2001-11-06 - 9:02 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Down in the River to Pray", by Alison Krauss, from "O Brother Where Art Thou?" soundtrack (thanks to Teri's "current music").

Yesterday was a momentous day.

I found the pumpkin spice cappuccino online.

Not just any pumpkin spice cappuccino, which might not have been as good, but the pumpkin spice cappuccino I won't shut up about that I had at the Rutter's in York on Leader's Heights Road.

Now, I had looked for it several times before, but kept getting pumpkin spiced coffee beans (I don't like real coffee -- I like my dipotassium phosphate and xanthan gum, dammit). Finally I hit on using "mix" in my search query and I finally turned up some pumpkin spice cappuccino mix on a wholesale site.

Before I purchased it, though, I asked Poindexter to call the store (after checking the address on our credit card bill for the gas & food purchase -- one good reason not to use cash if you don't care about your privacy) and ask what the brand was that they used.

I felt bad about sending Poindexter on what might be a wild goose chase. I told him, "If you do this for me, that'll be my 30th birthday present." But it was easy. He actually talked to the man who purchased the stuff, and it was a "one-shot deal from the Superior Coffee Company".

I went into paroxysms of joy when I saw that in my IM window. That was the online brand. I had found it! Hooray!!!!!!!

Get this: You have to order it in two-pound pillow packs at about $5 each, and there's a minimum $9 order, so I had to order four pounds of the stuff. Four pounds of pumpkin spice cappuccino powder.

Said Poindexter, "You're going to get sick of it." Said I, "But it has a two-year shelf life! I don't even have to drink it every day!" Actually, the $18 I'm paying (shipping was almost as much as the stuff itself), I come out ahead as long as I have about 18 cups.

Judging from the information on the site, I will get approximately 64 cups of the stuff once water is added. Spread over two years, that means I only have to have one cup every ten days or so to drink it all. And that doesn't take into account that my cousin Stacey will probably like it -- she and I both have a weakness for those GFIC flavored powdered coffees -- and I can give some to her. She drinks multiple cups of coffee each day, too, whereas caffeinated stuff is a "special treat" for me, only a couple times a week.

There are some awesome flavors, although I don't think I could drink any of them on a regular basis. They've got raspberry mocha, chocolate mint, white chocolate caramel. At only $5 each I may have to buy more. I'll have 100 pounds of various cappuccino mixes lying around the house making my husband crazy.

As if that wasn't enough excitement for one week, I'm also excited because I bought more clothes. Most exciting for me was two pairs of wool pants -- one in black & white herringbone, the other in Donegal tweed in shades of brown & cream. Woo! They fit really well and are lined, which is something new to me. I didn't know what I was missing! Wow! I don't think I can go back to buying unlined at this point. These pants are pretty classic, too, I think, so I should be able to wear them until I get holes in them.

I think where some people get excited about shoes (I am still trying to figure out what Amanda means by "The Shoes" -- I missed something somewhere), I get excited about pants. I am a pants girl. Remember my FUN PANTS? Remember my blue and white plaid capris? And tomorrow I'm going to wear my Brady Bunch Pants, which I got about 12 years ago and still am not tired of.

I *could* get excited about shoes -- I have trouble breathing in the shoe section at Nordstrom's -- but my miserly side is far more forgiving about buying fun pants than buying fun shoes.

So anyway, I am definitely going to have to start posting photos of my new clothes. Here's today's outfit (those are the herringbone pants) on our way to vote:

I couldn't decide which picture to post. The first one, I'm covering my face but for some reason I like it anyway. The second one, well, I look like somebody else. Hard to explain. Anyway, them's the pants. And since I am a total dork, here is the herringbone detail:

Onto a slightly less materialistic and obsessed topic, I was chatting with Michelle over IM on Friday evening, and somehow the topic drifted from how old we are getting (my ICD-9 diagnosis for my recent ophthalmologist visit said I had presbyopia! Already! "Old eyes"!) to my ducky feet.

I had been bitching to Poindexter about how my high-heeled boots, as much as he may like how I look in them, are really not practical for walking around in except short distances. They hurt my feet after a while.

The morning after our little explore-Virginia trip with the MIL, Poindexter told me, "At one point we were both walking behind you and Mother noticed that you walk kind of ducky-footed. Maybe if you made your feet point more forward, you'd put less pressure on 'em and the boots wouldn't bother you so much."

My husband told me, in essence, that I have ducky feet. That I waddle.

This was pointed out to me many years ago by a friend in college. She thought it was "cute". Apparently Poindexter also thinks it's "cute". I'll cute you, people.

So I started shrieking at Poindexter (remember folks, if I'm shrieking I'm not actually mad; when I'm quiet you have to worry), "Ducky-footed. DUCKY-FOOTED?! WHAT?! YOU'RE TELLING ME I HAVE DUCKY FEET?! YOU TELLING ME I *WADDLE*?! HOW CAN YOU SAY SUCH A THING!" Like that.

He was quite bewildered, saying "I thought I was helping! I thought maybe that was the reason your boots hurt!"

It is so cute how men do that. Tell you something perfectly honest, perfectly innocently, and perfectly unaware of how it could be perceived. Ladies, when your man says something that you perceive as an insult, think again. If you're certain he really loves you and he's basically a good guy, it isn't an insult. It's just a statement of fact and has no bearing on his feelings for you. I promise.

So then I went down to the MIL and asked her about my ducky feet, and she started yammering about "turnout" and ballerinas and how dancers walk like that, blah blah blah.

The sad fact is, folks, my knees are situated in such a way that it feels uncomfortable to walk with my feet pointing straight ahead, so there's no changing this. I'M DUCKY-FOOTED AND PROUD OF IT, GODDAMMIT! Apparently this is a sort of reverse pigeon-toedness.

Anyway, the cool thing about all this is that when I told Michelle about my MIL's "turnout" thing, the topic switched over to dance, and I found out she's danced all her life, and then she invited me to take beginning ballet lessons with her, and I made a completely spur-of-the-moment decision and said yes. If all goes well, we start Thursday. Wish me luck.

Poindexter was amused by the discussion because as Michelle was trying to explain turnout to me, and I kept getting up from the computer and trying weird positions and leg-lifts to try to grasp the concept of turnout.

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