Oft times I feel as if my world is fairly small.  494 to the south, Highway 100 to the west, 35W to the east and Franklin to the north.  Obviously I do travel outside of my “zone” but overwhelmingly, my life and errands are within.  So it isn’t odd to me that my mother also had a fairly constricted range.  It was brought home to me last week when YA and I were in St. Louis that Grasso Plaza is basically a catch-all for just about everything.

Grasso Plaza is about 5 minutes from my mom’s house, up on Gravois Road, which is a major thoroughfare in the southwestern suburbs.  It’s basically just two strip malls across Gravois from each other with five lanes of traffic in between.  (One of these lanes is what St. Louisans call the “suicide lane”, in which you can basically go either direction – insanity.)  The parking lots on both sides were clearly designed by an idiot who had been drinking heavily.  I can’t believe that the insurance companies haven’t banded together to force the Plaza to have them both re-done; I’ve witnessed two accidents myself in my visits to Nonny.

Anyway, here are all the places in Grasso Plaza that we went to in our three full days:

• Schnucks.  This is one of the grocery store chains in St. Louis; I am not making this up.  We got a few snacks and some beverages to keep in the condo while we were there.
• St. Louis Bread Company. SLBC was bought by AuBon Pain in 1993 and everywhere else except St. Louis, the name was changed to Panera.  I assume some lawsuit or contractual thing was involved.  On the outside the sign says St. Louis Bread Company, on the inside, everything says Panera, including how your receipt prints out.  We had two meals there.
• Walgreens.  Of all the things that Nonny didn’t have in her condo was lotion!
• Southern Bank. Nonny’s bank – we had to deposit a check of hers.
• Post Office. We had to send the equipment back to MobileHelp (Nonny’s “help I’ve fallen and can’t get up” service).  Very very friendly and chatty clerks – good thing no one was waiting behind me.
• Cotton’s Ace Hardware. I’ve been here many times over the years but this trip it was to drop off the last of Nonny’s canned goods/cereals.  Cotton’s has a collection barrel for the Affton Christian Food Pantry.
• Dollar Tree. Just a quick stop for some plastic drinking cups for the condo since there were so many folks working on the cleaning out.
• H&R Block. Stopped by to ask one tax question concerning Nonny’s taxes.  They weren’t helpful.  I should have just texted Linda.  Ended up getting better info from AARP.

These weren’t the only errands we ran, but it was most of them and I was happy to put Grasso Plaza behind us.  Even though it was handy, I don’t want to mess with those parking lots and that suicide lane ever again!

Do you have any favorite/usual shopping spots?