First off, a sucky day. Not so much at work, but pretty much since then. And let me say, not for the first time, that if this were one of my own daughters getting married, there wouldn't be enough hours in the day, days in the week. My girls are not so much fighting any more as they are inadvertently setting each other off into periods of annoyance/sadness. It's very creepy to watch. The bottom line is that they are too old to be sharing a room. A week or a weekend is okay. A month is not. If I can, I'm going to get a third room at the hotel for the weekend so they can each get some privacy. They can't get it at home, but maybe I can buy it for a couple of nights.
I had to go pay a shiva call after school. For those of you who are Judaism-impaired, a shiva call is roughly the equivalent of going to a wake. The differences are that it takes place after the funeral and not before (because the funeral is held as soon as possible after the death, the next day if they can arrange it), and it takes place at the home of the principal mourner, and there are no set hours like at a wake. If someone declares that he or she will be "sitting shiva" on Wednesday and Thursday (traditionally it's for a week, but I haven't seen anyone do that for years), it means that they're pretty much on call from morning til night for anyone who wants to drop in.
Anyway, the deceased was the elderly and ill mother of a woman I work with, an absolutely lovely woman who is probably almost 60 herself, and who keeps a low profile but is apparantly known and loved by the whole teaching staff, judging by the number of people who said they'd be going either today or tomorrow after school. I can't go tomorrow -- explanation to follow -- so I went today right from school.
It took forever to find the house, maybe 20 minutes away, but it took longer because I missed turns and in one place the street sign was actually bent so I thought I was on the wrong road. And then there was no one home. It was very freaky. I'm guessing that they weren't back from the funeral yet, which was at 11:00 this morning, but maybe the cemetery was far away somewhere. So that killed an hour I didn't have, and now I can't go tomorrow and I never even got to pay my respects and that makes me feel crappy.
I can't go tomorrow because GSA is having its end of the year bashlet, so I'm supposed to stick around for that, since I'm one of the club's advisors. But my real problem (as in, "That's not what I came to talk about. I came to talk about the draft.") is that today, I am being viciously and repeatedly bitten on the ass by one of my own personality quirks, one that I've always rather enjoyed.
As I may have mentioned, I wear blue jeans every day, nearly every single day of my life, in fact. Blue jeans are the perfect garment. I have over a dozen pair, although some of them are in sizes I can't quite wear right now, either too big or too small. I may also have mentioned that I only ever wear comfortable shoes, either Merrell mocs or some kind of sneakers. You may recall my paroxysms of joy last week when I succesfully wore sandals, a huge deviation from my normal way of life.
But you can't wear blue jeans to pay a shiva call, so I wore my one pair of black jeans today. Now I couldn't go tomorrow even if I had the time, because I don't have anything appropriate to wear.
One! One bite on the ass!
And anyway, after the GSA party tomorrow, which truthfully I'm considering ditching, I have to go to the mall. Because I have nothing -- nothing! to wear to that damn rehearsal brunch on Saturday.
Shit, this one is killing me. The few non-blue jeans items I have fit the rest of my pattern: they are brown or tan or black and they have been carefully selected to be worn with a) sneakers or sneaker-like shoes, or, b) brown Merrell mocs. I am, if you'll pardon the expression, fucked.
Two! Two bites on the ass!
We tried shopping today after the non-shiva call (bizarrely going to a mall right near where they're sitting, the mall I had used to turn around in when I got lost going there.) I went to Chico's, which is where I get the bulk of my non-jeans clothing, but they were pissy there and all their pants were cropped pants! Hello, I'm an elf; cropped pants look absurd on me. And the girls were doing their weird thing and by the time we left I wanted to pass out and die somewhere.
Three! Three bites on the ass!
Anyway, so now I have to spend tomorrow afternoon shopping for god-knows-what outfit in summery colors -- really, all I want is a pair of white pants that aren't jeans -- and then I have to buy shoes, of course, because I don't have any shoes that a grown woman would wear to a nice occasion (except my dyed shoes for Sunday, which make me look like an 82 year old grandmother and a librarian on holiday).
Four! Four bites on the ass!
You realize that this would all have been avoided if I had a normal middle-aged woman's obsession with nice clothes and pretty shoes. I'd have on hand just what I needed. Damn. I had to go out and buy a "pearl" necklace yesterday (Monet) just to have something to wear around my neck on Sunday.
Five! That's five bites on the ass! HAH HAH HAH!
