You can’t always get what you want ..(Part 1)

Last weekend was a crazy one, filled with laughter, joy, dancing; at times cabin fever coupled with depression, thunder storms , tragic central Texas flooding, an ill-fated Purity Ring concert(twice cancelled, at least I have the memory of doing a crab pose next to their poster weeks earlier), cousin’s visit, stars aligning to produce a miracle, and meeting new neighbors. (Intermingled in there a tad more than the usual drinking that I’m used to nowadays =P) However, I really want to talk about the miracle highlight of the weekend that really started over a year ago, involving a “magical” bookshelf.

I live in a small studio apartment, which is somewhat expensive given that is 400 square feet, however, I’m grateful to have found it , as I have the greenbelt (Austin’s version of a forest) right behind me and I’m super close to downtown. When I moved in I was willing to forgo the square footage; I can’t beat the location and it luckily fit within my budget. In other words, I had to get creative with organization since i was moving from a 1 bedroom apartment. I’ve failed to do so for the past 14 months that I’ve been at my studio apt. I started by buying a cozy sofa that fit perfectly, my plan was to get a bookshelf from IKEA that I could use as storage space and as a room divider. You know the type with the square cubbies (picture Hollywood squares w/o the celebrities) It would serve as division from the living room and my bedroom; give the back area a sense of privacy. At some point I want to add a curtain or panel behind the divider to give my bed area a sense of mystique. Ohhhhh…not that anything magical or mystical happens there. Far from..anyway, that’s a whole other blog topic.hehe

Anyhow, I found this great IKEA bookshelf called Expedit around April of 2014. I saw it at the IKEA showroom. I was there with my boss and a colleague shopping for some office furniture. Being women of great taste and multitasking brains, they gave me some decoration/furnishing pointers for my new place. I saw this mammoth bookshelf 6ftx 6ft and figured hey, that would be a great place to store stuff in. This stuff could go in baskets and or multi-colored boxes that fit perfectly into the cube. ( the whole divider idea) It wasn’t such a novelty concept I’m sure, for me it was since it was the first time living in a studio. I saw the price of $250 and said what a deal! The downer was when I reached for the little slip of paper to claim the item at checkout. Nothing there, there was a red sign saying that the item was discontinued. So I’m like, what the heck IKEA, why do you have the non-available display item here just tempting people??? It should have never crossed my eyesight!

As per suggestion of my friend, ok now that I recall I went twice to IKEA in a short span of time, once with a friend with an eye for interior design and another time on work duty with my boss & coworker. I left my number with an employee should they decide to sell the floor model. The employee told me he’d add me to the list since there were other people already interested in buying it. Apparently it was a hot commodity. I checked eBay when I got back home and it was selling for over $600 since it was now discontinued at all IKEAs worldwide; the new line for similar cubed bookshelf/dividers where much smaller, nothing that size. This wouldn’t help me since I need something tall to cover the bed area. “Shoot,” I just said in my head, “ok God, if you can help me obtain this, great, I’d appreciate it, if not, it’s cool. But really, it would be awesome.” IKEA wouldn’t contact people until they decided to remove that particular studio setup floor display. I left the store; my life went on… but flash forward a few weeks later I get a call from an IKEA rep saying “hey are you still interested in the Expedit floor model?” The price was now reduced to $150 since it was “used” and it had some wear and tear on it. I couldn’t believe it! He told me that they had called the people ahead of me on the list and that they didn’t get back, so I was the next one in line. If i didn’t purchase it that day, it was just going on the liquidation segment in the store and it’d get snatched up quick. Small problem, I was at work, didn’t own anything large enough to transport that behemoth and the next day I was traveling to New York to surprise my best friend for her birthday. I was like, crap; the odds are not in my favor. So it seemed. But I really wanted it (in theory, needed it also)!

(Oh, here’s a picture of the star of our story)

The brilliant employee (I’m not being sarcastic) suggested well if you come pay for it here at the store now; we can hold the item for up to a week and we can have it shipped to your home. We can delay shipping for up to a week. The price would come out approximately $200 including shipping. So I thought perfect, that’ll give me enough time to go on my trip and be back when it was time to ship it to my home. My awesome boss let me leave work for a few hours while I drove up to the outskirts of town to pay for the shelf. The guy at the checkout counter even rigged the system so they would deliver it on a Friday at the last part of the day. Otherwise I would have had to take a whole day off to sit there in a 9am to 6pm window. Ain’t nobody got time for it! (Or PTO for that matter)I was quite giddy over my great luck!!! The universe surely wanted me to have that bookshelf…mental prayer answered right??

A week later I was at work and I get a call earlier than expected from the delivery company saying that they were ready to head over. Even though it wasn’t yet time for the late delivery window that I was given. It was around 3 when they rang, I told them the earliest I could get out of work would be 430 and I could meet them at 5. I got another nagging call around 430 and I told them I was driving home to meet me there at 5pm. (i obviously wasn’t clear the first time) So I get home, probably commited a few traffic violations, got my newly purchased sofa and storage boxes out of the way, and waited in elated anticipation. 5 o ‘clock came, 5:15, 5:20…close to 5:30. I was like what the heck, all the fuss they gave me and they weren’t here yet. Surely they were delayed with traffic or something. I called the guy’s cell phone to let him know I was at home waiting. His response was super shady but basically told me that they would not be able to deliver the item because it had gotten damaged; I was like ummm…it was fine an hour ago…what do you mean? It was damaged in the transport, they hit something, and it couldn’t be delivered this way. Call the store for a refund. We’re sorry. Hung up! That was that! All that effort and ruined last minute with some lame excuse; part of me thought they actually liked it and realized its value as a now off the market item and kept it. Or maybe it did have some freak accident. No point speculating, it was just weird. I was pissed to be honest. Last available item, good price and already assembled and it was no longer meant to be in an instant. Why did the universe even tease me with it? Shouldn’t be upset over a material thing, but I was. The next day I was still fuming a bit after complaining to IKEA over the phone; however, they didn’t give me further explanations and just promised to issue a refund within a couple of weeks.

In the afternoon, I was invited to an outdoor Shakespeare play at a huge park near my apartment. I figured, great, this is an opportunity to finally use my bike here. This is part of the reason I choose this location. It’s close to the greenbelt and to a big park and lake right next to downtown. I went to the play, laughed, drank wine, was merry, attempted my best old English accent with the ladies I was with; and walked back to my bike which was a mere 50 ft in a bike docking area from the little outdoor amphitheatre. It was nighttime at this point. Well only half of it was there. I had a u-lock on the removable front tire and main frame. It never occurred to me that people would still steal the back tire and go through the hassle of removing gears, chains, rotor, etc. Well now, that was going to be tricky riding that. The odds were no longer in my favor, I called the friends I had gone with and luckily they hadn’t ventured too far. I was not that close to walk back. It would have taken me half hour at least in the dark. They drove me back to my place and I retrieved my car to go pick up the remnants of my bike. It wound up costing me half the price of the bike to replace the wheel and other gizmos (over $300). I was like what gives. The day before the bookshelf delivery had fallen through last minute, literally; fell or broke or who knows what the delivery company did with it and now my bike just got half jacked. I was pissed, angry, felt entitled. After reflecting the next few days I realized you know what maybe I shouldn’t be so attached to material things. Which up to that point, I was always was a bit of a material boy you could say, being an only child, i was fortunate to never lack food or provision from hard-working parents. As I became a young adult, I liked my good clothes, shoes, fancy things; etc; my budget has just never aligned with my expensive taste. Hence me being in debt much of my 20s, I would just swipe my credit card whenever in need (or want); but guess what? Debt with interests just keeps growing. My parents really never taught me how to handle money; I remember growing up with my family always stressed about money. Not just my immediate, but extended as well. I always said I don’t want to be that way, but I was. So I figured this had happened to me for a reason, I was like ok, what’s the lesson here?

I realized then, that when I get angry, i tend to act out and engage in self- defeating behaviors /addictions just to cope with the fact that I didn’t get what I wanted or to deal with that negative emotion.(That’s a whole other series of blog posts) Throwing a tantrum wasn’t gonna help.

I studied international business in college but didn’t really learn much about managing money there either. Years later, I worked at a financial planning firm for two years, which is where I really finally learned to handle money and get out of debt. The past few years I’ve learned I shouldn’t beat myself up for having expensive taste (I inherited that from my parents and that taste further evolved from an illusory g-l-a-m-o-r-o-u-s lifestyle while living in Miami. a.k.a. broke college student who dressed nice and was in debt but wanted to fit in with the cool rich kids) There’s nothing wrong with enjoying the finer things in life. Just be able to afford it and set aside some savings for the future whenever possible. Some people like to spend their money on cars, boats, collectables,travel, food, etc; my particular weaknesses was clothes. I’ve had to learn the hard way providing for myself the last several years that if I want something I have to work for it, and the money better be in my bank account, not on credit. If I don’t have the cash, then i shouldn’t buy it. Humbling but important lesson. And even then, you don’t always get what you want.

Shortly after Shelf-bike Gate weekend, I tried searching online for a comparable bookshelf that was the size I wanted; most items i saw where well over $500 and real wood.haha. Sure IKEA quality is highly less but their price was just right; Anyhow, I wouldn’t be able to afford anything that expensive at that particular point in time with other expenses I had going on. I stopped decorating or adding anything new to my pad at that point.

I said, I can do without a book shelf…And I did, I had mostly everything in a big blue bin and four staples paper boxes behind my couch. And a big unorganized paper/random item mess on my coffee and dinner table that never seemed to go away. Quite the fancy setup right? Things remained the same for a year…

Like Jagger said, you can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need…

And boy did I, flash forward a year later to Memorial Day weekend 2015 .. this particular story hasn’t ended..stay tuned for the exciting conclusion…

Click here for Part 2