We're talking multitudes here, people

On New Year’s Day I already had plans to rendezvous with my friends at Brooklyn Bowl in the afternoon and kick off 2012 with large quantities of fried chicken and biscuits.  But while L and I were tossing around possible breakfast suggestions and she threw Ikea into the ring I knew there was no way I could begin this next year in my life without a pilgrimage to my favorite Swedish mecca.  Sitting crossed-legged at the kitchen table, I could almost taste those savory Swedish meatballs, drenched in gravy and rolled around in lingonberry sauce.  Even as L’s father straightened up oversections of The New York Times and asked if we were really going to drive out to Long Island for Swedish meatballs, I knew I had to talk L into it.  I could already taste those miraculously creamy mashed potatoes, those cool glasses of lingonberry juice.  I’d even down that bowl of questionable salad, with the sad frayed lettuce edges and tough carrot shreds.  Luckily L is used to my random flights of fancy and she didn’t need a whole lot of convincing to schlep it out onto the LIE.  (Did I mention the meatballs?)

And even though I usually prefer to stay in on the first day of a new year, I have to admit that this was the BEST. NEW. YEAR’S. DAY. EVER.  Safely ensconced in a sun-drenched section of the dining area with my meatball special and a large plate of crispy fries (we couldn’t resist), I felt that heightened sense of clam that accompanies a fresh beginning.  Here I have the clean slate of a whole new year and where else to start it all then the store that helps us create environmentally-friendly, affordable, and beautifully designed surroundings?  (I swear, Ikea isn’t paying me to write this.)  

To me, the beginning of a new year still holds a bit of that feeling that anything is possible—this is the time to actualize some crazy dream of our, release it out into the great, wide world.  Ikea also brings forth that feeling in me.  Meandering through the charmingly space-efficient mock apartments makes me hope too…that I could make 180 square foot studio work…that I’ll stumble into the perfectly situated 500 square foot apartment…that one day I can have rooms to encompass everything I want to be—create an art space, set up a writing studio, make a meditation room. 

As L and I sat on the prerequisite bench, slurping our free fro-yo cones (yes, free!), the cogs in my brain started churning again and I came up with a new resolution:  to do at least one silly activity a week that makes me happy.  Building a line of teeny tiny snowmen along an untrodden pathway.  Stopping to marvel at new treebuds.  Splashing through rain puddles in brightly colored wellies.  Stepping on crunchy leaves (I’ve been told that walking with me in the fall is like being tethered to a four-year-old).

Ikea makes me slow down, re-evaluate what I might really want instead of the goals I’m already pursing.  Because the store means endless possibilities to me, it reminds me that I also have endless possibilities (Okay, Whitman said it best.  We’re talking multitudes here, people).  I just have to stop and listen to them.  I think I’m going to start by blowing bubbles this week.