Weather and Ikea

So for those of you who don't live in the area, we had quite the downpour yesterday. My experience with a good downpour is usually that they last for about ten minutes. Yesterday's lasted pretty much all. day. long. It was crazy. I just looked it up-- somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 inches of rainfall? Wow.

This, of course, happened because my parents were here visiting from Seattle. I'd told them about the delightful 70 degree autumn weather we'd been enjoying, but I guess Virginia wanted them to feel more at home. So we had hot, humid rain. Very impressive, Virginia-- the poor Seattlites hardly knew what to do with themselves. Unfortunately, this spoiled all my ideas of things we could do: Cox Farms, apple picking, driving up to Shenandoah National Park to look at the fall colors. Yeah, not good rainy day activities.

Instead, we went to IKEA. That was pretty fun, mostly because you get to park in a garage-- anywhere else and I doubt I would have bothered. Much too wet. But the parking garage meant I could deal with it. And now that I know how to navigate Ikea without having a nervous breakdown, I actually enjoy that store a lot. I've decided that the key-- for people who don't enjoy shopping-- is to go with a good idea of what it is you're looking for, and only bother with that. Skip everything else. In our case, we were looking at closets to give my parents ideas for how they might reorganize their laundry room. Just looking at all the closet options still took a good hour or so. Imagine if we'd looked at kitchen cupboards or something, too! The other key is to take shortcuts when you can. For example, if all you want to look at is closets, you can pretty much skip the entire middle level. So do it. There's no point looking at plates and lamps and plants if you don't need or want any. My other tip-- and this is key-- is to eat there. Swedish meatballs are great. Swedish meatballs for $4 is amazing. And if Dad is buying, you really can't go wrong! (Thanks, Dad! Lunch was great!)

The only bad thing about this trip was that Bentley chose this day to show off his bratty side to Grandma and Grandpa. I think I spent thirty minutes trying to bribe him to eat his lunch before I finally gave up and told him that he was not allowed to play in the kid area at all (despite the fact that Kendra was already there playing, since she had finished her macaroni & cheese). Much crying ensued. But as Craig said, at least I held my ground, right? That's good parenting, right? Right? And anyway, my parents were bound to notice that Bentley has the same bad temper all the rest of in my family have eventually. Right?

Today has been a beautiful, blustery day. But I feel too resigned to bad weather to do much about enjoying it. We did at least go to a park, which lasted until Bentley face-planted on the slide and started bleeding. That can happen when you decide to climb the slide in your socks... Pretty soon we're heading to the Cheesecake Factory. If Bentley doesn't want to eat his food there, I don't care. I'll be enjoying myself no matter what.

Sorry, I'm not really sure what the point of this post is, exactly. It meanders from weather to Ikea to my child's behavorial problems and back to the weather again sort of, with absolutely no point or punchline.

Oh, well. Sometimes, blog posts are like that. I'm going to blame it on the weather.