Soaking In It

(2000-05-20)

Hub went to New York last night--river rafting doncha know, my little urban outdoorsman-- and I THOUGHT I was going to be whiling away the time doing something very different than what I ended up doing. The first part of the plan was to work late. That's been, unfortunately, part of the plan all week since MARILOU NUNEZ OF SANTA CLARA CALIFORNIA has no qualms about leaving her workplace high and dry with three days notice. Then I was going to stop at Osco to re-supply (hair color, tuna fish, bubblebath, cotton balls, the requisite kitty toy...no, that's not a euphemism for anything, they like the little fur mousies), get home and eat something, then go to the Rumble with Jim. Simple, done this night a thousand times.

I only made one point-of-purchase buy at Osco-- a see-thru pen with a frog on top that LIGHTS UP when you write!(I'm 30 and this excites me). I finally made it home at about 8:15. Made a phone call and a tuna sandwich at the same time-- my own private circus act when you factor in the four cats-- and then realized I have fifteen minutes to get out the door.

I didn't get out the door. With my Osco merchandise de-bagged and tumbled onto the kitchen island, kitties who've barely seen me all week, a cold and raw rain out there...plus Darkbuster's playing and their fans are so obnoxious...

I remember my mother having this occasional event called "beauty day." Inasmuch as she could in a small ranch house with two kids (three if you count her husband who still can't boil water) and two dogs, she'd spend hours on herself. A bubblebath, then a facial, then probably a henna-- my mom sported that eggplant color that everyone's wearing now, including me. Well I WAS, until last night. Perhaps in some unexpected surge of desire to have more fun, I didn't get Clairol Dark Burgundy #34. I got Born Blonde.

So it took a mere fraction of a second to decide. I colored and soaked and manicured and mudpacked, the guiltiest-of-guilty pleasures in the CD player (last night it was Culture Club and Erasure) and had THE BEST TIME. I didn't tackle any problems, didn't mull over a single person's psychological motivation, didn't worry about jack OR squat. The only thought that popped into my head for some reason was how Shaw's supermarkets bought out Star supermarkets, but that in this town Shaw is pronounced as though it rhymes with Star and vice versa. If you live here, think about it. If you don't, you don't even wanna know.

I never even called Jim. Or Hub, now that I think about it...