you check out guitar george, he knows all the chords

I had quite a nice day today, although it was cold enough to feel like fall is going to kick in in earnest. I picked up my mom around 10:30, and we went to one of the Amish greenhouses in the area to buy some mums. Of course, I couldn't resist picking up a couple of succulents as well, but further acquisitions were prevented by the fact that the greenhouse is mostly cleared out at this point in the season. Their mum selection, however, was top notch, and the guy was quite friendly (even though we clearly interrupted his coffee time), so it was a worthwhile adventure.

Then, we proceeded on to the next town over, where my mom treated me and my sister to lunch in honor of our September birthdays. Despite living here now, I hadn't seen my sister in ages, mostly because she doesn't drive very far and I have been entirely focused on getting settled in. But lunch was nice, and I remain a fan of getting potato chips with ranch dressing there, so it was #worthit.

After lunch, my mom and I ran some errands at Walmart and Fareway - I discovered that Fareway now sells a few flavors of Spindrift sparkling water, which I previously mostly got at Whole Foods in Des Moines, so this was a major victory. Combined with the discovery that my local grocery store now occasionally sells corn tortillas, my menu options are looking up. It's still hard to get fresh herbs (so the thing I wanted to make that requires sage leaves will not have fresh ones, and we'll see how it works with dried ones), and chicken is weirdly challenging (clearly people here do not eat nearly as much organic, air-chilled, boneless, skinless chicken breast as in my old life), but all in all I'm making it work. I also got to meet my mom's old home ec teacher at the grocery store, which was lovely.

Then we came home, and I dropped my mom and her stuff off before coming to my house and putting away my groceries. I then ran a couple of other quick errands, came home, took care of tings, ate some leftover chicken tacos (still excellent), and then hung out with [censored] after he arrived from [censored]. And now I need to sleep - goodnight!