January 10: Meatballs

I was lounging around this morning when my friend Ami sent me a text message. Ami and I met when we both worked at Michaels; I was a department manager and she was a front-end supervisor. Most of the employees lived in Portland (where the store is) but Ami and I are both from the other side of the river. We bonded over that, and the fact that we share the same offbeat sense of humor.

When I left Michaels to go to Kohls Ami came with me. We worked completely opposite shifts, though, and didn't see each other much. We still had a great friendship, though. While working at Kohls one night, Ami had a stroke. At 36! Things were pretty serious for a while, Ami was hospitalized for several weeks, during which she had some major brain surgery.

Ami is strong, though, and she fought her way back to her old self. She wasn't able to continue working at Kohls, though. Ironically, she now works for a big competitor of the company that I work for.

So what does this have to do with meatballs? Ami asked me if I wanted to go to Ikea with her today. Heck yeah!! I love Ikea. Probably not as much as I used to, though, because we have so many furniture pieces from there that there is no more room in the house for anything.

We got there at lunchtime so we decided to eat first. It's the law that you have to have the meatballs when you eat at Ikea, so of course that's what I had. I do wish that this location had the red potatoes instead of mashed, but oh well. We eavesdropped on a couple ahead of us in line; they were shocked that all the merchandise seemed to have Swedish names. Have they never been to Ikea before?

After eating we browsed the showroom. Ami was there for a coffee table and she did find one, as well as an end table. We loaded it up, and got in line. There was a gay couple in line ahead of us with the same tables. I pointed it out to Ami, and she said, "Now I know I picked out the right stuff...gay men have the best taste!!" They heard her, and we all laughed.

After we left Ikea, we stopped at Petco for crickets (Ami's son has a frog), had coffee at Starbucks, and then Ami dropped me off.

It was great to see her.



---Posting from my iPhone every day in 2010