I went to IKEA today for the sixth or seventh time in my life. We usually go to the one in Schaumburg, Ill., but I have also hit the San Francisco and Atlanta IKEA while visiting friends and family. Before today, I was just as gung-ho as the next guy, loving the Euro emporium down to the very last umlaut.

But today was different. I think it was because we wanted to buy large pieces of furniture, instead of spontaneously tossing funsy-shaped gadgets and bags of cheap tea lights into our cart. Prior to this trip, I hadn't gone on a shopper's mission; rather, I went simply to enjoy the IKEA experience, with a few things in mind that I may or may not buy. (Although I did go just to buy a bunch of those colorful circle rugs once.)

Trying to buy furniture is a full-blown pain in the booty. After mulling over a myriad of bunkbeds and mattresses, we picked our favorites, and then diligently wrote down the item numbers so we would be able to find them in the self-serve furniture section downstairs. (Might I add the bunkbeds are for my boys, not for me and my husband. Phew.)

Then we went to the main floor to find our items, but after wandering around with a cart and a dolly for a while, realized they were sold out of the bunks, and the mattresses were not in the aisle that the computer said that they were.

The staff -- although bubbly in a way only someone who has never paid a heating bill can be -- was not particularly helpful.

We had already been disappointed by the fact they were sold out of pee-proof mattress pads and most of the flat twin sheets (always plenty of fitted -- what is that?), so by the time we got to the main floor to find our large items, we were IKEAed out.

Perhaps it was the glut of back-to-school shoppers that made things run less smoothly this time. Who knows. I did still manage to walk out with a cart full of incidentals, including the infamous bag of tea lights.