If the chair fits...

This girl knows how I feel. My Ikea catalog came the other day. Oh, the love.

I have a weird obsession with Ikea catalogs, and Ikea in general. If you believe it, I've never even been inside an Ikea store... too out-of-the-way, and the only time I ever even see one is halfway up off the highway when I go up to L.A. Is it the promise of Swedish meatballs? Partially. Mostly, though... it's the catalogs.

I don't know what I'd do if I actually went inside an Ikea. I think I'd never be able to leave. To see these funky designer rooms and actually be able to sit on the chairs and touch the curtains and...

I'd be on overload.

Because Ikea catalogs, to me, are pure gold. And by gold, I mean inspiration. If you opened up my imagination, and found the place where all my fictional characters lived, you'd find a lot of Ikea-like furniture in there. I take one look at a picture of a dressing table with costume jewelry and Russian nesting dolls on it, and I'm dying to know who lives in that room. What color is her hair and why is her lamp on in the middle of the day? Obviously she's got money... and she doesn't care about something as silly as energy crises. And I imagine she liked to play dress-up when she was little, and still does, though she keeps it a little quieter... a little more secret.

There's something elegant here, but it's a perfected elegance. Self-maintained. A modicum of control over everything, because she was a little too wild, a little too eccentric as a kid, and probably got a disapproving look or two for it that cut a little bit too deep. A little of that girly eccentricity still shines through... but it's been forcibly subdued.

And that's just one page! (Page 162 if you're wondering.) That was just one random opening of the book. This is proof, if you're wondering, that inspiration can zap you from anywhere. Even Ikea catalogs. Because to me, silly as it may seem, these aren't just pictures of furniture. They're snapshots of rooms that could really belong to people. People full of delicious quirks and gorgeous obsessions who are a little bit messy but a little bit sophisticated, too. People with backgrounds. With stories to tell.

And well, I've got my pen. I'm listening.