Well, it was another sort of horribly unfun but very productive weekends at Casa Weetabix, although it did have its highlights. I did make it back out for some uninterrupted shopping on Friday night, scoring a new shower curtain liner at Bed, Bath and Beyond (gah, I am absolutely frothing at the bit waiting for them to open one in GB so I don’t have to drive forty minutes just to get my kitchen gadget fix) as well as replenishing my Body Butter supply just in time for autumnal dryness. I still have not replaced my smashed-at-Journalcon Prescriptives foundation because the girl who was working at the counter was the same girl who was there a few weeks ago, when I stopped in and was given attitude as though she really wasn’t interested in talking to me nor selling me a damned thing. Fine. Lanc’me is starting to look like a viable alternative and has the added benefit of being available in town.
It was, however, an evening fraught with suspense. I saved myself from a splurge purchase of a very impractical purse at Banana Republic and then I narrowly escaped getting into a bitch fight with the counterperson at Godiva. She was a step away from the normal snooty Godiva salesperson, who is either posh reserved saleslady with a subtle European accent (and I imagine that she is possibly the princess of a small European country like Luxemburg or perhaps Lichtenstein but now is working in the US in efforts to increase her nation’s GNP, gambling at life and love along the way) or a giggling inept salesgirl who can’t understand what the big deal is anyway. No, this one had teased cotton candy blonde hair with jet-black roots and was wearing a kitty sweater. She immediately got my dander up when she tried to school me on each of the chocolates. Excuse me? I can differentiate between the subtle grace notes of certain batches of the vanilla caramels. I can wax eloquent on the white chocolate candy cane truffle of Aught Two. I have currently in my freezer four Godiva banana truffles stored away in case of nuclear emergency. Bitch, please. I am so not going to bow down to you like some apologetic fat girl. I am too old to be playing petty power games with some minimum wage lackey and sorry, sweetie, you cannot fend off menopause by applying tarantula mascara and three layers of orange cake foundation that stops at your jaw line, but thank you for playing.
By the time I drove home, I was exhausted and crawled into bed where I managed to watch exactly two minutes of the Tivo and then fall into a drooling coma. We slept a little too late on Saturday, but then woke up quickly and ran out the door to make it to the window place where we picked out twelve replacement windows for the house. Ouch. It’s sad that it costs so much for something that is essentially an absence. It’s paying for something to not be there. Man, I could totally party like a rock star with that cash, but yeah, sure, argon filled windows sound much more fun than plus sized pink leather pants and I’m certain that they will be hours of entertainment. In fact, my grandchildren (or grandnieces) will undoubtedly gather around our windows and say, ‘Show us again! Open the window with one finger! Tilt them in for cleaning! Wheee!’
We hurried out of the window place to run back across town to the house, where I scooped up Tilly and brought her to the vet for her yearly inspection/poking. Poor Tilly. She was a trooper, though, quite honestly. Four pokes and she didn’t even flinch. I had a sad moment sitting in the vet’s office remembering my sweet kitty Chelsea’s last day, and then my maudlin brain almost paired with my logic and talked me into adopting one of the nine adorable kittens in the waiting room. Had the little boy buff tiger (who was so adamant about tearing my right hand to ribbons) actually been a girl, his name would be Mabel and he would be probably mauling my Gatsby bear this very minute.
I believe that if all pets were named after old people, the world would be a much happier place. And besides, Cujo wouldn’t have been half as scary a book had the dog’s name been Dolores, and then the Saint Bernards wouldn’t be unduly persecuted by stupid people. But then, I have a serious soft spot in my heart for Saint Bernards. (Or maybe a hard spot caused by eating too much Godiva.)
After the vet, I brought Tilly back home where she had a half-hour emotional eating session, power-bingeing on kibble, and then proceeded to remove everything out of the kitchen save the refrigerator and freezer, as they didn’t fit through the dining room door and were too heavy for us to lift down the stair into the garage by ourselves. After that, we rushed around to get ready for Esteban’s cousin’s wedding, which was held in the basement of a parochial school and had a serve yourself bar. It was my first authentic Belgian wedding and was truly entertaining. There was no DJ, just a mix CD on repeat played over the school’s sound system (undoubtedly accustomed to broadcasting the Hokey Pokey or the attendance policies) and I had to tromp upstairs to pee in a pink bathroom stall best suited for third graders. But it was a delightful evening, just the same, and I got to banter with Esteban’s parents and favorite Aunt and Uncle and when he made a joke about not knowing whether one of the grandbabies was a boy or a girl because she was wearing yellow and he needs those kind of visual clues. I was wearing a blue twinset, so I said ‘Well, I’m wearing blue’ am I a boy or a girl?’ And he stuttered and then his wife said matter-of-factly, ‘Well, just look at that cleavage! There goes your whole theory!’ which then prompted an eruption of hysterical laughter from the entire table while both his uncle and I blushed furiously.
We cut out early because with the mix CD on the third revolution (there are only so many times you can listen to Boston’s ‘Amanda’ without going totally insane) and the fascinating ambiance which included a wall of DEAD NUNS staring down at us disapprovingly (ok, they weren’t dead when the photos were taken, but they are certainly dead now) it was not quite our idea of a good time. However, apparently our idea of a good time was to go home and crawl into bed declaring to the world how much our various parts ached and how much we wished that the refrigerator and freezer could sprout legs and walk themselves out into the breezeway.
In the morning, we went out for breakfast (since we had no choice, given that every heat source was unplugged and stashed in the dining room) and then returned to unload the refrigerator. With help of our excellent friend Markus and a few odd tools to remove handles, we had fully evacuated the kitchen. Esteban sent me to Tarzhay for a mop bucket while he swept and did dusty stuff. This was dangerous territory, given that it was Tarzhay and it had been a sort of unfulfilling weekend and I usually comfort myself by shopping for frivolous things (cute Mizrahi sunglasses? For $15? Insert salivation here.) but I managed to get out the door without delay and with bucket in hand. Ok, I did splurge and buy the $4.99 bucket rather than the $2 or 99 cent buckets but what is life if you can’t treat yourself like a princess?
Esteban scrubbed the floor to prep it for the installers and I ran around the house trying to clean up extraneous rooms for the Window Measuring Guy. This was a lot easier than it sounded, as the library/Computer Room #2 was completely trashed and the Actual Computer Room was a relapsed victim of Esteban’s CTSA (Can’t Throw Stuff Away) disorder. I spent the rest of the day trying to deal with the (fucking) laundry and pick up anything that would be potentially embarrassing (like our Easy Bake Meth Lab and our Pornographic Lite Brite: Ron Jeremy edition) until it was dark outside and I just didn’t care anymore if the Window Measuring Guy saw our cache of VHS ‘Mystery, Alaska’ ‘Xanadu’, and ‘Galaxy Quest’ stacked next to Esteban’s desk. So I went out the garage, got myself an Oreo Klondike bar and then ensconced myself in my bedroom and tried to get lost in the world of saucy runway coaches, Janice Dickenson, Tyra Bank’s strength in the face of torture (she had to wear size 7 shoes, y’all!) and the blind model’s negagivity. Which is apparently the science of stealing things. But I digress.
This just in’ actually, the floor. The floor is in. I haven’t seen it yet. Because I seem compelled to immerse you in my construction hell, here’s what it looked like yesterday. Yes. That was my floor for eight years. Feel my pain, people.
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