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We just saw MIL and FIL off after a nice Sunday dinner at our place. Earlier today, we took MIL to IKEA on a mercy mission.

She has out-of-town friends coming to stay with them next week and she's trying to get her condo fixed up. She has a good eye for decorating but insists that others do the handy-man part of it. The latest issue has been a set of bracket shelves she wants installed in the spare bedroom. All that is required are six screws drilled into the drywall.

She has appealed to her grandkids and her grandkids' friends to put up the shelves, but the grandkids are busy with school and such. She has called on her son in VA to put up the shelves, but he doesn't venture up this way very often. She has called on neighbors - no luck. Meanwhile, Big'ol has offered to put the shelves up; I had volunteered, too. Not good enough.

Finally, the friendly neighborhood condo handy-man installed the shelves. He missed the studs, used the wrong anchors for the drywall, and drilled the holes too large for the anchors. So when she started loading the bracket shelves with trinkets and *encyclopedias*, the whole kit-and-kaboodle comes crashing down. Stuff gets broken and she's fuming mad. Interestingly, she was fuming mad at *us*. We offered to help, but she turned us down.

Now, the out-of-town friends are very fancy and elegant. The shelves were utilitarian and, er, utilitarian. So I say to MIL, "How about a bookcase?" A bookcase can hold all the books she wants to display and all the trinkets and the dog toys and it won't fall off the wall. "Where can we get a bookcase?" she asks....

And that's where we hauled her to IKEA! MUAHAHAAAAA! Thank heavens for IKEA. Found her a nice, inexpensive bookcase, brought it back to the condo, assembled it in 20 min and voila! It even covers the screw holes in the drywall. ;) I don't quite know who out-maneuvered whom, but she's enchanted by her nice bookcase and the whole family is relieved to have the shelf matter put to rest.

I need a weekend to recover from my weekend.