After last Saturday's rain, the basement rug got wet and we brought it outside Sunday to dry. Except I didn't bring it in Monday so it's been wet all week. I am pretty sure I foresee a replacement. But I have to go attack it with the wet-dry vacuum and see if it's salvageable. Plus today it's sunnier but the sun will have a better chance at bleaching or killing the mold or just finishing the drying job if I use the wet-dry vac now. My other tasks today are digging the edging into the north front garden and digging out the easement and the strip between the sumac tree and the property line. I'm really not enthused about doing these things. So I'm babbling here.
It's not so babbly to say that "Holes" was pretty good. The casting was great (except that the actor who plays Stanley's mother annoys me), the story and the mood were faithful to those of the book, and the music fit well. It fit well now, in 2003; my only criticism is that it will date the movie more than necessary. Or maybe only if it's cringeworthy. I just watched "Roxanne" for the first time in a million years and that 1987 mood music was terribly intrusive, like Yaz in "The Chocolate War" or "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" in "Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid."
It is babbly to say that I found a black jersey skirt, just what I wanted--at T.J. Maxx. Cherry Creek is not a very good mall, as no mall probably can be, and Cherry Creek North is waaaaay too expensive a neighborhood to shop in. I went into Bryn Walker, a (shocking!) independent (I think) clothing store in the mall, and I found a skirt I loved because its rear hem fell nearly to the floor while the front hem hit only a mid-ankle.
Then the saleswoman suggested a pair of pants, and what the hell, I don't actually own pants that aren't jeans, for yoga, or part of a suit, so I did. She loved them (or professed to) on me and my "cute shape." She was rounder than I am and it's just a Fact that Salespeople Lie and that if she were thinner herself she wouldn't've said I have a great ass. Since I spent my entire childhood in mortal fear of floodwater pants, I cannot get behind this cropped thing. But I didn't take them off yet.
I tried on a shirt (that she called a "top," which usage makes me itch in a vague way) that did not disguise the bosom nearly as much as I require my shirts to do. There might even have been, by means of clinginess, emphasis, when I have spent my entire boobed life deemphasizing. It was also black, and I should maybe stop shopping with my mental mother. "Don't wear black next to your face" is an axiom I believe in anyway, and I don't wear red. Not because it makes one look like a whore, which is my mother's credo, but because red with any yellow to it doesn't work with my skin tone and red with any blue to it reminds me of my mother's beloved maroons and roses.
But in the black shirt and pants, I tried on a straw hat with a wide brim and slightly peaked crown, and I mourned Audrey. Then the saleswoman wrapped a scarf around my shoulders, and holy shit, I looked--well, I'll say it, I looked pretty good. I looked really good. I looked stylish and as if I didn't dress at Ross. Also I didn't look dumpy and dowdy but attractively curvy, which is a pleasant change.
Her next push was for different shoes. Another reason for me not to wear the pale linen skirt is that I am going to bring one pair of shoes for the week, my black Dansko clogs, and I Don't Wear Black Shoes with Pale Colors. (Which is why I didn't buy a beautiful pink linen dress at Casual Corner, besides that pink linen doesn't travel or hold up for a week any better than undyed linen). She wanted me to try on a pair of mary janes with a flat footbed. Yeah, flâneuring around Paris in new shoes without proper support. That sounds good.
Meanwhile she was telling me she just wouldn't let me get the skirt, that I must get the pants instead. Meanwhile the other customer (in the two-salesperson store) was making a purchase of six hundred and sixty-four dollars (more than my plane ticket). The pants were sixty bucks, as was the skirt; I hadn't looked at the booby shirt's price tag nor that of the scarf or the hat or the shoes. Dumpy and dowdy is cheaper and takes less space on an international flight. Damn. I asked her to hold the skirt and pants and vamoosed with empty hands.
I took the bus downtown, ransacked Ross and T.J. Maxx before "Holes," and found yet another in my long-running series of black jersey skirts, sturdier than the Bryn Walker one, ankle-length though without the fabulous sweeping hem, unwaisted. Also a black linen "top" with white embroidery on it (for my white linen skirt, because my mental mother won't let me buy a piece if it doesn't work with something I already have).
After "Holes" I walked down to the Tattered Cover (take that, Barnes & Noble! which is right under the movie theatre) for Emlet: Make Way for Ducklings and a charming book about a squirrel who paints with his tail, inspired by everything he sees through the windows at the Met. (I do secretly still love the sunflower-beheading, nectarine-raiding, tomato-nibbling squirrels.) This squirrel's name was Micawber, and what could be cuter? But they didn't have Giraffes Can't Dance, so I still haven't seen that. And a Paris guide or two, based on what seemed best from the 'brary.
I am so glad I borrowed this from the Cherry Creek library yesterday: the Audible.com version ended about seven minutes or one chapter too early. I thought that the goat's name was Jolie, because it was pretty, but it was Djali. Also Quasimodo was named for the Sunday on which he was found, and it happened to suit his person as well. There's a half-man holiday, like Whitsunday and Assumption? Okay.
I finished it on the porchswing.
The rug is almost dry, but I wonder if the sun will be able to shine the smell out of it, or if the smell lasted only as long as the wet. I suspect we'll find out the hard way.
I ripped out some of the bit by the porch, trying to spare the grape hyacinth and the tulip that I would like to transplant when the big silver sage goes in there. I put in some edging, but not more because I didn't rip everything out. I didn't rip everything out because the soil's still so wet (excuses excuses...) and would dry into its clumps. And that's really it.
Otherwise Blake and I sat in the sun and read Toni Cade Bambara. I wasn't wearing much, it was 73, and I was hot. Is that usual?