Swedish Meatballs, Mmmm

Dear friends,
Today I experienced IKEA. That's right, it was my first time ever in an IKEA store!
I saw some pretty incredible stuff - well, maybe it wasn't that incredible but it was pretty cool.  You see, I'm part Swedish myself, a side with which I'm becoming more familiar by the day. Most people know that IKEA is full of Swedish designers of home furniture, fixtures and appliances. Not everybody knows that their store, a showroom combined with warehouse, also includes a restaurant/cafe and mini mart full of ethnic foods.
Upstairs in the showroom, I sat on the beds, opened cabinet doors, fingered curtains, exclaimed over lamps and lanterns, laughed at silly pillows, read book titles off the shelves and generally enjoyed the scenery. In the restaurant, I ate the quintessential meal of Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes and gravy with lingonberry jelly. It was delicious but altogether filling - I hadn't been that stuffed in a while! Downstairs I wandered among rows of sheet sets, differently shaped pillows, bathroom sink displays including a retractable round wall mirror, fuzzy bath rugs resembling Leon's hair from The Puzzle Place, hundreds of scented tealights and really cute Christmas decorations. The typical IKEA paper lanterns were everywhere, in addition to the lotus lanterns of which I am very fond - and downstairs they were dressed up for the holidays! One round lantern was striped with silver tinsel and another sported golden bows.
After checkout (and chocolate) I oohed and ahhed over recipe cards in the Swedish Market and enumerated the different varieties of pickled herring. Now, you have to understand that in my family, it was a Christmas tradition to eat marinated herring as an appetizer on Christmas Eve at my grandparents' house, along with smoked oysters and crackers, a Christmas Tree-shaped pimiento cheese dip, and lupine beans. Ah, memories.  The cinnamon buns smelled mighty tasty, too, but again I could not have eaten another bite. Truly.
Now that's what I call living, haha. IKEA is another place I'd be delighted to visit once more (or fifty times, as the case may be).  After all, life is too short to die.