Mom's in Town

My mother is back in town and staying with us for a day or two. Like a few months ago, she came up with my aunt who's visiting her daughter and granddaughter.

We picked her up this morning, visited with my cousin for a little while, and then went home. After a quick lunch, we went up to Laurel and took the plunge, buying an armoire at a North Carolina furniture outlet place. We've been talking about getting this piece for a while now (we want something to hide the television in), but have been going back and forth over it because we aren't sure where it should go.

If we put it upstairs, where the television is now, it would block the pull-down stairs to the attic. If we put it downstairs in the living room, we have a TV set in the living room, something neither of us are 100% certain we want. There's also the issue of whether or not the armoire would be able to fit up the stairs and then through the turns into the hallway to get into the guest/media room.

The piece has to be ordered, so we have a few weeks before it will be delivered, which gives us time to figure out what we'll do. And then there's still the matter of needing a crib ...

After buying the armoire, we stopped by Behnke's to see if they had a lime tree for Evelin. (She was thinking it'd be nice to have a little citrus tree that could be moved outside for the summer and then in for winter; plus, we'd like to have fresh limes.) But it was not to be; the only citrus they had at this point in the season as a variety of dwarf orange.

I had a panda-watch shift scheduled before my mom made her plans to come up, so they dropped me off at the Metro and Evelin and my mom went to Ikea. It was my mother's first time at an Ikea; the closest store to her is five hours or so away in Houston.

The pandas were doing well. The weather was overcast and cool, which seems to be good panda weather. They had a very good play session in the front of their enclosure, and Mei was very aggressive with Tian Tian, which is a good thing. He still stole her fruitsicle later in the afternoon.

After the Metro ride home, I made us a quick pasta dinner -- yellow tomato sauce that was made from last year's crop -- with Tofurkey Sweet Italian sausage. It was pretty tasty, but I liked the kiełbasa better.