Reading: Blind Assassin

Moving: housework

Watching: Fawlty Towers

Learning: There are shoes that cost over $400 a pair. That people buy.

23 September 2000: Messages

So I stole the format. Sue me.

Dear Denver,
This is not "Monty Python and the Holy Grail." You seem have have given autumn a miss and gone straight on to winter. You're not funny.

Dear Lord & Taylor,
When your label says "Made expressly for you...by Lord & Taylor," all I can think of Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret. I don't want to buy Grandma's knitting.

Dear shoe manufacturers,
Shoes should know how to stay on the foot without any strappy thingie around the ankle. Strappy thingies are bad. Women do not want to wear fetters. Or they shouldn't, and I don't, and I'm right, so stop it.

Dear Valerie Stevens,
The Foley's at the Cherry Creek Mall in Denver, Colorado, doesn't have a pair of your delicious grey satin embroidered mules with the Louis heels in a size 9.5. Please send such a pair to me directly.

Dear Neiman Marcus,
It's bad enough you sell shoes for a price that could buy groceries for a family of four for a month, but whatever. What really offends me is your multi-tree, front-section Christmas display. It's September, you maniacs.

Dear world,
I give up. I'll get a pedicure so I can wear a pair of mules (if I could find the mules) without snagging the rayon and taffeta of my dresses on my calloused and cracked heels. But don't tell anyone.

So that was my Friday night. After all that I grocery-shopped but forgot peanut butter.

Also I found a pattern for a duvet cover that I liked, and the store lent me a pillow for 48 hours. I took it home and thought it matched and RDC agreed, so that's that. The problem with the leafy one from BB&B was that, besides its looking hotelesque, its shade of sage green clashed with both the lavender bedroom and the sage green hall and study. This pillow goes with both paint colors and it's not as ponderous as RDC's grape leaves. RDC is a wine drinker and liked the grape leaves; my favorite flower is lilac and oops, is that a lilac on the pillow? I believe it is.

Today has been drearily wet and cold. Happily, this means indoor projects. I cleaned. I tidied. I repotted the plant (red ivy) the Botanic Garden gave me (two weeks ago) when I joined. I moved the halogen torchière from my study to the living room, since the present ceiling fixture is about three candlepower. In my study I strung my Christmas tree lights and set up a couple of lamps, all of which together don't illuminate as entirely or as pleasantly as the torchière. I cleaned the bathroom. I did some laundry. I watched some Fawlty Towers on BBC America, which has made me very happy of late by providing Blackadder at 7:20 every evening.

One Fawlty episode I had never seen before; another was "The Wedding," which I had but not memorized; the last was "The German," which I thought I had pretty much down but had not. Blake and I went upstairs to get Monty, who naturally loves John Cleese. RDC got home from Home Despot right then and the four of us watched it together. I had forgotten about the nurse.

This single episode is the funniest one in all televisionania. It reminds me of my mother and makes me pity her. CLH had borrowed some tapes off a friend and brought them home one Christmas, thinking I might not know about Fawlty. We sat in the living room watching them and howling with laughter. Our mother was unamused. Did she mind the volume of our laughter? Did she rather we spent our days at home with each other conversing with her? These are not the objections she made. The objection she made to "Fawlty Towers" was that it was not funny.

It wouldn't bother me so much that she didn't find the Colonel's confusion over the talking moose or Basil's rudeness to the nurse ("Don't touch me--I don't know where you've been!") funny if I had ever known her to find anything funny, up to then or since. Her brother can make her laugh until she's maroon, which is a quality I really appreciate in him, but otherwise, nada.

Stuff I didn't do today:

  • Find out if any of the other window-coverings in the basement could replace the unlovely tan plaid one in my study. I am not the vampire the seller's son was and don't need that much light blocked.
  • Bring out the trash. It's raining.
  • Plot the lot and measure everything for the eventual garden. It's raining.
  • Go outside. It's raining and cold.
  • Use the stud finder to determine if I can put shelves on the three spots I wish. At least I thought about it, and then I wrote "9 volt" on the next shopping list, since that's why I couldn't.
  • Rearrange the books, starting from A, to fit in the two Lloyd Alexanders I bought, because if I have to move my Harry Potters onward, the next shelf is too low for them to be vertical. I need those shelves.

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Last modified 23 September 2000

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