Dance Party at the Office! Well, the internet and ethernet agree: this is soooo not a day to be at work. Emails are sluggish. Court file access will likely be hit or miss. Bad internet and the CLOUD (sans either Atlas or Google Maps...) is not debilitating to one's ability to work, but it's not the hugest boost to one's work ethic either. As a disincentive to productivity, it is up there with the beautiful dawn whispering fickle fulminations on the future swelter of the office space. Add the strange office juju that we've been experiencing and it amasses in amoral chaotic frenzy of "I would definitely prefer not to!" So, even if my usual music stations are crapping out on me, I call it a DANCE PARTY at the office!!! Hike up your skirts ladies and (Scottish) gentlemen (whose virility I am assured by recent science newsyish sources cannot be matched), and kick up your heels! But only after you sign waivers and a few acceptance of liability forms. This is a legal office, after all.
Yesterday, I made a further foray into expanding my mediation practice. These excursions sempiternally involve plenty of social chatter, coffee swilling, swaps of high-minded aspirational talk, accompanied by scant detail. But in this case, there may be a concrete opportunity to apply our high minded ideas. This would almost serve as a pared down version of the Cadillac collaborative model, which appeals to me as a middle ground for clients who do not feel comfortable pursuing the grand package but who could benefit from some of its finer points. The opportunity is one hazy crepuscle, but one worth another cup of coffee and idle chatter aiming at gradual revelations of concrete logistics. Consider that my ambitious moment for the week, before I set to jigging.
My true foray was my very first married-lady date-night. Of course +Andrew Wright used to have these scheduled mid-week nights through our student days, but now that we're married, everything is totally different. At least, it marks that our transitional phase has settled down enough to add some mandatory novelty back into the mix, as antidote to potential complacency with those faint ruts of routine (hurray, we have routine!).
As previously, I did a little research (the spreadsheets and notebooks are archived for future donation to the Metropolitan Museum), and selected a restaurant. It was one I'd been to several times before in my teenage years, but not frequently. Very casual, but the sort of place that gave me my tasty salad and Andrew his enormous steak mexican-inspired something with fancy chips and salsas. And it's the best part of town to sit in a window (definitely behind glass as the passers-by can be aggressively colorful) and people watch.
I was so excited about this whole shebang, that I even put on a skirt and some very cute socks and- ok, paper bag on standby for those prone to hyperventilation - left my cell phone at home! Yeah, that's how much I love my husband. We still have some money left over from our wedding gift-pile, so whichever guests did not buy us our dresser are now paying for us to have these little nights. Thanks now-anonymous donors! Of course the best part was that we got to come back home together, he totally did get that kiss (and many more) good night, and by the end of the evening we were in pajamas watching Sports Night on my laptop.
Most nights, we're both pretty busy - Andrew tending to his recondite training schedule, me doing my bizarre kitchen things (mostly involving live emus, a little open flame, and some good old fashioned chanting, of course), us tending to errands and chores and bills (oh my!), and both of us eventually unable to resist the vortex of our various portals into the virtual abyss. People may have queried whether television inhibits bonding, but I think that judiciously applied it can do just the opposite. I may have reclaimed my phone by the end of the evening, but there's something oddly affirming about just having a single screen for us to stare at, and a single story/experience for us to vicariously share (and talk about while contorting through various momentarily comfortable configurations of cuddle).
In all, it was a lovely evening, that sent me to sleep with a smile on my face and waking with possibly less than renewed energy for business as usual. At any rate, the internet comes and goes, and so does my morale. Papers are up and at hand for minor edits. Chronologies are falling slack, awaiting polishes. Ads lay in pieces demanding construction... And I dance in my head and only sometimes on chairs, while I trudge through the business part of the day!
After Date Night Come Singles Night - In homage to the eternal paean quality over quantity, Mr. (W)right and I honor our special date night with a personal-space/singles night nibbling at its toes. One night a week - Friday for May - I know that I have the house, the night, and my mental energies entirely to myself. Andrew, in turn, knows HE MUST CRUSH THE COMPETITION - PUSH PUSH PUSH - as he happens to spend this night in a superman costume at Marymoore Velodrome, track racing to his heart's content (and various lactate thresholds).
Track cycle racing is an odd sport, something of which I admit to having minimal first-hand knowledge. But I have watched quite a lot of Olympic track racing! And Andrew has dissected his various races in such opulent detail that it's as if I've been there teetering on the edge of explosion, grasping at points and looping round and round and round again. I won't spoil the fun for you. Let it simply be said that organizers perhaps recognize going around and around and around may become dull without additional rules and requirements. I'd also go out on a limb and suggest that many organizers are a bit... mathy in inclination. As such, there are several variations on going round and round, each requiring slightly different strategies and rewarding different approaches. So far, I have no doubt that Andrew is a strong contender for the bathing-suit portion of the competition.
But yes, enough about my husband. Last night was about ME. Singular Ms. (W)right and her shore leave from the S.S. Marital Bliss. Oh the rabble rousing, I assure you, was positively scandalous! The food processor awhir at a frenzied howl, shedding aside eternal layers of identity into onioney piles of nothing but layers!!, and the mad permutations of evening dress running from fleece to boxers to long underwear and back again! This girl knows how to live it up. And down. And up again.
Although I cherish my momentary dominion over the house, I did also spend the evening out for some true adventure: Shopping part two!! Yes, that's right. I girded, braced, and cinctured the hell out of my loins, and sidled back to that bullet for another gnaw. This time, I did it at the far less daunting Labels, a designer(ish) consignment store that has pullulated about Whatcom County almost as prodigiously as our Woods Coffees, Whatcom Educational Unions, and other endlessly replicating local businesses that make Starbucks seem like a meager Mom and Pop.
One of the things I appreciate about Labels - aside from having clothes that were assigned sizes before the vanity madness, and aside from obscenely favorable pricing - is that they organize the clothes intuitively. I suspect that this is partially due to their aim of having several people be able to rummage in, rummage out and not interfere with each other too much. I'd contrast that to the usual baffle-them-into-submission approach of first-hand clothing stores.
At Labels (and most second-hand stores of any mettle), long pants of "small sizes" are in one circular rack, which is further sub-categorized by color; similarly, all the small sizes of t-shirts are on a single rack, as are small sizes of blouses, as are small sizes of skirts... And the dressing room doors lay ajar for repeated visits without any perky gate-keeper insisting how AMAZING I look in that salmon-barf and puce onesie she absolutely insisted I must try on. There is the downside that sizing has even less meaning in a second-hand store, due to the olio of designer interpretations within and without their brands over time. However, due to the aforementioned unhindered access to changing rooms, a determined shopper can assuredly assay approximately twenty candidates within the time it takes to explain to a first-hand store clerk that you don't really want to give out your email or sign up for any discount notifications or get the credit card to save 15% on my next purchase or...
I admit that there is some ineffable quality to the new pants that made the long trek to Burlington into the very bowels of retail hell quite worth my while. They look and feel darned good! But since I am far too tapped on mental reserves, and far too cheap, to follow up with several additional excursions, Labels was an excellent and far more comfortable way to fill out the wardrobe reconstruction on which these pants broke first ground.
The entire trip cost approximately twenty minutes and the price of the pants(slightly less, in fact, despite the fact that I found the pants on half-off sale) for jeans, two pairs of work pants, and new pajamas. I am triumphant!! I at the very least am more likely to extend this not-going-to-work-looking-like-a-hobo thing for a few more weeks!
To round our my excesses of success and do my own little victory lap, I went to The Croods (almost entirely empty theater, but alack the possible perambulations of a fully vacant house were stymied by the arrival of a father and his little daughters - drat!), then returned to a full pile of crosswords and plenty of veggies. Oh yes, if Andrew only knew how wild his little wifey got when he stays out late, he'd never leave my side!
I did not, as I was wont to do, read. It's too soon after the last book and I always need a day or two to reflect. I had finished The Beautiful and the Damned mid-week, leaving Mr. Patch smugly insane in his hollowed-out wealthy stupor and Gloria pouting in her fine fur coat. It was really coincidental that I stumbled into my favorite F. Scott just as all the Gatsby gadding escalated to full pitch, but I've decided my compromise with this new film's existence is that I shall have read TBD and shall soon watch Strictly Ballroom. This is my way to make peace with old Baz who once made a fantastic film and then mascerated his oeuvre into a sickly paste, deftly ripping through stories I love with a day-glo (3D!!) machete.
I wonder why it is so painful to have art you love feel misappropriated, or for artists you find fatuously pretentious to be embraced as geniuses... And why such a generally judgment free woman can work herself into a pleasurable froth decrying a book, author, or auteur whose works have been somehow thrust upon me in lieu of fame. I'm sure there's far too much soul-searching to go into on a post-single-cabbage-chopping-movie-going-pants-buying-single-lady-binge... Suffice to say, I'm in the market for a new book! Until then, I've got a few crosswords left and a whole HEAP of cabbage (and onions) in the fridge. And a husband who has returned in what appeared to be one piece. He got in after I had zonked well-out and my main interactions have been focused on keeping some small portion of that damned sheet he keeps trying to throw on the floor, and possibly not kicking him anywhere delicate when I occasionally toss and/or turn.
And Macy's said 'Let There be Sofa' and There Was Sofa, and the (W)rights saw that it was good: The final set-piece to our grandiose game of house arrived yesterday! Andrew and I have long agreed that it is a wise investment in our marriage to cultivate - in addition to regular cleaning service - an auxiliary sleeping chamber for those moments of severe discrepancy in sleep-schedule or style (sometimes we all like a somnabulistic rodeo, and sometimes we just really don't need that extra kick in the ass to achieve our dreams). Sleep deprivation is for the parents. We're DINKs. We demand sofa! And we have received sofa. We also like the idea of being able to inhabit the same room when Andrew is pulled upstairs by the siren screeches of his laptop and all its computing capacity. Me, I'd live in the kitchen if I could, but he enjoys his little study/office situation.
Our sofa is spectacular, spanning the equator with soft bouncy amenity. It even looks nice in our room. We undertook to find a sofa a few weeks ago. This is always a harrowing experience, as you may imagine given my previous descriptions of clothes shopping. There are occasionally furniture stores that simply leave you to your couch surfing. In fact, there was one in Maryland that had several stories, the top tier of which my best friend and I often enjoyed as a secret respite from the blaring world of Philosopher Kings, tourists and Middies. However, these are rare.
More often, the sales people are torn between solicitude and soft-sell, flitting in and out with input as they try to hide the fact that they've been stalking you through the store waiting to strike. They are all very nice, but I can feel myself being watched ever-so-closely. And, well, a sofa is a sofa. All the variations in sofa described in painstaking detail on those little tags make my mind whirl. It was actually quite to my surprise that Andrew appeared to have far more pointed opinions about the fabric of the couch... of course he also suggested a rather unsavory fabric scheme that I denounced as "1970's swim meet towel* in a slight pique. Still, while I am somewhat skeptical of Mr. (W)right's color-savvy, given that he calls his copper bag "red," I'm glad to say that we managed to plop up and down on enough couches to find one with only two available fabric options. Either through actual fortune or simply because the shopping had eroded our judgmental capacity, we liked one of the colors. In final stroke of fortune, the color is, in fact, quite appropriate for the room.
As is common, we purchased our sofa and then began the long wait to possess it. Macy's auto-called me and flooded me with emails reminding me of the impending delivery. Our calendars screamed out COUCH yesterday. And finally, the phone rang and the time came.
Our delivery people oozed skepticism about our plans for putting the couch upstairs. They asserted with quavering concern that it was highly unlikely that our sofa would be able to fit through the serpentine hallway and arrive unscathed in the room. Given the certainty of presentation, I suspected that we were moments away from a permanent couch-stair-installation homage to Richard MacDuff. But, as they do, they sighed and tried it anyways. I wonder if they do this with every delivery in the hopes the people will say "oh, ok, just leave somewhere easier then." Whatever their intentions, they exceeded their own expectations. With minimal crashes and not a single dysphemistic grouse, the sofa landed in its new home.
Finally, I can return to staring over the top of my laptop/netbook/ultrabook/smart-phone/kindle/Martha Stewart Magazine (oh darn, my one year ninja subscription of that just ran out... why I got a free year I'll not guess, but it did create some desire to subscribe only countered by my cheapness and terror of Martha Stewart) at my husband's hunched shoulders. Perhaps from this new vantage point, I can even see the bowels of his five or seven cabalistic "training log" sites (voodoo).
Ok, maybe not always... sometimes, there may be a few obstructions to the view...
As we were supposed to wait from 10:45 - 12:45 for our couch "window," and the delivery occurred - naturally - at 9:30, Mr. (W)right and I wasted no time on celebrating our bounty. Instead we reapportioned our run (usually scheduled the following day, but as said day has been scheduled by the weather gods as "rainy", we were flexible). As is often the case, I needed to borrow running clothes from Andrew to do this. No matter how much I plan, something will either be left at home, left at the office, or - in this case - just in the wash. Surprisingly, Mr. (W)right's various proffered pants continue to be quite accessible to get into in all regards. Another key to a great marriage!
We then, miracle of miracles, got couples hair cuts. No, not matching. Not yet. Andrew was quite clear with his stylist that while he enjoyed the slight androgyny of his longer lovely hair, he was not ready to take the plunge into that degree of stratified fuss. I am glad. I like to think I am the layered one in the relationship, take that as you will! Mine looks like my hair, but plumped and fluffed back up. His looks delightfully in-between military recruit and mountain man. I love his long tresses, but I like it when they don't smother me every time we kiss, so the chin-length is something of a perfect win in my opinion.
Naturally, Andrew celebrated his new hair by going on some sort of insane bike ride up a mountain, while I returned to chanting with chickens and doing your typical sofa-welcoming rituals. I believe it feels quite at home now... as do we... as do we!
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