I think some sort of threshold has been passed…this past weekend, instead of getting hot chocolate to sustain me during my day of errands, I got a Cranberry Craze Jamba Juice instead. Ahhhhhhh. It’s back to gray and rainy today, of course, but I have a little hope that suicide weather is on its way out soon.
So guess what I did Saturday night, while you were out with your friends and laughing hysterically and making memories to last for a lifetime? Well, I was playing dress-up in my living room, of course. Please tell me someone else does this…like, you get a new outfit and so you run home and try it on with tights and your knee high boots, and then when that looks pretty good you try it on with the black high heeled mary janes in case you go salsa dancing and then you wonder if you should wear the simple blue and silver necklace and earring set or should you shake it up a little with the red earrings, and then you think about getting a cute little scarf to wear on your head, and then you wonder how your boots look with the skirt you haven’t worn out yet, and so on and so forth. I got all into it, changing my shoes and my skirt and double-checking to see if I could wear a long-sleeved shirt with that skirt or if I should stick to short-sleeved or what, putting my hair up, then fluffing it out. I’m sure if I owned any makeup at all I would have accentuated my cheekbones and played up my saucy, pouty lips…as it was, when I made a little moue when I applied my Burt’s Bee’s lip balm I looked dangerous. I don’t usuall look dangerous. Most of the time I look negligible at best. I look like someone with good intentions who doesn’t follow through very much.
I made sassy faces into the mirror and pretended like I was a Charlie’s Angel and then I started having imaginary conversations with various people who were so surprised to see me in anything else but jeans and a hoodie cardigan. These conversations always ended up with my saying something like “I guess you missed your chance, didn’t you?” or “Oh, nowhere special, just to the Cannes Film Festival. How was your weekend?” Then I flounce off into the sunset with a flip of my hair and the imaginary person or people with whom I was having this deeply satisfying imaginary conversation goes “Wait! Chiara! I…where are you going? I…wait!” but I don’t even hear them because I am late to my book signing. See how that works?
Anyway. This is all just to say that I bought two dresses on sale at the Gap over the weekend and that once I put on tights and boots I feel pretty cute. I hate to shop, especially when I have a deadline. In this case it’s my friends’ Ian and Katie’s wedding about which I am stressing…I’ve been looking for something to wear to this wedding for at least a month and it’s been killing me. I’m not sure I’m going to wear a short black dress with knee high boots to a wedding because…well, I don’t know. It just seems wrong. They’re planning a very nice wedding at a very nice venue and I don’t want to tart the place up or anything. The wonderful thing about being a wedding guest is that no one cares what you look like to a certain extent. So I didn’t find something suitable to wear to this wedding but since I tried on every piece of clothing I own I did find something that will work. Part of it is still black but I am wearing it anyway. I call that a shopping success, in that it didn’t actually require me to go shopping at all! Ian and/or Katie, if you’re reading this and you don’t want me to wear a partially black outfit to your very nice wedding that is in less than a month, call me, okay? Also, I still have your Family Guy DVDs, but that’s neither here nor there.
Also, at Target, I got a very cute new purse. It has my first initial on it. It goes very well with all my new outfits, you’ll be thrilled to know. I practiced taking my cell out of it and making important calls that ended with trilling laughs and “Bye, darling! Don’t forget to pick up the champagne and caviar for tonight!”
I guess it’s no surprise to readers of this little journal that my fantasy life is, um, healthy. Robust and strapping, really. Full of vim and vigor, breathing in the fresh mountain air, taking deep draughts of self-delusion and greeting the day with a glad cry, is my fantasy life. Usually I don’t bother with actual real costumes the way I did Saturday night, but it was nice for a change. Between a wedding, a cocktail party, my birthday with its attendant trip down to Portland (Powell’s!), and going down to the ABL this weekend for a weekend of pure, unadulterated hotness, it’s looking like a pretty good time to be practicing up on the cuteness and the sassiness and the general take-no-prisoners attitude, even if for the time being no one but the cats see me in action.