The force isn’t a real thing, but May the Fourth is. Star Wars nerds unite on this day to celebrate what’s wrong with the movies and television shows they love. I collect Star Wars things, but I’m not obsessive about it. This is just a day that I point out on the Nerd Mouse calendar (which you can find at NerdMouse.com). Today is huge with nerds but tomorrow is huge with people who drink alcohol. Cinco de Mayo is not just to celebrate my nephew’s birthday. It’s also to celebrate Mexico’s victory over the French. Since no one is around who remembers the battle of 1862, drinking tequila seems to be the order of the day. I work tomorrow and I’ve heard a bunch of people have or will call off. I’ll be a designated worker/driver.
Patti and I went to IKEA this past Thursday. Why we went there relates to Patti quitting smoking. She is still smoke-free and retired. She just wanted to get out of the house, so we went. If I’d ever been to IKEA, I have no actual memory of it. I knew you could get Swedish meatballs there, and they sold inexpensive stuff. What I didn’t know was how huge it is. They have arrows on the ground, so you don’t skip sections. There are maps to tell you where the different sections are. I thought we were done when I realized there were just as many sections downstairs. They were downstairs for me, but Patti took the elevator.
Right when we got to IKEA, we went to eat. Patti knew what she was going to get. It’s what everyone gets. Swedish meatballs were fine for her, but I didn’t know what I was going to get. I saw what I wanted to get and realized I would have to say it out loud. They had “plant balls,” but I really didn’t want to say that. I looked further at the menu and found that they had “veggie balls.” For some reason, I felt better about saying that and it looked more appetizing to me. I got the veggie balls with what else but vegetables. I felt good about myself.
The sections downstairs were better than the sections upstairs. They had smaller items that we could fit in our house as opposed to all the furniture upstairs. I enjoyed the artwork section, but Patti basically skipped it. I’m the art aficionado in the family. By the time I was done, she was only halfway through the next section. It was a boring section, so I just joined her right where she was. In the last section, they had grocery items. I resisted the urge to get the Swedish cookies, and Patti resisted the urge to get the frozen Swedish meatballs because they looked too hard to make. The only things we got were two animal butts that you could put on a wall and hang things on their tails and a garlic press. We had two garlic presses that were both broken. Now we have a weird Swedish one that hopefully works.
In a real twist, we went to Target after IKEA. We were walking through Target, and I was thinking about how Target is just a mini version of IKEA. Patti was looking for containers. We saw every single version of containers that you could ever want, but these containers were on sale. She tried to get these corn cob holders that were shaped like dogs for a friend of hers, but the woman at the checkout said they couldn’t sell them because they discontinued them. The metal sticking out from the plastic dogs was falling out. The tiny metal rods were then just small swallowable swords. Patti pointed out that there were a bunch more out on the shelves. Another employee went to take them off the shelves. Along with getting the containers, Patti was saving lives.
Thoughts from Life 
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