Nov
4
The weather has been grey and wet for long enough that it’s already hard for me to remember how parched the end of summer felt. I had been looking forward to the cooler temperatures but not the lack of sunlight: it is so GLOOMY when it’s cloudy, and of course as soon as we roll the clocks back it’ll be vampire-dark at, like, 3:45 PM.
Everything outside is currently a mess of mud and decomposing fallen leaves and so of course that is what every pea-brained member of the household is continually tracking onto the carpet, and by pea-brained I am most definitely including both teenage boys as well as the adult male, all three of which should know better and YET.
“SHOES,” I find myself saying over and over and over again, like some sort of not-very-smart parrot who knows how to screech exactly one plural noun. “SHOES!”
I hate being the Shoe Police, not only for the boring nagging it requires but because of my personal pet peeve about no-shoe-households, which seem overly fussy and incompatible with actual life. However, I have also learned that repeatedly wiping up carpet stains is also incompatible with certain things, such as sanity.
“But why don’t you make the FLOOR RUINERS scrub the floor?” you may be saying, because you are a sweet summer child full of hope. O, I have chosen this path many times, for I too am occasionally dazzled by life’s many possibilities! — but wow, talk about making things worse. (“Did you clean with a … Sharpie?”)
Oct
28
Last weekend I was in Port Angeles, spending time with my mom and aunt and helping them with a clothing sale. They had advertised it locally and for two days people came and went, not a lot, but a steady trickle of women who sifted through lovely barely-worn purses and blouses and shoes and jewelry and enriched their lives a tiny bit while offloading a bit from my mom and aunt.
It was a fairly interesting and rewarding experience, really, seeing things go on to live new lives with new people. Many of the shoppers were chatty and so we would learn one lady was happy to find an elastic waistband because she had a sensitive area on her back from a surgery scar, or another person who needed sturdy shoes and so was delighted by the trove of stylish Easy Spirits and Clarks.
One woman showed up with her boyfriend/husband, who skulked in the driveway and made comment after comment after comment about the female frippery at hand, while ever so slowly the rest of us sort of … separated this lady? Like buffalo forming a protective semi-circle against prey? Pretty soon she tried on a jacket that he began blustering on about, saying it looked ridiculous on her, and we started actively shooing him away and telling her that not only did she look fucking fantastic and fierce in that jacket — which she did! — one of us would be happy to give her a ride home if the Mister was in such an all-fired hurry.
Eventually, she left wearing the jacket, plus a pair of glamorous oversized sunglasses. “We’re going to dinner with friends tonight,” she called as she left. “This will be perfect!” We all waved, benign smiles, a few extra teeth in his direction.
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