Bears Know Best

Chapter 12: Room for Improvement

SATURDAY MORNING, I woke up groggy and it took me a bit to get moving. Mom and I had agreed to wait until 8:30 to leave so that Alyssa could get an hour ride in with her parents before we left. Thankfully, by the time she caught up with us, I was more conscious! In fact, as soon as she climbed into the back of my mom's Escape with me, we started a non-stop conversation.

We were talking about bike suggestions her dad had made last evening to her for me when I found my eyes going wide.

"Whoa!" I said as I spun around in my seat. "Was that really a horse and buggy?" I asked Alyssa and my mom.

They both laughed, "Yes it was," my mom said.

"Why?"

"There's a big Amish settlement in this area," Alyssa said.

"Really?"

"Uh-huh," she told me.

"Cool!"

Mom added, "We're actually a little east right now of the main group in this part of the state. There's a town about twenty minutes west of here that is the central point of one of the largest communities in the country."

"Neat!" I said, it was so different than anything I'd ever seen in the big city. For whatever reason we'd never encountered anything like that when I'd visited before.

"They have a restaurant down that way that an Amish family runs, it's pretty good," Mom told me.

That brought a whole set of questions from me about how they could run a restaurant without using electricity and modern equipment. Alyssa tried to explain it, but I couldn't quite get my head around it. We moved on to other topics of conversation as the countryside rolled by. After about two hours on the road, I could see Pittsburgh forming around us. Mom used her GPS to navigate us to the IKEA store.

"I love this store," Alyssa said for not the first time as we walked in the entranceway.

"First things first, bathroom," I told them both.

A trip to the ladies' room wasn't traumatic for me, except the fact that it wasn't traumatic. 'I know something must be wrong... I should be hiding out of sight at home, not going out dressed like my step-mom's worst nightmare come true.' I giggled inwardly at that thought; anything that bothered her might be worth doing just to upset her.

Once matters were taken care of, we took an escalator upstairs and began searching through the maze that is an IKEA. "This just looks ridiculous," Mom said pointing to one chair. "It's like something out of a bad sixties movie." She added.

Alyssa and I both laughed, "It's probably their most popular chair," I guessed.

Alyssa nodded.

We shopped through each section of the store, not really paying much attention to some areas, but still going through it. In the furniture section Alyssa and I found a white corner desk that seemed like it would be perfect for my room. It was just big enough to hold the iMac inside of the monitor area, and would seat my MacBook Air next to it comfortably on the side. Mom agreed with it, and we took down the number on the box so we could find it downstairs.

There were some lamps we decided I needed, and a few other odds and ends here and there. The storage area yielded some neat little boxes and ways to keep track of odds and ends. We also picked up some more hangers for my closet, and a few little decorating touches here and there.

"You know, they have some neat stuff, but I don't like any of this bedding," I told Alyssa.

She nodded, "I think we definitely need to hit a Pottery Barn for that and curtains," she suggested.