Walking in Ikea

The last week has been difficult for Jim.  As you no doubt recall, all the impingement that was occurring was preventing the nerve from firing and stimulating the leg muscles.  Now that the nerve is no longer trapped, it’s waking up and rediscovering its environment.  How does a nerve say hello?  It hurts.  It hurts a lot.  So the pain in the back of the thigh and calf has been pretty bad.  We’re walking anyway.   On the bright side, his left calf no longer looks like he had polio.  There is more muscle mass and more definition than before surgery. 

We had to be in Renton this morning, so after lunch at The Lemongrass restaurant we decided to go to Ikea.  If you are in this area, I highly recommend The Lemongrass.  It’s Vietnamese food, and most of the people in there are native speakers.  It’s really good.

Anyway, Ikea has done a massive expansion.  I think they bought some adjacent buildings, tore them down and added parking.  They also added a second floor to the building.  The bulk of the additional inventory seems to be kitchens.  They have a lot of kitchens on display.



Kitchen faucets in the foreground, refrigerators in the back.  They carry a lot of small refrigerators.  If one were building a tiny house, I would look here for for food storage.



The cafeteria has been moved upstairs and enlarged.  There are now two serving lines, with more food offerings.  The meatballs still look terrible, however.  See the wheeled conveyance in the middle of the photo?  That’s a tray cart.  You can put three trays on it, put food on tray, push cart to table, and grasp your child with the other hand.  Pretty smart.



They have a lot of everything.  These are the throw pillows. Our couch pillows are deteriorating.  We bought a duck feather insert and a cover for it.  Jim likes it, so next time we’re there, we’ll get another one and the two old ones will go over the side.



When we were living in North Carolina, we bought Jim a chest of drawers at Ikea.  After years of thinking we needed heirloom quality furniture, we decided that was stupid.  All a dresser needs is functioning drawers and the ability to keep the underwear in nice stacks.  We were saddened to see they no longer carry the one we bought back then.  It was pretty. 

This is the area where you pick up your items, ready to be assembled by you, the home owner.  This is one of many rows.



Ikea offers a lot of level walking.  It’s also good for wheel chair bound people who need an outing.  When Jim broke the pelvis we would go and fondle the merchandise just for something to do.

Other than this, I have nothing of import to convey.