I guess the weekend’s not techically over yet, but I’m still feeling a little disappointed nonetheless. Nothing terrible has happened. No big scenes or anything. No freak snowstorms. Just…eh.
Friday was one of those days at work when you know you have a ton to do but you can’t do it because a) you are checking your email every five minutes, b) you are reading online journals every five minutes, c) you are eating your officemate’s pretzels, or d) you’re waiting for other people to do their work, already, so you can do yours. I made a couple of dumb mistakes. I got really antsy. I bounced up and down in my chair.
At five on the dot I was running out the door and down the elevator except the elevator didn’t work for some reason so down five flights of stairs and out the big door and across the street and onto the bus. I was going to meet Carl in the U District for dinner and then we were going to see Far From Heaven a couple blocks away. I was excited to see it because I love Julianne Moore and because I’d heard it was good and also that the costumes were good. Well, it was a gorgeous movie, and it was very smart about certain things, and yes, sign me up for the beautiful clothes and Julianne Moore’s breathy, breathy voice. It’s just…I don’t know. I had a really really hard time with the white-woman-and-black-man-throw-caution-to-the-wind thing. At least the movie didn’t make her run off with him and leave the children with “the domestic.” But still. I got the point. Really. Several times. I always think it’s telling when a movie is trying to be All Deep and the audience laughs. I got itchy about an hour through it, and then I felt guilty, because I wanted to like the movie more, and because I felt like I was letting Julianne down. But I was pretty disappointed.
Saturday Carl went for a hike and I…lucky me!..went to the mall. I hate the mall. I don’t hate Target, for some reason, and I don’t hate going to the upscale outdoor shopping center. I don’t hate the grocery store or Value Village. I do, however, hate the mall, and Saturday brought back all the reasons I’ve severely cut down my mall time since moving to Seattle.
Lest you think I’m an elitist of some sort, let me assure you that much of my wild youth was spent as various malls, the epicenter of which was, CocoWalk and Miracle Center notwithstanding, the Dadeland Mall, a good half hour from my childhood house. Thanks for dropping me off, Mom! Can I tell you how much time I used to spend there? Such that I didn’t ever have to look at the mall map, and that I knew a special secret parking lot that no one else knew about, and that I had really specific food court establishments I would grace with my custom. OF COURSE I went there just to hang out. OF COURSE I went there for school shopping. I have purchased Mrs. Fields with the best of them, and have wandered around many a Sharper Image, going, “Amy! Look! Look at this! A massage chair!” So my mall creds are tight, okay?But see what happens when you move away from suburbia (sort of) and stop buying clothes for yourself on any regular basis. You forget about the holiday music and the dreaded mall kiosks. You find that there is stuff you didn’t even know about, like this weird Aqua Massage thing. You can’t find the Lenscrafters and you keep getting lost and mall Santas have always freaked you out a little bit. I felt really stupid because I coudn’t get where I was trying to get and then I felt worse because while I was wandering around aimlessly, with a little worried crease between my eyebrows, I was thinking about crass commercialism and consumer ethics and all this stupid, elitist, bah-humbug stuff when all I wanted was a pair of new glasses frames. Seriously, I have no sense of humor and can only exist in a specially calibrated micro-climate consisting of hemp socks and organic satsuma oranges, with a little drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil imported from Italy.
thing. You can’t find the Lenscrafters and you keep getting lost and mall Santas have always freaked you out a little bit. I felt really stupid because I coudn’t get where I was trying to get and then I felt worse because while I was wandering around aimlessly, with a little worried crease between my eyebrows, I was thinking about crass commercialism and consumer ethics and all this stupid, elitist, bah-humbug stuff when all I wanted was a pair of new glasses frames. Seriously, I have no sense of humor and can only exist in a specially calibrated micro-climate consisting of hemp socks and organic satsuma oranges, with a little drizzle of -virgin olive oil imported from Italy.I finally made it to the Lenscrafters and submitted to an eye exam, including the horrible eye-puff thing, and had my new frames alll picked out (they were made of titanium and were half rimmed and looked really cool on me in a I-might-be-a-classics-professor-or-I-might-be-a-dangerous-spy kind of way, and I was all communing with this super nice girl who was helping me out and explaining progressive lenses, which is really just a nice word for bifocals and which I’ve decided I’m not getting anyway, and then when she told me what the price was…well, will you, all eight of my readers, forgive me when I say I gasped and totally pulled out of the deal? She was holding out her hand for my debit card, and I was having a small coronary incident, and she was smiling at me all trustingly, and I had to tell her, with a catch in my voice, that since I don’t make the salary of a international spy, I woud have to forgo the four hundred dollars she wanted me to pay for glasses. Writing this reminds me I should really call the place and tell them that she was so super nice to me, because I felt like SUCH an ass. Still, though, four hundred dollars!
I called Carl and had an argument with him over cell phone, and then, in a move of rare brilliance on my part, I then went over to another store whose name I will not here divulge and got him his Christmas present, a oiyotihr irpytpt. True love, my friends. I even got a poutks liyroypfj hgpr to go along with it, because I think he should be able to hpierphdf uppihpf when he pojph pwqeupr with his new opurtphdh bcshpbpeh. Don’t tell him, though, okay? I want it to be a surprise. Anyway, that wasn’t such a great experience either because it was very crowded and loud and crazy in the store and also the grepwosfneoh salesperson was…how can I put this…ever so slightly CONDESCENDING when I was trying to choose between two proughhoi wehapwdgo. Condescending, like with a smirk and raised eyebrows and words of one syllable so that I’d be sure to understand. I was very assertive, though, and I retaliated by raising my own eyebrows even higher and saying “I’ll take the qwoieshy piypihfe that’s extra shiny, thanks.” Go me. Then I called Carl back and apologized for having a fight with him in the mall parking lot and then went to return my overdue library books.
For the second time this year, the Seattle Public Library is closing down…I mean, shutting the libraries down…for a week during which the librarians won’t get paid and overdue library books wont’ be fined. It’s a city buget cutting measure. It drives me crazy. I hate it that this city has the same problems that all other cities do, and that it chooses to cut things from the budget like social services, you know that help people get jobs and housing and food, and libraries, which are the greatest thing ever because they let you have free books, instead of choosing not to build not only a 400-kajillion dollar baseball stadium but also, right next door, a 400-kajillion football stadium. Both of which were voted down several times in Seattle elections, let me just mention. And I’m not going to mention the budget cuts on the state level because it’s been, as I mentioned, rather a blah weekend already. Anyway. Poor librarians. Poor people in general who just want to go to the library. I returned my books and got some new ones, including a couple of cookbooks. I love cookbooks. And a book about whales. And a Virginia Woolf book, whom I’ve never read for some reason. And a couple of others I don’t recall off the top of my head. That should hold me for a couple of weeks.
I hadn’t eaten all day by the time I got back, so Carl made me some lunch and then we went to our friends’ house and, for some reason, watched Time Bandits. I’ll just say this about that: I’m not in college anymore, sitting on the floor of the dorm lounge, and also it was super long, and also I had nightmares about Brazil, , and that’s not fair because we didn’t even see that. I was glad to see my friends though, especitally since they have a very cute little baby kitty. Little baby kitty! Little baby kitty that somehow gets caught under the couch cushions! This little baby kitty was mighty cute, I admit, but I have to say that it’s nice to have grown-up cats that have personalities, inasmuch as cats do, and that you don’t have to watch every second to make sure they don’t get stuck in the dishwasher!
This morning John and Treasa came over, thankfully after Carl and I had been yelling at each other and then apologizing to each other five minutes later, and we had breakfast and then went to Quaker Meeting. I haven’t been for a while. I’m having a hard time wanting to go, and it’s for a pretty ridiculous reason, if you consider how Quakers do their thing. I mean, the whole point of it is that there’s no institutionalized hierarchy, and that every meeting is going to be different every time and that you’re going to get a different sense every time, right? Right. And the whole time I was trying to still myself inside I kept thinking, “I hope no one says anything that I, personally, might find annoying or inappropriate.” How tolerant! I felt awful for just that reason because of course someone did say something I didn’t quite like…it was along the lines of “Why doesn’t someone take President Bush by the hand and lead him to the VietnamWar Memorial? If someone wold just do that, he’d cry in front of it, and then we wouldn’t go to war with Iraq” …because, remember, it’s all about me…and I got quietly all bent out of shape. I don’t know. It just rubbed me the wrong way somehow.
Well, anyway, I got over myself and we went to Essential Baking for stromboli and white pizza, and then we went grocery shopping and I got the ingredients for a caramelized onion tart which I’m going to predict will be many thousands of calories per slice and will be ten kinds of yummy. I made some sauteed brussels sprouts, my new favorite thing ever, and we gave Spike The Cat some cranberries to play with…this house has hardwood floors, and for some reason she likes nothing better to play soccer with a cranberry. She meows this weird cranberry-soccer-only meow when she plays. When she loses it under a rug or something she freaks out and comes over to where I am and says, “Can you get my cranberry, please?” And I’m all, “No, I’m writing an entry, ” and then she’s all “Come ONNNNNNNNNNNN!” and I’m all “Can you get it yourself?” and then she’s all “And do you see any opposable thumbs here, bitch? What’d I just say? I said get me my cranberry! I need to make the goal! Get a move on!” Cranberry soccer is the best.
And so now I’m sitting here writing this sitting on Carl’s bed while he organizes his desk, listening to a three cool mix CDs on shuffle. I’m going to go to my house in two minutes and then organize my desk, and then we’re taking Carl’s dad out for dinner because Carl’s mom and sister are currently in Africa and he’s been alone all week. And I’m going to send out some Christmas cards (and send me your address if you too want one! Mom, I’m already sending you one, okay?). And then this weekend will be over and it will be time to go to work again tomorrow. And that’s it for me for the moment.