A Green Rocky Mountain August

Lughnasa                                                                  Labor Day Moon

Rain continues to come to the mountains. When Kate and I went out early this morning to Evergreen for our business meeting, there was dew on the grass, tips of the spruce needles and faint wisps of vapor rising from the valley floor. The intensity of green reminded both of us of the Midwest, of northern Minnesota. Usually, Shadow Mountain and its neighbors would be taken over by browns and dull greens. Not this year.

Our lives continue, with each small journey through the mountains, to become more and more embedded here, memories filling us up with Colorado. Not in place of Minnesota, no, but adding to those memories. And calling these new ones memories of home.

We visited IKEA and ordered the last of the bookshelves, 5 more. Cybergremlins have attacked our credit card online, not hackers, but ones making it difficult in certain instances to get websites to accept our valid account. As a result, we had to get in the car, drive down the mountain, go south on Hwy 470 along the Front Range, get off at Yosemite Street and proceed to the large blue monument to Swedish efficiency on IKEA way in Centennial. There, we made the exact same order I had to tried to make online, used the same credit card and had a successful experience.

The whole trip reminded us of the real benefits of buying online. The physical moving is left up to the product, not the purchaser. Of course, while wandering the intentionally maze-like corridors of the IKEA store, we did find that wonderful children’s storage and table combination and a probable small table for our breakfast area. That wouldn’t have happened online. On balance I would rather have stayed home and discovered both another way.