Weekend Wonderings --- Pseudo-Anatomical Analyzings
Very long day today .... it began with me kicking myself as I awoke at 5:45 this morning, having not turned the alarm on last night. Which in and of itself wasn't really a problem, since I woke up in time for what I had to wake up for. But it wasn't exactly the time I had planned on getting up for.
See, a certain good friend of mine had her first "real" (nunly) job interview this morning for a job that she REALLY REALLY REALLY wants. And, since we were initially going to go shopping for a dress for her First Monastic Profession today (all sorts of excitement heading her way, no?!?), we figured I'd go with her to the Big City for her interview and then do the dress shopping. However, with Time Zone details (to be ranted about in a Coming-Soon-To-A-Blog-Near-You post), distance, and early morning appointment, we were scheduled to leave here at 6-ish. No problem, right? After all, I've perfected the SpeedyWakeUp (see Insomnia and Time I Wake Up answers here).
But, it is a problem when I had these great thoughts last night to make some yummy muffins and her favorite coffee and bring it down to wake her up as a little special Good Morning & Good Luck Surprise (although, I ended up deciding eggs and toast might be faster --- plus, I'm not sure if we had muffin ingredients down here on the floor, even though I found some yummy-looking recipes. But, I digress.). But, 15 minutes before departure-time (not including my own clothing & teeth-brushing time) was a bit late to be working out logistics for a Breakfast in Bed delivery.
She was cool with it, though, and made up some feel-good-line about how not having her normal morning routine would have thrown her out of whack or something like that. It was a nice try, anyway! :-) But, we found a car with a CD player, threw some fun tunes in the car, and drove off into the sunrise.
When we got to the Suburb of the Big City for the school, we discovered that it took WAY less time than we expected, but that was partially good because we had to do a slight turn-around off the interstate since for some reason they decided that it wasn't important to put exit numbers or road names on the particular ramp that we neded to use. After our extra-scenic route we found the school, and then she drove a little bit more down the road and shoved me out of the car at a McDonald's and told me that maybe she'd be back to pick me up later, if she was feeling nice. So I sat there and attempted to get some work done for school (very important because it wasn't until I had been sitting there for an hour and a half trying to figure out how to condense 1100 years of church history into 12 class periods or less that I looked at the calendar and realized that, in actuality, it's only 7 class periods -- and that includes any tests I'll give them, final exam prep, etc.! Stupid way-too-long abstinence class! But that'll be a later rant as well!)
But it was a very effective time for me -- I had forgotten how my most productive planning and grading before I entered happened at the food court of the local mall --- just enough chaos around that I didn't have to look for distractions, but an unfamiliar enough setting that there wasn't the "run down to the kitchen and grab something to munch" every two minutes.
And so I proceeded to sit at McDonalds from about 7:45 until 10:20, which at any other time would have driven me absolutely batty, but in this context it was more of a "Yay! She's still there!" So everyone send lots of WishWishWish thoughts her way, and telepathic "Hire Her" messages to the principal!
After much rejoicing over how well it seemed to go, we then got down to the original planned purpose of this expedition: a plain black skirt or dress.
Now, keep in mind that we were in Suburb of Big City, and then quickly went into Big City itself. And I'm not using those terms to make fun of Nowheresville -- we were truly in Big City. And keep in mind, too, that, while we are living in a monastery, it's a rather progressive monastery. We wear Real-People Clothes and even go out and interact with Real People on occasions. And I'd like to think that I manage to keep at least semi-okay tabs on the events in our world, and my friend gets the New York Times daily e-mails and works in our Communications Office, I guess we're a bit more isolated than we would have thought.
Because, apparently, we both missed the memo about the addition of skirts to the Endangered Species List.
Even in the Business Coordinates section .... it was shorts. Long shorts are now business attire?!?!? Don't get me wrong, I'm all about casual comfy, but to not even have the option?!?!? And yeah, sure, I've got a nice stock of dress pants, but shorts???? Not quite.
And we'd scan racks in gazillions of stores, look for black, think "Oh, this could be good" .... only to realize that it was hung in such a way that it only looked like a skirt. Which the abnormal freak that I am quickly morphed into not just saying "Oh wait, it's just pants" .... no, I had to point out the difference between pants and skirts/dresses......
Which brings us to the Question of the Day:
Why does everything have legs?!?!?
We've decided that there might be a summer project in learning how to sew. At least something simple like a straight black skirt. Maybe the stuff my sisters tried to teach me when I was little sunk in a bit ....
See, a certain good friend of mine had her first "real" (nunly) job interview this morning for a job that she REALLY REALLY REALLY wants. And, since we were initially going to go shopping for a dress for her First Monastic Profession today (all sorts of excitement heading her way, no?!?), we figured I'd go with her to the Big City for her interview and then do the dress shopping. However, with Time Zone details (to be ranted about in a Coming-Soon-To-A-Blog-Near-You post), distance, and early morning appointment, we were scheduled to leave here at 6-ish. No problem, right? After all, I've perfected the SpeedyWakeUp (see Insomnia and Time I Wake Up answers here).
But, it is a problem when I had these great thoughts last night to make some yummy muffins and her favorite coffee and bring it down to wake her up as a little special Good Morning & Good Luck Surprise (although, I ended up deciding eggs and toast might be faster --- plus, I'm not sure if we had muffin ingredients down here on the floor, even though I found some yummy-looking recipes. But, I digress.). But, 15 minutes before departure-time (not including my own clothing & teeth-brushing time) was a bit late to be working out logistics for a Breakfast in Bed delivery.
She was cool with it, though, and made up some feel-good-line about how not having her normal morning routine would have thrown her out of whack or something like that. It was a nice try, anyway! :-) But, we found a car with a CD player, threw some fun tunes in the car, and drove off into the sunrise.
When we got to the Suburb of the Big City for the school, we discovered that it took WAY less time than we expected, but that was partially good because we had to do a slight turn-around off the interstate since for some reason they decided that it wasn't important to put exit numbers or road names on the particular ramp that we neded to use. After our extra-scenic route we found the school, and then she drove a little bit more down the road and shoved me out of the car at a McDonald's and told me that maybe she'd be back to pick me up later, if she was feeling nice. So I sat there and attempted to get some work done for school (very important because it wasn't until I had been sitting there for an hour and a half trying to figure out how to condense 1100 years of church history into 12 class periods or less that I looked at the calendar and realized that, in actuality, it's only 7 class periods -- and that includes any tests I'll give them, final exam prep, etc.! Stupid way-too-long abstinence class! But that'll be a later rant as well!)
But it was a very effective time for me -- I had forgotten how my most productive planning and grading before I entered happened at the food court of the local mall --- just enough chaos around that I didn't have to look for distractions, but an unfamiliar enough setting that there wasn't the "run down to the kitchen and grab something to munch" every two minutes.
And so I proceeded to sit at McDonalds from about 7:45 until 10:20, which at any other time would have driven me absolutely batty, but in this context it was more of a "Yay! She's still there!" So everyone send lots of WishWishWish thoughts her way, and telepathic "Hire Her" messages to the principal!
After much rejoicing over how well it seemed to go, we then got down to the original planned purpose of this expedition: a plain black skirt or dress.
Now, keep in mind that we were in Suburb of Big City, and then quickly went into Big City itself. And I'm not using those terms to make fun of Nowheresville -- we were truly in Big City. And keep in mind, too, that, while we are living in a monastery, it's a rather progressive monastery. We wear Real-People Clothes and even go out and interact with Real People on occasions. And I'd like to think that I manage to keep at least semi-okay tabs on the events in our world, and my friend gets the New York Times daily e-mails and works in our Communications Office, I guess we're a bit more isolated than we would have thought.
Because, apparently, we both missed the memo about the addition of skirts to the Endangered Species List.
Even in the Business Coordinates section .... it was shorts. Long shorts are now business attire?!?!? Don't get me wrong, I'm all about casual comfy, but to not even have the option?!?!? And yeah, sure, I've got a nice stock of dress pants, but shorts???? Not quite.
And we'd scan racks in gazillions of stores, look for black, think "Oh, this could be good" .... only to realize that it was hung in such a way that it only looked like a skirt. Which the abnormal freak that I am quickly morphed into not just saying "Oh wait, it's just pants" .... no, I had to point out the difference between pants and skirts/dresses......
Which brings us to the Question of the Day:
We've decided that there might be a summer project in learning how to sew. At least something simple like a straight black skirt. Maybe the stuff my sisters tried to teach me when I was little sunk in a bit ....
posted by Steph Youstra at 11:42 PM
5 Comments:
You know, I went to the mall last night to try to find a nice oufit for Easter. I did manage to find some skirts to try on, but they are frilly and flowing and look more appropriate in my opinion to a Charlie's Angels reunion than to a human being in 2006 wearing them.
I just wanted a plain khaki skirt. But apparenly that's on the endangered species list too.
I have quite the opposite problem. I look at something that I think has legs, and it's a skirt.
Have you tried Kohl's? (It's between the two malls, behind Star Ford on Shelbyville Road.)
I had a similar experience last week. At one point I thought I wanted to wear a skirt to my mom's memorial service, but the only skirts I own were too festive for the occasion; I had to go to A Big City for another task anyway, so I thought I'd stop at the mall and get a basic black skirt, to wear with my gray tweed jacket. Just a plain ol' black skirt. (Just what I wanted to do that day...not...but that's another story.)
Three hours and several accelerations of blood pressure later...I finally found a black box-pleated skirt that fit the bill, at Sears. No one else had skirts on the rack. They had gaucho pants -- really atrocious ones, I might add -- and shorts, and skorts, and hippy-chick broomstick skirts with mirrors and beading on them, but no basic business-attire skirts. Very strange.
(I wound up wearing a black pantsuit; go figure. But now I own a black skirt appropriate for a job interview, which may be looming in my future if the government keeps cutting funding for local agencies like mine.)
Online shopping anyone? It's what I do anymore when I know just what I want.
They're not shorts! Gasp, shock, horror! They're gauchos!
Soon I'll be posting something about clothing, meself. And the Spathic Easter Dress.
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