Because shopping is the best way to beat the heat

We are in the throes of another diabolic heat-wave here, which means that, as a former Southern girl, I’ve basically been lying prostrate on the couch, one arm akimbo, one hand clasping my forehead, crying for a mint julep. Greeks don’t really seem to have much patience for Southern belle sensibilities, so my cries have been ignored.

I risked the odds today and went with my husband and mother-in-law to IKEA for some much needed house shopping. After four hours we came out with two rooms’ and a bathroom’s worth of furniture, which should suit us nicely – for now. We also learned that it is much better to go to IKEA during the weekday – because on Saturdays it gets all the Balkan traffic and you walk around the store playing “which language am I hearing now?” to little success. It makes life interesting, but you’d think IKEA would get smart and open another store closer to these people who have to spend their entire Saturday driving all the way to Thessaloniki and back to get their yellow and blue Swedish fix.

We still have a lot of practical things that need to be purchased before we can move in properly, which means it is a real damn shame our local Praktiker burned to the ground recently. It is going to make finding these things a royal pain in the arse. Some day it will open again, I’m sure, but fortune was not smiling on us (and I suspect quite a few others) the day it burned down.

By the way, it isn’t a good idea to put your IKEA shopping bag on the floor next to a bedroom display and look at something across the aisle from it. One woman thought the items in the bag were part of the display and profuse apologies and embarrassed laughter ensued.

One more day of unbearable heat and then I can stop being an anguished Southern belle. It would be nice if this was the last horrific heat wave of the summer, but summer ain’t close to being over yet, and I ain’t no fool.