Circles of hell

They are here!  In Sacramento!  And I went to three of them.

What started out as a quick trip to Ikea turned into a three-hour nightmare.  Yes, a nightmare.

The Sacramento Ikea is a mess right now.  In fact, it looks a lot like our kitchen and laundry room which I went to Ikea to escape from.  They're doing renovations at the store so huge white tarps are covering most of the departments.  Merchandise has been moved around and some items are just not available at all.  I walked through the ENTIRE store twice because different employees gave me different answers on where I should "try" to find what I was looking for. (Side note: one of my pet peeves is back tracking.  In a store, in the car, anywhere.)

I'm trying to spruce up the laundry room on a very, very tiny budget.  I wanted to replace the cheap plastic coat rack that was hammered onto an old piece of wood, that was hammered into the wall with something cuter and sturdier.  Initially I was going to make my own pretty one thinking that would be cheaper but I don't have scraps of salvaged redwood lying around and the kind of simple hooks I wanted  COULD NOT BE FOUND IN IKEA.  So, I picked out two, white coat racks with 5 silver hooks each (cost: $10 each).  A cute coat rack doesn't make too much sense anyway since it will be covered with coats.  

Seeing this now, I think 10 hooks might be excessive.  We'll see.  V has a lot of coats.

I must have been in an Ikea haze because I somehow convinced myself that I had to go next door to Wal-Mart.  Wal-Mart?!  I hate Walmart!  But I did like that they had two thin, tiny cafe style curtain rods for less than 3$ each which are perfect for my little window project.  The main reason I went in was to get one of those little plastic mats with ridges that you can put your wet/muddy/sandy boots and shoes on without making a giant mess on the actual floor.  They didn't have exactly what I wanted and what they did have was 15$ which was too expensive for something so ugly.

When I am stressed or angry, I like to eat a McDonald's cheeseburger.  How convenient that there is a McDonalds, an In and Out, and a Burger King within the same complex as Ikea and Walmart.

I resisted and went to the grocery store instead.

Sacramento friends, have you been to the Food Source on Stockton Boulevard?  It's owned by Raley's but looks absolutely nothing like Raley's inside.  There are even two parking stalls exclusively for police vehicles and 80% of the time there are cops dealing with an issue outside.  I usually need to be in very high spirits to shop there because it can be depressing inside.  Yesterday was no exception and the only reason I went was so I didn't have to backtrack to go to another grocery store.  I bought some supplies to make veggie burgers for dinner and got the heck out of there.

Today I'll finish painting the window trim and the back door and tonight, an episode of Downton Abbey!  (I started watching Season 1 on Netflix last night!)

 Fact: My parents attended a wedding at Hichclere Castle (where the show is filmed) a couple of years ago and wore fancy hats.