Now, the whole reason behind this trip, besides seeing our sweet friends, was ostensibly to go to a Gaskell Occasional Ball. These are lots of fun…dancing is fun, and dressing up is fun, and a live brass band is fun. And that’s what a Gaskell is. People get all freaky and wear huge period-authentic hoop skirts and you do dances like the mazurka and the schottische and a good time is generally had by all. The best part is that all the women get dressed in the Ladies’ Lounge and are all doing their hair together and (literally) tugging on each others’ corset strings and fretting about not being able to sit down properly wearing hoops. Actually there are plenty of people there wearing ordinary dress-up clothes, but it’s the ones in hoops who stand out, understandably.
Friday night after the aquarium was spent having a yummy dinner and a Hot Tub Symposium and in a long talk with Anna during which there was much whispering and giggling and possibly some tear-wiping. Saturday came much earlier than anticipated, and off we went to rent Carl a costume (including a top hat!) at this very funny costume place near the ABL and then went on a long walk to the mall where I got a pair of knee high socks which I would later forget and Carl got a dress shirt. Then it was time to finish the alterations on the dress Anna had made me and take showers and decide to be late to our meeting place and then bundle into the van and then drive to Oakland, during which I promptly fell asleep. I never stay up until five, my friends. I am a delicate flower who needs her eight hours, at least. So I was a little knackered, to say the least.
Oh, the dress that Anna made me? Did I mention that every so casually in the paragraph above? Yeah. She made me a dress to wear to this ball, with her own two hands and her indestructible sense of style. She is the most talented person on the face of the earth. And she didn’t make me just any dress, but a gorgeous Regency style one just like the one Elizabeth wears in the Pride and Prejudice movies…and you know how I love those movies, right? It was a total surprise and I loved it and she also made lingerie for me to wear under it and she did the beading on the bodice, if you can imagine such a thing, and I totally felt like Cinderella at the ball.
The most talented woman in the world and her lucky best friend
We were late getting to the place the ball was held, due to the strenuous consumption of excellent Indian food in Berkeley and also a little bit due to getting lost on the way there, but there were still plenty of people getting ready and putting their hair up, and I had such a cool moment putting on my lipstick (yes! Lipstick! I told you it was fancy!) when I was all ready to go. I had come in all hot and sweaty and burping some gobi aloo scented burps, but then after being trussed into my bustier and bloomers (she made bloomers) and putting my hair up with little white roses I got a look at myself in the mirror, and it was like I was looking at my true elegant self. The world may think that I am an Old Navy-wearing slob, but the truth is I was born to wear beautiful dresses and be very lady-like with good posture and pretty hair.
Carl and Rob were all suited up (as were Brian and Dave, the other boys who came with us) and Anna and Joey and Erin and I met them in the grand lobby and went in together and danced a couple of waltzes, including the lovely Congress of Vienna Waltz, and then a Victorian line dance (really) called the Sir Roger de Coverley, and then some polkas and other things.
This is all so exciting
Taking a break.
I found myself getting pretty tired, honestly. I mostly danced with Carl, although Rob did ask me to dance a gallop, which is certainly the silliest partner dance ever, with the obvious exception of the polka (I danced some of those as well). I was even asked to dance by a total and complete stranger, who followed me back to where I was sitting and asked for a polka with me. “But I don’t know how to polka!” I sputtered in the true spirit of ladyness. This dude didn’t care, and I recovered what serve as my manners and followed him out to the floor for the longest polka the world has ever known. It was pretty exciting, actually, to be asked to dance by someone I don’t know. The last time I went to one of these I was single, and I guess I must have spent more time on the outskirts of the dance floor with a wistful look on my face–Pick me! Pick me!—-because I seem to recall having danced with a lot of different people back then. Of course, it’s also completely possible that I didn’t spend all my time sitting down with my feet in my hands going “Ugh! Ow!” and running into the Ladies’ Lounge to (ahem) adjust my bodice, and therefore looked like a more eligible dancing partner. I don’t know.
Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, or so I’d like to think.
So we danced and looked at costumes and talked and I ate some cookies and at the end everyone sang God Save The Queen, which of course I didn’t know and which sounded to my uncouth colonial ears like “My Country Tis Of Thee,” and then we crawled back to the van and went back to Brian’s house in Berkeley where we were spending the night. In the morning we had breakfast and an It’s-it each, and we walked to a big rock in the middle of his neigborhood and played on that, and then, for some reason, we saw some deer running through the streets. And then it was time to go back. I had this weird sense the whole weekend that we were just up the freeway from them somehow…well, technically, we are just up the freeway. Sixteen hours up, to be precise. It just felt really natural to be there, like, oh, here we are with our dear friends and now we’re going to go to the Aquarium and now we’re going to go out for Mexican food, and hey, now it’s time to get a costume! It didn’t have the same sense of being completely disconnected from my real life that my time in Florida often has. I guess it’s because even though I don’t see them or do that every day, this is my real life.
Thanks for a great time, you hotties.