Arnold looked around at the floor full of wooden pieces, screws, bolts, tiny plastic circles, a strap and an allen wrench in a little more than horrified confusion.

"I thought it already came assembled."

In front of him, sitting on the floor amidst all the assorted pieces was his darling wife of six months, holding a small booklet up instructions upside down.

"Nope." She said. "That's the beauty of IKEA. We get the joy of assembling all of this ourselves."

"We just paid two hundred and fifty dollars for a dresser we have to put together ourselves?"

She looked up at him with an almost manic grin. "Isn't it great?"

He wrinkled his nose as he carefully picked his way across the room towards her. "Great would not be the word I would use, no."

She waved the instruction booklet at him as he found a bare piece of floor and sat down on it. "Look Arnold, it's this simple. If a marriage can survive building an IKEA dresser together, it can survive anything. Just think of this as insurance."

He chuckled as he took the booklet she was waving at him and opened it to the first page. Then after a minute, he flipped it over and opened it to the first page of the English language side. "So what you're saying is this is training for bigger things in the future?"

"Exactly!"

"I think it's more you and Tad going on an IKEA road trip and impulse buying."
I don't know what you're talking about."

"Mmhmm."

"You know Shortman, I'm still looking at desks."

He blushed a deep red as he picked up a large piece of wood. "Shut up."

Twenty minutes later and Arnold was already regretting not repacking this…disaster, sending it back to the store and spending twice as much on a dresser already assembled. He stood with three pieces of wood in precariously situated in what looked like some sort of wood twister game while Helga, now only wearing a light pink tank top, studied the instructions with a determined eye.

"You need piece D. It holds together pieces 1 and 5."

"Where the hell is piece D?"

Helga turned around in a tight circle twice before her eyes widened in accomplishment. She reached down and picked up a long, thin piece of wood and held it aloft in triumph.

"Huzzah!"

"Wonderful. Now can you fit this before my arm falls off!"

"Oh right." She scooped up the appropriate screws and the allen wrench and hurried towards him.

"This isn't looking like a dresser." Helga stated. Arnold poked his head up from behind the dresser where he was nailing in pieces of hard wood to form the back of the dresser. Helga had her head tilted almost sideways, staring mournfully at the wooden frame. "It's more like the dinosaur skeleton of a dresser. Like, if we turned it sideways, it might come to life and chase us into the kitchen."

He glared at her and went back to nailing.

"I want a divorce." Arnold announced. Helga looked up at him while she constructed what he thought looked like a drawer.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"I'm not being ridiculous, this," he waved his hands wildly around their bedroom which still held what he knew was more pieces of wood than what they started with. The damn dresser was expanding. "This is ridiculous! And it's all your fault. Yours and Tad because you two can't do anything normal, oh no, you have to take day trips to IKEA."

She sniffed as she attached one last piece of wood and suddenly…SUDDENLY, it somehow morphed into an actual dresser drawer.

"Technically, this is your fault." She stated. "I wouldn't have had to buy a Hemnins dresser if you'd hadn't shot down Dyfijord as our first born's name."

"It's pronounced Hemnes!" Arnold shouted. "And we don't even have a first born!"

"Well, we won't with that attitude." She placed the completed drawer to the side and began picking up random wood pieces to start another.

"And another thing," He snatched the second allen wrench from on top of the skeletal dresser as he stormed away from her. "How can you remember to correctly pronounce Dyfijord and not Hemnes?"

"Because Hemnenis isn't going to be our child's name." she stated calmly. He responded with a shout of frustration as he fell onto the floor behind the dresser.

"Holy…how in the hell did you do that?"

He left the room for only the briefest moment…okay ten brief moments, but he had to go to the bathroom and get out of that room before he locked his beloved wife of six months into that torture contraption she'd bought. That…hellacious infernal device that sat there, tormenting him. When he'd returned, she'd finished creating the eighth drawer, which was residing with its clones and had gone to work in placing the border onto the dresser. It actually looked like a dresser now. A dresser without its drawers in it, but a dresser nonetheless. He was speechless.

"What witchcraft have you wrought?"

With one final turn of a screw, she glanced up at him, a small smirk playing on her lips.

"You're making it too difficult. It's only a dresser not a rubix cube."

"I can work a rubix cube, this…not so much."

"Come here and hold this last piece so I can tighten the screws on it."

He walked over and held the side piece of the dresser while Helga got onto her knees and tightened the final screw. She climbed to her feet, tossing the allen wrench onto the top of the large and now finished dresser.

"Now just to put the drawers in and we're finished."

He helped her put in the drawers, more like fixing a jigsaw puzzle than putting in shelves but eventually it was completed.

He stepped back and looked at the long, redwood piece of furniture that had his arch nemesis for the better part of two hours. He had to admit, it did look good in their bedroom.

"So we've discovered that we can survive anything." He said. Helga grinned at him.

"I can, you on the other hand." She wiggled a hand. "If you listen to me, which you should always do, we get things done."

He wrapped an arm around her waist, smiling at the now finished project.

"We do make a good team."

"Damn right we do."

He pressed a kiss to her cheek and turned to walked out of the bedroom.

"Still not naming our first born Dyfijord."

"Why not!"