yellow is the color of fear

Easter Sunday arrives, and you wake up a little depressed.
Your family is 800 miles away, but you're not so much homesick as you are sad not to be getting the annual shipment of Cadbury Eggs your mother usually sends for the holiday.
It's 42 degrees (again) and kinda gray (again) and the apartment is a complete disaster (again), due to an unfinished painting project the BF started on "Good" Friday.
So the BF decides, it's time to go to IKEA.
OK, you say, but only if the trip will not take up our entire day. Because you've learned your lesson. The last little IKEA adventure turned into a five-hour tour of duty.
No, this time it'll be different, he says, because this time we have a plan. We'll go and buy a new couch, he says. We need a new couch because we have houseguests coming this weekend, he says.
Oh yeah. That.
So you go.
The 1 Train takes you to 42nd Street. You have a cupcake for breakfast then descend into the flourescent Purgatory of the Port Authority bus terminal, where the free shuttle to IKEA takes sad-eyed (and mostly foreign born) shoppers out to Elizabeth, New Jersey, for the promise of Big Box Bliss.
Funny name, "Elizabeth." It sounds so elegant, with visions of stately British gardens and ponds filled with swans. But Elizabeth, New Jersey, is perhaps the antithesis of elegance. It's a rusted scab of industrial blight that happens to have a shiny yellow-and-blue IKEA store.
Inside, no one speaks English. Untold masses cram the upstairs "Showroom" and clog the aisles with strollers. They leave sweaty fingerprints on white canvas couches made in Sweden.
But you and the BF have learned your lesson. You stay on target. You weigh the benefits of the cloth loveseat over the leather sofa. You measure metal tables. You follow the IKEA rules and jot down names like "Ockero" and "Rosfors" on the pre-supplied shopping lists.
You hand those slips to the yellow-shirted staff, and the verbal lashing begins. This item is out of stock. This one you'll have to pick up yourself.
But it's a sofa!
Sorry, see the people downstairs.
At this point, a voice on the intercom announces that the last bus back to civilization leaves in half an hour. You've spent three and a half hours in the store already. Your plan is now fucked.
A mad dash downstairs to the warehouse leads to a dreadlocked salesgirl whose eyes are filled with hatred. We only have one of those loveseats left, she says, pointing to a plastic-wrapped glob in the distance. It's your loveseat, alright, the last one, which you lift yourself onto a dolly and start the long haul to the cash registers.
An Easter miracle? Not quite.
Turns out there's a gaping hole in the plastic, which penetrates the brown-paper bottom of the sofa. Another salesguy says they can't sell it with a hole in it. He'll have to send it to the "As Is" department, and you'll have to come back for it later.
As Is? As if.
You and the BF are about to go Columbine. The bus is about to leave. You frantically wheel your other purchases (a rug, some mirrors, a press-board mail sorter, crap) up to the check-out area. You have personally witnessed riots that are more civil than this consumer clusterfuck. Nerves are frayed. A woman with a baby shoves her way past you and breaks in line. She does not speak English. The baby is sleeping.
Five minutes until the bus leaves, you realize there's no way you can possibly place your order for the Rosfors (a four-door wooden TV cabinet) or the Granso (a cute little dining room table). You decide to cut your losses and go back to Manhattan, an oasis of calm compared to this savage third-world excuse for shopping.
On the bus, the BF plops the rolled-up rug in the gap between your seats. You hold the bags in your lap. On the other side of the aisle, a fat woman of some sort of Slavic descent hovers over her 9-year-old daughter. Her voice is shrill, like Betty Boop, and she does not speak English. It sounds like some bastardized form of Swedish. Her hair is dirty. The daughter drinks a Mountain Dew and looks bored. The bus smells like stale potoato chips.
Your BF says he feels nauseous.
You sit and wait. The bus fills past its capacity. It's now 5:30 p.m., which means your day is pretty much over. Betty BaBoopski screams from the back of the bus, telling a young Asian girl to please not drop her shopping bag on her daughter. The daughter looks embarrassed.
Finally the bus departs, and the rotted metal of New Jersey begins to fade into the towering comfort of Manhattan.
Why, God, why, did you waste your Sunday doing this?
The bus arrives back at Purgatory and Betty BaBoopski is causing another scene. A short, Guido-looking guy says to her, "Do you realize how fucking annoying it is to have you talk over us?" She grabs her daughter by the hand and you see them again a few minutes later, asking for directions from a young thug on 9th Avenue.
Later that night, in Chelsea, you and the BF go into a drug store looking for shampoo. They don't carry the brands that either of you use. They're also sold completely out of Cadbury Eggs.
Happy Easter.


Update: Another reason to hate IKEA.