This weekend was supposed to be a lull between the weekend before which was more like a full week but whatever, and this coming weekend, which I will mainly spend upon a series of airplanes that will convey me first to Miami and then to London. I am stressing about how, exactly, to pack for all this. My packing list looks like this:
Black wool pants
Flip-flops
Black sweater
Black camisole
Black cashmere socks
Black sandals
Black librarian skirt
Camera! Camera camera, DON’T FORGET THE CAMERA!
Black short-sleeve v-neck
Black coat
DON’T FORGET THE CAMERA BATTERIES!
Orange-and-pink scarf and hat
Other non-wool black pants
Fortunately for me my stopover on the East Coast involves leaving all my cute camisoles and Christmas presents at my mom’s house (she reports it’s beautifully warm there but to bring a sweater because sometimes, late at night, it gets down into the low seventies) so all I need to bring to London itself are my woollier items. I am still congratulating myself on my travel savvy in managing to take four flights for the price of two and am crossing my fingers, toes, and all other appendages in the hopes that I will get upgraded on at least one of the cross-Atlantic flights.
I started off my calm-before-the-storm weekend, then, by going to a one-man rendition of the SantaLand Diaries by my beloved David Sedaris on Friday night. David Sedaris himself, I should not, was not performing at the good old Bath House Theater. Instead there was a rather fey individual sort of mangling the piece, much to my dismay. I rolled my eyes a lot and whispered to Gael that “Dude, I would not make that acting choice right there.” I ran into my old boss and a girl I knew from bellydance and managed to smuggle in a bag of cookies in my purse. This cookie-smuggling was, in terms of awesomeness, only shadowed by the fact that the super yuppie place we went to for drinks after the show was playing the entire Snoop Dogg discography when we came in. This passes for a hot Friday night out for me, okay?
Saturday I elected to go shopping for a pair of black pants instead of getting a frontal lobotomy, which is the only other experience I can think of that would compare at all. J came with me and we made elaborate plans concerning synchronized watches (neither of us wears a watch) and cell phones ( I never remember to turn mine on). J called me three times and I did not hear her because of the mixed m鬡nge of noises in the big downtown Gap: screaming children, screaming Christmas carols, and screaming me, paddling through stacks and stacks of size 0s and 2s and 4s. I had grimly appropriated the only size of Classic Fit Boot Cuts in a size 14 in, apparently, the entire store and was thinking of writing some strongly worded letters to the management (“Are you JUST NOT INTERESTED in the needs of women with junk in their trunks, Gap Management?”) when a sales associate around my size came up and asked if I was finding everything I needed. ”No” I hissed. She offered to get me some more style in my size…which, you know, just to judge by the people walking around on the street in broad daylight, doesn’t seem like it’s that uncommon of a size…and I stalked off to the dressing rooms in something of a snit. I was about to get in line at the cash register when the sales associate person came back and gave me a pile of pants, which she’s apparently had to mine from the darkest depths of “the back” to find for me. I appreciated her work, but decided to purchase only the aforementioned librarian skirt and other black pants.
I must mention that these new pants are not my True Love Pants. I foresee my relationship with these pants as a in-between sort of thing…like, these pants are fine, and they have many good qualities, and they don’t ride up too much and they’re basically long enough, but it’s not a permanent thing. We’ll go to London together and that will be fun but in the back of my mind I’ll know that whatever special times we have together won’t last. In a couple months I’ll wake up in the morning and the pants will be all wonky and won’t fit right or will have lost their stretch. “Baby,” I’ll say to the pants, “Is anything wrong? You don’t seem yourself lately.” And then the pants will go “Oh, I’m not GOOD ENOUGH for you anymore, is that it? FINE THEN!” and then I’ll go “Dude, chill, okay? I’ll just wear the corduroys if that’s how you’re going to be” and then the pants will be all “I’m not happy in this relationship. I…I think we should end it” and I’ll be all “WHAT? But I took you to London!” and the pants will be all “I…I know. I just can’t do this anymore, all right? Can you understand that?” And I’ll go “Is this because of that time I washed you on hot instead of on cold by accident? Baby, it was just that one time! I said I was sorry!” and then the pants will just turn away in silence and I’ll go “Okay, well, if that’s the way it is then I’m done here too” and the pants will whisper “I’d hoped we could be friends” and I’ll retort, “What’s the point?” and that will be that with these pants. We’re in sort of our honeymoon period right now (I’m wearing them as we speak and I have to say they do make my legs look pretty long) but I know it’s just a stopgap thing. That’s just how it is with me and pants.
So…yes! Saturday! I brought home my librarian skirt and my For Now pants and started to knit a baby hat for my friend Ritchie’s baby shower. I am pleased to report that this baby shower was awesome for many reasons, the foremost being that it was at my beloved Peachy’s house and that it involved many awesome people, some of whom were men, even. There was a marked absence of ridiculous baby shower games even though we did do a little cooing over some of the cute baby stuff they received. I didn’t finish the baby hat in time to go over there to the shower but I did meet some fun new people and pet some dogs and eat some cheese and confirm my idiotic love for both Richie and Peachy and everyone they know. The only thing that could have made the evening better would have been a repeat performance by Ritchie, who is now roughly eight and a half months pregnant, of her stunning rendition of “I Touch Myself” on Peachy’s home karaoke system. I have high hopes for little baby Ritchie’s first birthday party, though.
Yesterday I went out for blueberry pancakes and a walk with my friend S. and then came home and did a handstand on the purple futon. I experimented with DryEl(spot review: pretty good!) and did some regular laundry and ate some goat cheese and tried (and failed, ultimately) to watch a movie about a Russian psychiatric hospital and went to bed early. The rest of my week will involve bellydance class, trying to get everything packed up, getting on the plane at 6:00 am on Friday, going to the beach, and inflicting myself on the UK. I can’t wait.