2005-04-26 - 10:10 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Smoke on the Water"

Sunday, April 24th, 2005

Good lord. Where to start? Laundry list!

- Had an excellent visit with Camille, despite having back pains the first day. Fortunately what we mostly do is sit around gabbing, which I can do just as easily reclining on the couch under a Christmas throw blanket that should have been put away in February. ([OLD LADY MODE] I thought it was kidney pain related to the recent TMI. Or maybe it was just from sleeping on my stomach on a 10-year-old mattress that sags in the middle. I quit doing that and have been feeling FABULOUS the last few days. FABULOUS. No more stomach sleeping 'til we get a new mattress. [/OLD LADY MODE]) In addition to the aforementioned gabbing, we had crepes for dinner one night, visited with Peter, T, and Philipa, and took a long zigzag tour of a couple of Center City neighborhoods Camille was interested in.

- I got my hair permed for the summer on Wednesday. Poindexter has been sneezing up a storm and blaming it on the perm. I figured out a way to put my hair in a bun to sleep in so that it wouldn't get all over his pillow, which seemed to help. Also, I found that I like not getting my hair in the way all the time, so I'll continue this for a while and see how it goes. My head still stinks when it's wet after washing, but fortunately is not so awful once it's dried.

- Last Sunday the people we had picked as tenants CHANGED THEIR MIND and backed out. I was so irritated. They had a perfectly valid reason, but we liked them a lot, and they were the ONLY people we liked, so we had to start from scratch. We put an ad in the Post again and got NO CALLS. GAH! We'll try again in a couple weeks. Our rental is a bit high-end, so there's a possibility that the people likely to take it are using realtors, and realtors won't come to us because they won't get a commission. So we may have to reconsider doing the looking ourselves. Blah. We'll see. It's important to me to have a tenant who communicates well so I'd really rather not have a realtor do it if they have to hire the first person who applies and passes the credit check.

- In the absence of calls about the house, we abandoned our plans to go to Virginia this weekend and instead stayed home and spring cleaned. It was REALLY nice to have an entire weekend to ourselves and GET THINGS DONE. The house looks gorgeous, all my spring/summer clothes are washed and put away, and everything is in its place. And I am completely appalled that this is now my idea of a good weekend. I am OLD.

- Yesterday afternoon I went out to get takeout and took the long way 'round via Lord & Taylor and The Gallery. I thought I didn't like bohemian style, but what I do love is embroidery, sequins, and sparkles, so I am losing my head over all the gorgeous bohemian stuff at Lord & Taylor. I have decided to allow myself ONE PIECE that is wildly embellished and ridiculous. ONE PIECE. Deciding on that ONE PIECE is proving to be very difficult. I look at them all and feel a mad infatuation, but I can't find one that is PERFECT. I have the same problem with the embellished sandals -- I want a pair, but I can't find one that is PERFECT enough to buy. At the other end of the spectrum, they had '50s-style one-piece bathing suits, too! SO GORGEOUS! I saw a periwinkle one with ruching over the boobies. *sigh* The problem is, I never go swimming anymore. I'm gonna have to find a picture of one for my fashion scrapbook (currently existing as magazine cut-outs gathered in a manila folder).

Monday April 25, 2005

One day last week, I was walking down the street laden with grocery bags, and I saw a man and a woman a few blocks off, walking toward me. I wasn't paying much attention until I saw that they were both walking with the same peculiar gait, which is why they caught my notice in the first place.

From a distance, they appeared to be together, but as I got closer I could see that the woman was 10-15 feet behind the guy. The guy was an Italian-looking man in his 60s, walking slightly hunched over with his shoulders raised and his arms swinging, like a caricature of a gorilla. The woman behind him, a tomboy/hippie impish black girl in her early 20s, was walking behind him imitating his walk!

I nodded and smiled a hello to the guy, passed him, and then gave the girl a combination look of shock and a laugh, and she stopped imitating and collapsed in giggles. What a nut.

------

This past Saturday, again laden with bags, I found myself behind a group of women in their 40s and 50s, all dressed up in adorable outfits involving cropped pants and brightly colored cropped jackets and pretty bags. They looked like suburbanites I followed along behind them for a while, checking out everybody's clothes and bags and shoes.

One of the women in the back started lagging behind and turned half in my direction and said, "I'll tell ya, I'm tired of all this walking." At that point, I'd already walked two miles that day, so I was amused. "Try walking a mile with five grocery bags," I said. "NO," she said. I laughed.

Later we passed a Jewish house of worship, and I was going crazy trying to remember what it was called. "Temple" was the only thing that was coming to mind, but it didn't sound right. Wouldn't you know, one of the women pointed at it and whispered behind her hand to her companions. "Synagogue". Like it was a secret or something.

The synagogue in question has some amazing stained glass. The doors were open, and most religious places in the city are happy to welcome visitors, so I (still laden with grocery bags) decided to go up the steps on one side, peek through the door at the interior, and go down the steps on the other side, nice and smooth.

Well, I got up there and the first thing I saw were several signs, one for each doorway, on 8.5x11 paper, landscape, with large Times New Roman lettering: "MEN'S ENTRANCE". After a half-second of indignant wondering where the WOMEN'S ENTRANCE is (can only be in the back or the bottom -- hmph!), I figured a peeping female isn't going to be too welcome, and walked quickly across to the other side. Only to discover that the steps there were blocked off, which I somehow failed to notice from the street. So I had to retrace my steps.

As I was doing so, one of about ten men inside -- obviously not attending to his damn prayers, if that's what they were doing -- saw me, looked a little nervous and started heading in my direction. I was afraid he was going to yell at me about it being the MEN'S ENTRANCE or close the door so my girlie gentile cooties couldn't waft in, so I quickly walked across -- getting only a glimpse of a tableful of prayer shawls out of the corner of my eye -- and ran down the steps and up the street.

Oops.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

I'm crabby. I've been looking for a particular style of sandal to absolutely no avail. I want this sandal to have the following qualities:

1. Be turquoise (the whole thing -- I don't want a turquoise upper and black bottom)
2. Cost $25 or less
3. Have little to no heel so I can walk at least 1.5 miles in it
4. Have embellishments (rhinestones, sequins, whatever)
5. Not look like I made it myself in art class
6. HAVE A FOOTBED THAT IS THE SAME SIZE AS MY FOOT.

An example would be something like this with no heel.

I have actually found a number of sandals that meet criteria 1-5, but they invariably have a huge footbed that sticks out a quarter inch out from my feet all around and makes them look larger than they really are. Even if I try on a size smaller.

It's true that I have narrow feet, but most dressy sandals have a narrow footbed. WHY must the casual flat sandals be clunky? Why can't I have basically the same thing as a dress sandal, but with no heel?

Or if I do find something that meets all the criteria except the price, why does it have to be so fucking expensive? I'm finding stuff that costs $50 at least, usually $75 or more! I'm not asking for the moon here! If I can think up this style of sandal in my own head, it doesn't take some fancy-ass designer to think it up and implement it! It's basically the same thing as a number of other inexpensive sandals out there, but NARROWER.

I'm about ready to buy a pair of drugstore child's turquoise flip-flops and glue some sparkly beads to 'em.

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