Lisa and I went to Ikea, mainly so I could get legs for my desk and so sometime this week (unlikely to be Monday or Tuesday) I could start working in my actual office.

I did get legs. Vika Kaj, if you want to look them up.

I also got all sorts of other crap, including stackable, less-unattractive-than-the-green-ones storage bins for the recyclables in the kitchen, and a hanging rack for utensils, and a toilet paper holder for my bathroom, and two lamps, and other stuff.

Also we ate meatballs and lingonberries.

After dropping it all off at home, I went to Home Depot and got mainly plants and associated detritus. When I got home I repotted the plant Lin bought for the front stoop and the tree thing (tag says Arboricola) I bought for inside. All looks very nice. I did this repotting on the front stoop, so of course the Albanians openly watched me again. I don’t get that at all.

I looked at deck boxes and sheds. I think I’m going to drop $79 on the smallest Rubbermaid deck box. It’s definitely big enough to keep all the gardening stuff in. My trimmer could probably go into the next-largest one ($99), but I’d have to measure.

I’d bought a lampshade at Ikea for the pink lamp (it’s gray with white designs on it, it isn’t bad) and it took me a long time of partial lamp disassembly to get this particular lampshade to go onto that particular lamp. But at least the fact that it isn’t the right kind of lampshade also means it isn’t the same kind of lampshade as the three previous lampshades, all of which Jasper broke in the same way. That can only be good.

I went down to the office and put a half-assed second coat on the parts of the lavender where I thought it needed it. I thought about the ceiling and the trim in there and decided to blow it off. I’m tired of having so few usable rooms in this place. I need that office. And I don’t care about paint nearly as much as most people around here seem to. If it gets to bothering me I’ll drape all the furniture and touch it up. Big deal.

So I put the paint and supplies away and pulled up all the dropcloths and garbage and put the big bundle of that outside in hopes I’ll remember to put it in the trash tomorrow night.

Then I realized there was a small but vital piece missing from the power roller. But my mother let Max pretend to paint with it the other day, and he always disassembles stuff. Meaning it’s really no one’s fault. Oh well. I’m sure I can buy a new part.

Then I dug through boxes looking for the Roomba charger so I could vacuum up all the drywall dust and other crud before moving furniture in (though: side effect of sticky carpet-protector dropcloths: when you peel them up a lot of dust and hair from before you put them down come with them). Of course the Roomba has to charge for hours and hours before it can do it, but I don’t have another vacuum cleaner, so so be it.

In the boxes I found lots of stuff, like my center channel speaker and my computer speakers and an AirPort Express and some small but vital cords and cables and such. Still no sign of the power cord for the Slingbox, though. No idea about that. I’d like to find that.

When I finish writing this I’m going to put one of my new lamps together and use its light to do another crossword puzzle while I watch something off my DVR. I’ll probably go to bed early again, like yesterday. With Lin and Max not here, I don’t quite know what to do with myself.