“Fruit-forward with notes of grilled M&Ms,” John said in his best wine snob voice.

“Forget the bathroom vanity,” I said. “I’d even go for a glass of that Two-Buck Chuck we leave out for my dad right now.” We’d been displaying decoy bottles of wine to keep my dad from drinking all of John’s good wine for a while now. Sometimes it worked. Mostly my father drank the good stuff and left the decoy bottles for John and me.

We put away visions of wine and headed for Ikea, where not so long ago we’d bought a sleek modern bed and a comfy latex mattress to replace the ancient twin beds my sister and I had slept on.

We parked the car, took the Ikea escalator up. We stood in front of a bed exactly like the new one we had at home.

“Maybe we could just sleep here,” I said. “I mean, it’s close enough to our bed, right? And those sheets look clean.”

But we soldiered on. We remembered that soon we’d be able to ditch the rickety piles of books we’d been using for night tables. Instead of buying tables that matched the new bed, we bought metal tables, with clean funky lines and openings in the back of the drawers to create hidden cord charging stations.

We followed the maze that was Ikea, zig-zagging through the minimalist displays, past the wardrobes, the dining room furniture, the office stuff.

“I always forget how disoriented I get in this place,” I said.

“The better to make us spend our money,” John said. “Keep the customer lost inside for as long as you can, circling past things they suddenly realize they can’t live without. It’s actually pretty brilliant.”

I yawned. “Brilliant if you don’t have to work tomorrow.”

Eventually we came to the land of bathroom vanities. We both immediately headed for the perfect one. It was old-fashioned and modern at the same time, wall-mounted but with simple legs in the front.

“Kind of like a mullet,” I said. “You know, business in the front, party in the back.”

“How did we end up with a running joke about mullets?” John said.

I shrugged. “Be happy that we don’t have to try to knock down any more walls with one.”

The vanity was the perfect shade of gray to coordinate with everything we’d just picked out for our new bathroom. It had double built-in white porcelain sinks and a matching backsplash, plus soft-close drawers that pulled out fully and had lots of room for storage. We chose retro-feel faucets, a modern throwback to the kind that used to have an H and a C to turn on the hot and cold water separately.

“I knew you’d love those faucets,” John said. “They’re perfect for a preschool teacher.”