I’d planned on posting this a week ago, but since I felt too dreadful, I’m posting it now. Tomorrow (Thursday) is my birthday-I could do a Byron sort of poem On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year, but instead I give U:
Goo!
It’s no secret that I loathe winter, is it? I hate the cutting cold, the bare trees, the very things that people always say they’d assumed I’d absolutely love. I don’t love, like it and it’s getting impossible to deal with. Period. if any of you happen to have a nice summerhouse that needs a bit of life-look NO farther-I can add life to all sorts of places! and it won’t even cost U a thing. Not to mention, I’m a neat freak-so I’ll probably tidy up your place far more than its been tidied in ages! I really need to get out of this drab place…But let’s move on to my snow day excursion.
Doesn’t it figure that the ONE day of the week when I agreed to go out with the gang, it’d decide to be extra cold, blowy and generally nasty. People have told me I carry a dark cloud above me-perhaps that dark cloud was the source of the icky weather?
I woke up to snow-but only a dusting, and so I put on the game face-and thought “ah, no biggie-Just a little snow-I’ll wear my tough girl boots and things’ll be just fine.” hmm….
My tough girl boots were a beloved pair of boots that I once upon a time treated myself to-even though I felt they were a bit overpriced. Back in the days of more money than sense I fell in love easily with shoes…. and dolls among other things-so once I had ‘eye contact’ with these things, we’d ‘click’ and then I had to have them-the only exception being a burgundy pair of Doc Martens that I fell hard for in a shop called Sentiments. the asking price was $260.00 and I thought “wow, I like you… a lot-and when your price comes down a little, I’ll like you even more-even love U-and I’ll take you home and walk all over the world in you.” Time passed, the price DID come down-minimally, which is a word that keeps finding its way into too many of my day to day conversations these days..So, yeah-the price came down in tiny drips and still, I waited. In fact, I waited too long-because by the time the price had dropped to $200.00, my own personal ’stock market’ had crashed and I never again visited the shop and never again saw those beloved boots. But other than that long lost love, I’ve usually taken my true loves home with me sooner or later-usually sooner.
So, I pull out my lovely tough girl boots -the sort of boots also referred to as “Boy Boots” by a twisted redneck that I had the displeasure of spendng my formative years having to refer to as ’step-daddy’. I’m very picky about my shoes-they MUST be polished and look nice all of the time-as a matter of fact, there’s two things that I apparently inherited from my grandfather-who sadly, was long gone before I came to this world: Never let anyone know how much money you have in your pocket. Even if you’ve only got pocket lint for company, never let on that you’re busted. and regardless of what kind of life you’re having, never let your shoes tell people your story.
For the most part-I’ve followed that advice. So, my tough girls are already polished and in the horrible mocking winter sun peering through the window, I notice a faint split in the back of one of the girls-where the sole meets the shoe. I was in a hurry and figured that perhaps the split or crack had always been there and maybe I’d been so blinded with love, I’d not noticed before. Let’s face it, love can blind you to all sorts of things-we can be so blinded by that chummy little feeling that we can ignore the fact that we’re in the company of a hardcore anarchist that may or may not rage into Benihana and grab a prop sword hanging in the lobby and then terrify the patrons-just for a laugh. We can be blind to the fact that the seemingly ‘ok’ thing or person you adore may in fact be a cheaply made piece of shite that was indeed probably falling apart at the seams when you decided to fork out too much of Daddy’s dirty green for them in the first place. Ah, such is love, my friends, correct?
I would assume this is exactly what happened with me and the tough girls. They were probably skanks from the very beginning, and I’d not taken the time to see them for what they truly are. Still they’ve been very faithful to me at times. For example, when I finally recovered from some sort of mysterious seemingly Multiple Sclerosis relapse (No, I’m not making it up-I’ve got the ’snapshots’ of my poor tortured-lesion covered brain to prove it) and had finally climbed out of the wheelchair which had been my constant companion for nearly two months until I discovered the “magic” of corticosterioids, the first thing I did was learn to walk again-without the constant terror of falling down. And the true test for me-the thing that convinced me that I was back in business and was moving-really moving on my own again, was pulling these heavy bad girls out of the closet and clomping around (semi) self-assured that I’d no longer be falling down and twisting numb ankles or seemingly flying through the air as if I’d been tossed like an empty can. So me and my girls became friends and I proudly wore them most of the time, retraining my still partially numb legs to carry the added weight around just like my old self again.
But over the past two years or so, they’ve been pushed aside for lighter, cooler, shorter boots-and usually only being called on when I had a ton of snow and ice to tread through. So how was I to know that Wednesday our long off and on relationship would fall to pieces?
Never take anything for granted, sweeties-not walking, nor love, nor a kick ass pair of boots-U really never know when things are going to fall apart (quite literally even).
So, after spending too long on Yahoo Messenger, I was forced to run around madly through the house getting ready-and because my cell phone doesn’t like bothering me with trivial things like text messages-even though I’ve politely ASKED it to, I was caught in my pjs-hair undone and without a touch of Lucia’s trademark heavy eyeliner-so I had the misfortune of trying to get ready in a flash, while two of my gang members sit there staring at me.
I don’t do well under pressure. I suck royally under pressure. In school, if I would have been forced to work at McDonalds like some of my other friends..ok, I only had one friend in high school, so lets say friend-If I would have tried to handle the McDonald’s job that my friend did, I would have quite literally attacked someone-it’s not my fault™. I simply can’t function under pressure. So putting my makeup on under the watchful eye of my impatient mother wasn’t fun to say the least. The snow had gotten heavier since the early morning dusting, but I soldiered on and went off to a new grocery store that I hadn’t been to before. This store-or the deli/produce section at least, was marvelous! There were so many choices-I felt like I was in veggie heaven-I actually took the time to check out the eggplants (for my first attempt at Rataouille) and eventually made my way over to the cheese section-where they have every sort of cheese known to man. I’m a cheese lover, so I punched out the germaphobe Lucia and grabbed some toothpicks and began testing the goods. There was an amazing hard parmesian, and delicious sharp cheddar and the best-a blueberry cheese. WOW!! It was like the most beautiful cheesecake taste in the whole world ever! Of course along the way, I encountered cheese that tasted slimey like calimari-which I was suckered into trying once-despite the fact I loathe anyting that once lived in the ocean. And there was a beer cheese which had an odd color about it, so I skipped it.
But the grocery store fun didn’t stop there. I sought out-like I usually do, the “International” section-and they had an INSANE selection-at least for this area and in this particular chain-and No, it wasn’t the evil MART of all marts by the way. Their idea of International is Taco Bell brand taco dinners-trust me, I’ve looked.
I’ll spare you the rest of the details but in the end, I found some wonderful Jalfrezzi ingredients and some curry paste-which I’ve never used before, but am SO looking forward to trying. I also got about….3 tons of Jasmine rice-which is, along with basmati, my favorite rice.
So I had a decent time all in all-as far as grocery shoppong goes; but lets face it-decent times rarely last, do they?
As I was stomping through the slushy snow back to the car, I noticed a strange flapping sound coming from my footsteps. But when I’m that cold, I’m really too pissed off to care-so I kept walking. As I was getting into the car, I happened to catch a glimpse of one of my beloved tough girls, grinning an ugly gaped toothed grin up at me-yeah, the whole sole of my right boot had pulled itself away-which would explain the horrible flapping sound and the fact that though it had somehow managed to stay dry, my foot was freezing. I can imagine how this must have looked to passerbys- the black anime-haired (on good days) woman in the long black fur-trimmed coat aimlessly making her way through the arctic winds with her dumbass flapping boot! I was beyond disgusted-in the same way you get a bellyache when you witness your doggy getting plowed by a train. My gal, one of them- had ditched me. So, I had to make a trip home, where D was kind enough to bring down a different pair of boots.
In the next, more local, more dreaded store, I discovered shoe glue- aptly named GOO!. Wow, I thought-with the naive hopefulness of an 8 year-old that discovers sea monkeys for the first time in the back of a comic book and actually believes they will really look like the pink people in the drawings: this will work! My boot’s will be as good as new!
And then something even MORE dreaded and unthinkable happened. After paying for my things, I noticed some lucky troll looking person with a gaggle of snotty nosed(no really they were pretty icky-nosed), kids waving at me. At first, I assumed it was someone behind me, but then she stepped out of line and walked straight up to me and said “Is Your name Luci?” and all I could do was fake the slightest smile possible. Those brows-the same wooly unshaped brows she’d had nearly 20 years ago. It could only be one of my former high school torturers-. The same torturer that teased behind my back about the fact that for whatever reason, the Big Boob fairy had given me not one, but at least TWO visits-and sung mock chinese songs when I stepped into class-implying that I looked chinese, I assume. I had absolutely no problem with’looking chinese’, but I hated the way the torturers found such strength in numbers and had the audacity to tease ME about anything. But here she was, actually hugging me-HUGGING ME-actually touching ME-invading myspace-and asking where I’d been? So, to swallow the old wave of pre-Columbine memories that outcast like me had the misfortune of suffering, I gave her a very brief rundown of what I’d been doing-ending with the fact that I have an English web-developer for a hubby-which for some reason always impresses the hell out of most American women ( It seems American girls are suckers for that accent-even now-go figure!) That, as I expected was enough to send the troll into a frenz of: “Oh My God-that is so COOOOL! U are SOOOO lucky!” And to top it off, I added that I was planning on moving to Cornwall in a year or so-and then came an even more gushy reaction from the hairy browed ex-torturer. She had the nerve to ask if I still talked to anyone from school and all I had to do as a reply was give her one of my L sneers. I asked her a question too by the way :”So, have you always lived here, or did you ever move away?”
Wanna guess what her answer was?
She actually asked if I would “PLEASE” come to the 20 year reunion that she was “personally” organizing-and I said I would If I had the time. Oh, yeah-I neglected to remind her that because of the league of oxygen thieves like herself, I had stopped going to public school in 11th grade-opting for the ancient version of homeschool, which, believe it or not was a very cool alternative-even for ‘88/89-I took classes like sociology and psychology while she and the other plain janes baked cakes and learned how to be good wives for their future hubbies in Home Economics.
So I said goodbye to Eyebrows and her snot-brood, and went home, Thanking every possible powers that be that I didn’t end up with such a miserable fate as troll girl and pretty excited about the notion that I’d be able to save my beloved boots.
But the next day, I tried the Goo!, and it wasn’t pretty-The glue was goo indeed, and while the sole is once again attached-the entire sole is covered in a clear inch of goo-so, hopefully, I’ll be able to carefully scrape some of the excess glue off-But even if I manage to make them wearable again, I doubt I’ll ever feel safe wearing them without a back-up pair of boots, so my love affair with my old faithful girls have come to an abrupt ending it seems and I’m left to wander the world barefoot and cold, until I find the next suitable pair of tough girl boots-(ok, that’s a small exaggeration), but still, it sounded like the perfect bittersweet ending to such a sad breakup, didn’t it?
So for now, stay warm and if you ARE very warm-stop being so smug!…and make room, because I am SO coming to visit!
~13
Ex Tough Girl:
Ugly Grin of a Love Gone VERY bad:
The ones that ‘got away’, and to be honest, I really can’t think what I ever saw in them anyway:
The kind of Troll that makes fun of girls like me:
The Great GOO! Disaster:
AND…
and the moral is:
Usually, what’s dead is truly dead, and U gotta learn to let the tough girls and those ex-torturers go sometimes.
