So the first thing that happened to me this weekend was I became grossly ill right as I was picking Carl up from the airport on Friday. Awesome. We had about fifteen minutes to get ready to go to the opera after we got home…except I didn’t make it that far. I swooned on the way from the couch to my closet and that was the end of the opera for me. I tried to watch Dancer In The Dark and couldn’t do it. That was Friday. Very exciting.
Saturday, it did not start out so good. There was some moping and crying and clutching of the stomach. I had to go clothes shopping, you see. Carl was nice enough to accompany me downtown, where we essentially recapitulated my fun day with Molly. Except without the Aquarium bit. And with an ultimately useless trip to the shoe department of Nordstrom’s. I’m trying to get a good pair of shoes to wear on my trip. Nothing I have is quite cutting it, even though I own a lot of pairs of shoes and even though most of them were expensive enough that you’d think they could handle a little tourist trip to The Continent. Nope. I found a pair that were perfect..black, closed toe but not too hot, good arch support because I have high arches, cute, pretty light, went with my black pants, reasonably prices. I was all excited because I thought they’d go with all the work clothes I was ostensibly downtown to buy, as well as taking me to France. They were perfect. Score! Shopping score!
Except, of course, they totally killed my feet and gave me blisters. Thanks to Nordstrom’s absolutely ridiculous returns policy, I wore them all around Saturday and was able to return them Sunday. So far so good, except I still don’t have any good shoes. The last time I went to Europe I ended up buying a pair of very cute and very uncomfortable black leather slides, so you’d think that I could get it together to get something better than that, but no, apparently not.
Also, re: The Trip. Can I tell you something? Can I tell you how Zen I am about the whole thing right now? As I was telling Sundry at our very ladylike pho lunch the other day, I pretty much planned everything in, like, February. Except I used a much coarser simile for “planned my trip” which I won’t use here, because it was bad enough that I was shrieking about shooting my metaphorical load in the quiet Vietnamese restaurant, with the proprietor and other patrons shooting me looks of undisguised horror without my deigning to mention such a thing here. But yeah, like, I bought the tickets and I’ve planned out where I want to go and I’ve done pretty much everything, including purchase travel-size toiletries, that I can do, short of getting on the plane and getting over there. It gets curiously more remote the closer I get to it; a couple of weeks ago, even, I couldn’t get out more than three sentences without interjecting something like “Hey! I’m going to see where Leonardo da Vinci spent the last three years of his life. Isn’t that thrilling?” And while I’m not all “meh” about it now, I am noticeably less psyched up about it. I don’t exactly know why this is. Maybe I shouldn’t have let such a long time between deciding to go and actually going go by. It’s not that I don’t want to go, because I do, or that I’m not excited about going, because I am…I don’t know what it is.
Regardless, I still don’t have any good shoes and this is beginning to seriously bother me.
Carl and I ogled the beautiful tulips at the Market and also slurped down some delicious celeriac soup with white truffle oil, only minutes after a scrumptious French lunch (see, I’m trying to get more in the mood) that involved what can only be called the wild mushroom soup of the Divine. My mouth loved that soup. My stomach wasn’t so sure, but it was a trooper and sampled several other treats at the Market before going out to the waterfront and chilling out a little while, right next to a high school choir practicing their madrigals. And then it was time to take a deep breath and go get me some new clothes.
As I’ve documented before, I’m not so much for the shopping. I hate how crazy Old Navy makes me, with the Tiny Fit ™ and the loud loud music and the polished concrete floors. Interestingly, Nordstrom’s makes me crazy too, in a whole different way, in that I always feel like an uneducated rube whenever I go in there. I feel, somehow, as if I should be shopping in stilettos. I just feel fat at the Gap.
I managed to get out with a minimal amount of trauma, plus four skirts and a sweater. Carl was very helpful…while I was dissolving in tears because everything in the Gap was striped and pastel and because all of the pants were “cropped,” he calmly sat outside the dressing room and pursed his lips and nodded his head appropriately whenever I emerged (invariably with a scowl on my face and with the question “So, how much does this suck?” in my mouth). He stood in line with me at Old Navy and even carried my bags. It was okay.
Tiring though. By five o’clock I had blisters and was really ready to go home. I had plans to see my friend Ian’s improv show at 8:30 that evening. I thought I’d just take a little nap at about 6:30. Friends, I woke up the next morning at 5:30. I slept for eleven hours on a Saturday night. Is that weird? That’s really weird, isn’t it. I would wake up every couple of hours, look at the clock, decide I wasn’t hungry and that there was no reason for me to get up since I’d already missed the show, and roll over and snore happily away again for another couple of hours. Real great.
I spent Sunday being a little sad for a while, then being happy because I got to go to the Frye and to Volunteer Park again with Carl. Oh, and I returned the Shoes That Weren’t, as well. I’ll show them. It was a really weird weather day…I optimistically put on sandals but brought a sweater just in case , and I tell you, I was not comfortable temperature-wise once all day. I hate that. I have a very delicate internal thermostat, you see. My internal thermostat was not happy yesterday. It sort of wished it had stayed home and taken a nice bath or something.
At the Conservatory Carl and I were sitting on this very nice bench in the Tropical Room, which I totally love because it reminds me of my mom’s garden at home. This bald guy in a leather jacket walked by carrying a bunny. On a leash. It was extremely funny and weird. We sort of oohed and aahed at the bunny and the guy stopped and put him on the little table near our bench and said things like “Oh, don’t pay any attention to him. He needs to behave,” and “Hmph! He’s giving me attitude today.” To be fair, the bunny didn’t look like it was doing much of anything…it was a very calm bunny…but I was willing to take the guy’s word for it. A bunny in the park. What’s better than that? It was as good as any a way to end a very random weekend.