NY: 3 trips over 2 bridges later

Wednesday July 27, 2011

I like visiting my mother. She's spry, upbeat, and has a positive energy. I'm not allowed to tell you how old she is, but she is old enough that she ought to seem a lot older than she does. There are many people 20 years younger than her with half her energy and wit.

Anyhow, so here we are. We talked about mall walking and visiting the pool in her 50+ living community, but we really really wanted to go to Ikea so it won out. Breakfast at Panera, then we tackled Philly via the Walt Whitman as well as the Betsy Ross, with no help from confusing Google directions, and proceeded to get quite lost (Jon was navigating. That's all that needs to be said about that). Plus that PA/NJ border is confusing, since it's on a diagonal - there's even a little snip of NJ that is west of a little parcel of Philly, go figure. Anyway, it took us about 3x as long as it should, but we made it. Even if we went over the bridge(s) 3 times.

This is a big deal, you see. The closest Ikea is 7 hours away in Minneapolis, where I have been known to drive just to go to Ikea. So it was on our list, baby. The list of places I made a point of going to when in Philly used to be a lot longer - Crate and Barrel, Restoration Hardware, Trader Joes, Whole Foods - KC is deemed a large enough market now for all of these, but Ikea is holding out.

So, with store map and big blue plastic shopping bag in hand, we shopped and shopped, ate the obligatory Swedish meatballs, Caesar salad, and a strange but good shrimp sandwich, and shopped some more - was all excited about new curtains and a new lamp, neither of which turned out to be in stock, but we made do with a new table purchase for the office. Score!

Home for a glass of wine while we assembled Ellen's new Ikea coffee table...

To Carlucci's for dinner - right on the Rancocas Creek - pretty - memories of riding horses to the creek through Anderson's peach orchard, circa 1970 or so... Friendly and cute waitress, good sea bass risotto, too.

That's it, a nice day spent with Ellen, who incidentally showed no sign of lagging during the marathon Ikea expedition, although both Jon and I had our low blood sugar moments. Good to know that I have her aging-gracefully gene - thanks, mom.