Monday, Jun. 21, 2004 - 12:05 p.m.
Again with the Monday thing. But it’s a pretty decent Monday over all.
I’m in a new dress. A new black one at that. Tonight is some sort of work dinner on the river in the Quarter which might be mildly amusing. J is going with me, so I’ll have somebody fun to talk to.
This should be a whirlwind week considering I’ve got just three days to clear off my desk before I’m off for the weekend.
As usual, I get ahead of myself so let’s just go back in time to my weekend since that is what Monday entries are for.
Friday night:
Thomas and I rocketed into the weekend doing something so extraordinary and mind blowing that once I write it down everyone who reads it will know without a shadow of a doubt that we are:
An old married couple.
Yes, we went shopping, people. And not just for groceries but also for clothes. Could we BE any more married?
First stop was Schteinmart where Thomas picked up some mundane things like socks and then a couple of pretty snazzy new shirts. One is particularly nice: grey background with light black leaves patterned all over it. It’s his new official “Quarter Shirt”, but of course since it is long sleeved, it is a fall/winter sort of thing.
He can bring it to San Francisco though because the seasons are inverted there and it is bound be chilly at least some of the time.
I bought two new potholders and a dish towel, but they are cool. A pineapple design with words like Caribbean written across it in floating, dreamy black lettering. It exactly fits in with our plantation/West Indies house theme.
I love Schteinmart. It can be cheesy at times, but you can really find little treasures there if you mine hard enough and/or walk in on a lucky day.
Next stop was Swinn Wixie where we did the weekly shop in pretty standard time. In my haste to get done I neglected to write a list and as a consequence I’ve forgotten a couple of things I’ll need to pick up tomorrow night on the way home. Things like water and toilet paper. Little essentials like that.
Even with all the shopping, we were still home by quarter after 7. I poured us both brimming glasses of champagne and we toasted the weekend, Fatalie’s comeuppance and I couldn’t help but mimic Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold from “Vacation” when he is sitting on the vibrating motel bed with his wife and toasting a “Renewed love affair” in a shaky, bouncy voice in time with the mattress. That scene always cracks me up.
I took my champagne and a library book (because I went to the library on Friday afternoon during my lunch hour) and sat on the sofa in the living room and read until after 9 when I finally decided to make Three Cheese Hamburger Helper which I ate while reading.
I went to bed around midnight or so and slept rather soundly, but not as soundly as Thomas.
Saturday:
I was up at 8:30, while Sleeping Tom didn’t end up rising from beneath the covers until noon.
I ground and brewed some PJs coffee and played Sims while doing laundry and semi-cleaning, but mostly playing Sims until I realized I had about two hours before Caftan Night and still hadn’t cleaned out the litter box.
So all hell broke loose in the form of Pine Sol, mops, dust rags and brooms while the cats hid behind various bits of furniture and/or demanded to be vacuumed along with the couch.
It was around 8 or so before I finally sank down into a lovely, warm bath scented with Oceanus bubbles and a dolphin shaped bath bead. The candle on the window sill glowed and flickered against the clouded glass while in the trees beyond a cicada sang and crickets chirred in the long grasses.
Yes, officially it was summer. I even broke out my Misquamicut (bought at a beach in Rhode Island) shot glass.
While at Bath and Body Works earlier this month I discovered a hideous thing. They no longer make my favorite body spray, Lavender Flowers. DAMN! They did this to me a few years ago when they stopped making the Fresh Herbs scent.
So I have to be sparing with my “lavish” applications of lavender body spray after bubble baths. I have a little over a quarter of the bottle left and I guess when it is gone, that’s it for that part. Curses.
Minor irritations aside, Saturday night was spectacular. Adorned in my Moroccan caftan, I swirled into the living room to watch Ab Fab and then into my Study to call Ken and listen to lots of dark, mysterious music by candlelight.
Thomas had imported my chair into his Chamber and so I sat on the floor against the wall across from my altar and had a strangely skewed view of my room. Something about sitting on the floor looking up at the candles floating in the darkness fills me with contentment.
Around 11 or so I tucked Thomas into bed, made some homemade pizza, and plugged in the Stepford Wives on DVD.
I realized as I watched it that I had not seen this movie since way before I was married the first time. I might even have been a teenager. I had no clue what it was like to live on my own, let alone in a committed relationship. I had no sense of how people can actually get so worked up about the “ideal” relationship that they’d even go as far as fucking robots to get it.
That movie has all kinds of levels from straight on horror to subtexts about Women’s Lib and stereotypes.
I remember thinking the movie was funny and scary back when I first watched it. Now I think it’s sad and it made me angry too. (Okay, and there’s some campy fun stuff too!)
When the wives are sitting in their consciousness raising group and Tina Louise’s character just starts talking about how she knows her husband never really loved her, just loved the idea of her and loved the way she looked and so that’s why she turned to her tennis court instead of him, I realized that this wasn’t just dialog, that this actually did happen sometimes. And then the Stepford Wives started doing this commercial for Easy Off that was truly scary. The way Joanna and Bobbie and Charmaine looked at each other thinking, “Is this for real?”
It’s sort of how I look at people myself. I see many people wrap themselves up in so many layers of false perception and fake comfort. What kills me is the superficiality that some people devote their lives to. It’s shocking and it’s pathetic and its also tragic in the cases of those who know they are doing it and drown just a little more each year until they no longer remember what it was like to be young and earnest and setting out to live life to the fullest.
Ken got a little bit drunk on his Smirnov Ices – he was pouring a shot of real vodka into each glass he poured – and as a result he actually started to cry at the end when Joanna finds herself in the “creepy” Men’s Association mansion in a replica of her very own bedroom with her replacement robot stalking her with a smile on her lips and a pair of nylons stretched between her hands.
Anyway, apparently this movie is going to become one of my classics that I can throw on any old night. Whether or not I philosophize afterwards remains to be seen I guess.
I ended up in bed around 2 a.m. and I slept until nearly 10 Sunday morning.
Sunday:
Basically I read books, petted cats, talked to my parents and played Sims. Oh, and drank coffee. You know, typical Sunday stuff.
Which brings me here, to typical Monday stuff writing up this entry.
And now it is done!
