards. My dad is the only person in the neighborhood with an upside down strut assembly (or whatever it's called). But I digress.

So I built myself a pretty new chair. Specifically this chair. I chose white because I have as of yet not bought a sofa and I thought white is a nice color to go with any sofa I might choose to buy in the future. However, it took me 8 months to buy this chair, when I'd decided in August that I wanted it. Who knows when I'll buy a sofa? (Though I did see one I liked a lot when we were at IKEA; btw, we were at IKEA for five hours yesterday. Isn't that a very, very long time to be at IKEA?).

But. Back to my story. So it took me 90 minutes to build the chair. I know, I know, really long time, and those of you handy with tools? Stop. Laughing. But I have a good excuse, honestly. For about 20 of those minutes, I was on the phone with my cousin. For 30 minutes, I was distracted by "Sports Night" and really, the hard work all took place in the last 40 minutes; my thumbs will never be the same again; they are still feeling all tingly from their wrench work.

Thankfully, IKEA provided the wrenches for the job, so I didn't have to purchase any tools. Granted, teeny tiny wrenches, but whatever. There was also a pretty diagram with very clear instructions made so any person who has never built a chair before can follow and absorb. However, despite the pretty diagram and very clear instructions and the supplies provided, the crucial missing element was another person. I think theoretically, you can build this chair without another person; I obviously did. But it'd be a hell of lot easier if someone else was there, if for nothing else, to hand you a beer when you can't figure out why something won't screw (while on the phone with my cousin, I realized I was using the wrong screws in the wrong place -- hence, My Issues (tm) and why I wasted almost a half hour -- the "Sports Night" half hour -- trying to get the supports put together).

Plus, building this chair means you have to contort your body into very interesting positions, some of which I had not thought physically possible. In addition to my sore thumbs, I have muscles creaking at me, muscles which after 28 years of living in my body are just now making their presence known. And I had the blinds open which means, I'm pretty sure, the lady across the way with the big beautiful dog, probably had a great view of me going through the IKEA workout. I'm hoping it was raining hard enough that the view was obscured. Either that or she was too busy playing with that big beautiful dog to pay attention to me. Why, yes, I do think the world revolves around moi.

Anyway, I finally got all of the pieces assembled; the chair comes six pieces. That's a lot of pieces! And there are a total of 10 screws. That's a lot of screws! And all of the screws are labeled with numbers like 00324X and even the wrenches have numbers -- this is for easy matching and so you know whether you have the right parts or not. I was able to figure all of that out and only screwed in the wrong screws once (and it took 30 minutes to figure that out, but whatever); I'd like to say it wasn't my fault because eight of the screws bore startling resemblance to each other and are probably related by factory.

What I found most difficult was actually figuring out how to get all the pieces to line up so I could screw them together. Because of the way the chair is shaped, it's not easy at any time to lay the thing down flat. The most extreme hardest part was screwing the actual sitting part to the support, because of the awkward angle. This is the part where it would have been very helpful if IKEA had included another person in its packaging. As it was, building this chair would make a good challenge for Survivor. Especially if you withhold the wrenches.

But all in all, life is good and while I don't have a sofa, I now have another very comfy chair in the living room so I can actually have people over to watch movies etc. And, before you ask, yes, I have sat in the chair and no, it did not creak or fall apart. So there. I am so all over this IKEA thing. Rah!