Fall is definitely in the air this weekend. At one point, I found myself scrounging through Esteban’s sock drawer for his big grey man socks (which he never wears because I’m usually wearing them, however, they are so big and bulky that they take up half the drawer, while my sock drawer space is precious, reserved for four hundred socks which precisely match four hundred pairs of pants. Hi. I’m compulsive.) which I then wore around the house because my cropped pants were too damned chilly. It was 57 degrees. My black and white 1930’s Paris calendar is still turned to August. Yes, it makes my head hurt too.
We did get some rain on Saturday. Esteban spent the day cleaning out our garage, which is lovely because now it smells like garage (which is a delightful, slightly damp WD-40 kind of smell) rather than the funky weird almost garbagey dusty crypt smell that was happening in there before. I, on the other hand, spent the day taking my 15-year-old brother shopping for school clothes. I had planned to do this on some level, since my mother doesn’t seem to ever have any money, but the poor kid also swallowed his pride and actually called me to ask if I could get him some pants. Immediately, I was awash with bitterness, because I remember years where I had exactly two pairs of wearable pants and had to do laundry every night so that I’d have something to wear the next day. As we have discussed in the past, my mother is not exactly Homemaker Of The Year. So pants! You want pants! Pants you shall have!
By the end of the excursion, he was beaming from ear to ear and commenting that he never realized how much fun he could have shopping for school clothes. I think he was mostly thrilled that he had clothing with actual brand names and not things from the ultra-clearance section of Wal-mart. (And this is not to say that I disparage Wal-mart clothing. Or cheap clothing in general. I happily embrace the joys of $5 t-shirts from our local mass merchandiser. But I also understand that the early teens are hard on kids and it’s nice to have at least a few cool items and maybe encourage the kid to take some pride in his appearance. And maybe I’m rather thin-skinned about the matter because I grew up in the situation that I did and know the crippling low self-esteem that can come from the self-fulfilling prophecy of poverty) We fell flat on getting the shoes he wanted (I-Paths? Is that what the kids are wearing these days? I tried and tried but couldn’t talk him into a cute pair of Vans, which he claimed to ‘have never heard of’. Apparently, I am woefully unhip these days) and also couldn’t get him into the salon to get rid of his Cost Cutters bowl cut. So there’s still round two of the Awesome Big Sister act yet to come (Big Sister Act! Wacky hijinx ensue when Kathy Najimy and Weetabix teach a ragtaggle bunch of orphans about Abba and matching their underwear to their purses! You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll sing along to the breakaway #1 hit ‘If I had a Decent Bra’, soundtrack available in stores near you!) And also, he wants a new skateboard, but that will have to wait until his birthday. And this is why I’m not a parent, because I’m not all that concerned with the idea of him cracking his head open. I mean, sure, I don’t want it to happen, but really, I cracked my head a million times in the seventies and what’s a little cracked head? Why, with a cracked head, you can do anything! Even be the President of the United States.
After I got home, I was too tired to make dinner and Esteban was too hungry and wanted food right now, so I made a run to the little sketchy college deli nearby for some of their incredibly good and cheap tacos for Esteban and also a provolone sub for me.
We camped on the couch with our cheap take-out and watched the second installment of Kill Bill on the high definition salty goodness of our new TV (which does not make the buzz buzz sounds all the time, like it’s going to explode. Who knew that life could be so peaceful without the suspense of burning electronics). We debated whether it was derivative of Spaghetti Westerns (Esteban’s view) or the Kung Fu Movies From The 60’s genre (my view). And then we revisited the well-traveled discussion about why The Good, The Bad And The Ugly is alternately Cinematic Genius / That Which Sucks Donkey Balls. Which then boiled down to the fact that I just don’t like Spaghetti Westerns because I don’t like the desert. Or, for that matter, Clint Eastwood, who, I postulated, is quite possibly a metaphor of a desert wherein water equals acting ability and cacti equal squinty eyes and perhaps scorpions equal spitting tobacco juice. I don’t know. The metaphor sort of breaks down the more I got into it, but we both agreed that we liked Kill Bill much better having seen the second half and in spite of the presence of the desert.
On Sunday, I was really looking forward to sitting in my house and doing very little, in grand defiance of my normal tendency to cram as much as possible into the weekend. I really wanted low key, especially after the roller coaster that was the weekend previous.
However, I woke up and wanted protein, and, after the inevitable jokes from my demure husband about protein shakes, we endeavored to go out for breakfast, which is always folly, as anyplace making anything remotely resembling breakfast is always packed on Sunday mornings. We drove around for an hour, circumnavigating almost the entire county, and finally ending up at lunch place at 10:59 am. Whatever. There I had spermless protein, so I was very happy.
After lunch, I dropped Esteban at home and went to the art festival. Esteban encouraged me to call various people to take with me, but I finally explained that I didn’t want to do anything with anyone, I just wanted to go by myself and linger at whichever booths I wanted to linger at and leave a half hour after I got there if people started pissing me off. Which they did, because in crowds, people act like cattle and apparently the presence of art encourages folks to walk at this weird stilting funeral procession.
I use the word ‘art’ loosely here, as there seemed to have been this weird infiltration of distinctly craft-like items, such as textile arts, which were really just appliqu’d sweatshirts. Ok, they were edgy and not quite the kitty sweatshirts that are profligate in GB, but still, they were appliqu’d sweatshirts. Not art. Sweatshirts. Or rather, not the art I care about. (Go ahead and gripe in the comments section about how artful your particular sweatshirts are, we are still talking sweatshirts.)
I had hoped to find a black and white photo from one of my favorite local photographers, but while I did talk with him, he’s only printing 11×14″ right now and I wanted something larger. Also, he had sold the last copy of my favorite abandoned church print. I did buy raffle tickets to win a leafless tree print of his, but I haven’t been called by the raffle people, so I’ll probably have to just call him and order the print I want and then frame it. Or just find out where that damned church is and take the picture myself. I did end up seeing like four hundred people I knew at the festival, including favorite in-laws Ward and June, so my efforts to be antisocial were all for naught.
I then went home, put on some yoga pants and an old t-shirt, cleaned the living room (including waxing the wood floor, something I do NOT recommend and apparently I’ve since learned that it wasn’t even necessary), and then settled in with the Sunday paper, a chilled Dasani, and the TV.
My biggest motivation came when I realized that I was hungry and had to make a decision between just making a sandwich or going with toast (and, in a Kafka-esque twist, I went with the sandwich. I know! I am shocked as certainly you all are. My only explanation was the allure of Colby Jack and also 12 Grain bread, so complex and yet, so simple and beautiful), but other than that, I was all about the slacking.
I caught about four minutes of the MTV Video awards, which was enough time to learn that pimp hats have apparently become cool and also dresses are now made from rags. Has no one noticed that Jessica Simpson seems to have a freakishly large mawp. She could wrap those lips of hers around a watermelon, I swear, she’s like a PEZ dispenser, even moreso than Julia Roberts. Also, there is something wrong with a universe when Christina Aguilera is the cutest one at an award show. The Beastie Boyz are grey at the temples and then I had to stop watching because I am apparently very very old now and must preserve the waning minutes of my life for things that really matter.
Like Six Feet Under DVDs and staring lasciviously at pretty Peter Krause.
Oh, and I almost forgot! It’s voting time for the Diarists once again. Go send your love and votes to entry nominees Disco, my arch nemesis, Ladee Leroy, Sundry, my sidewalk angel Invincible Girl (who is so good that she’s up against her own damned self), and K.Lo. Sexy Kitchenlogic is up for a Legacy Award, too, so do me proud and rock the vote!
