My Vacation

So what does a girl do when the whole entire family is out of town? Well, I:

• Watched Cirque Éloize and wrote a review of it. I really enjoyed the show, but it was a little bit tragic because I went All. By. Myself. I had a press pair of tickets, but I got them pretty shortly before the showtime. So then I contacted three different friends, all of whom were out of town. And then I put it as a Facebook status (#feeling pathetic), like, 3 hours before the show, and there were crickets. Well, that’s a damn shame.
• I slept in. A lot. What’s especially comical is that our cat is usually up and meowing for food or to be let out by the crack o’ dawn, but she gradually followed my lead through the week, and this morning she was still happily snoozing between my legs at 9:15 am.

• Speaking of the cat, I solved the excessive poop mystery. I wasn’t poop: it was hairballs. They look similar. I’ll spare you the photographs. I bought the “hairball control” food formula and am crossing my fingers.
• On Monday I went to the Saratoga Race Track for Family Monday for KidsOutAndAbout. Children love to spin a wheel to get something, no matter how small. There were many out-of-towners, which was not helpful for my purpose of getting people to sign up for the newsletter (you should sign up too, you know!) and also: do they distribute cigarettes and cigars at the entrance? Because it’s smoky everywhere. But I ran into a woman I’d worked with maybe 15 years ago, so that was pretty nutty. And by “ran into” I mean that I saw her from my post at the KidsOutAndAbout table, where I was smiling and holding onto the prize wheel and reminding kids that it was one prize per person as they came on and on, relentlessly, while I wished I could figure out why she was so familiar. But luckily she came back to me at a slow point. Which was almost the highlight of the afternoon, except I was also able to try a ShackBurger and cheese fries at the Shake Shack. My little brother’s girlfriend works for Shake Shack, so I’d heard about it but never tried them. Oh, it was so sublime. I only wish that I could have given that meal the loving attention that it deserved, but people kept coming up wanting to spin my wheel. Dammit. The exclusive Sloppy Track shake was too sweet for me, though.
• I test drove six different cars. Our car is nearing the end of its life. I am not enthusiastic about cars, I am cheap, I hate driving, and I’m not so good at chatting with people, so that was a hard day for me. I also began to notice that I seemed to be getting the lowliest sales guy at every place, presumably because I was a woman alone. Which pissed me off, but then I’m completely stereotypical because I really hadn’t planned on making a final decision without conferring with my husband. But that’s not, like, because he’s the boss of me. But then it would be even worse, because I’d forget even the most basic information that would convey that I have decision-making skills. How many miles are on my Jetta again? I’m not sure: I think that that information was sloughed off with the dead cells from my uterine wall two weeks ago.
• Nevertheless, I stumbled my way to narrowing things down a bit. I think I like the Nissan Rogue or the Hyundai Santa Fe over the Kia Sorento or the Nissan Pathfinder, and I’m blowing off the mini-van choices because I’ve resisted this long and damned if I’m going to cave now. So, strong opinions? Please discuss.
• I went to the library and browsed wildly, picking out the uber-stressful Top of the Lake, re-discovering Paul Simon’s Graceland, finishing the rest of Kristin Cashore’s Graceling books, and finally getting my ordered-it-a-while-ago copy of The Goldfinch, which I need to start reading ASAP for book group.
• I also checked out a yoga DVD and then never played the damn thing. At the beach I’d done early morning yoga, and I had aspirations to Achieve Serenity this week, but then I just didn’t. Mostly because I was sleeping in too late to want to do yoga outside in the heat.
• But I did go to four different exercise classes. Including one where I realized belatedly that I was talking way too much because I’d been starved for company. And another where the trainer decided that we should go work out directly at the entrance to the pool. Because I’m sure that she never feels self-conscious working out in front of random strangers. And neighbors. And friends. Who would wave and say hi while I was in mid-Burpee.  I liked this trainer, I did, and I even welcomed the excursion outside. I’d go for a less high-traffic area, though.
• But back to books: I also tried 50 Shades of Gray, which I’d picked up at a $1 used book sale, and I figured that this would be a nice, safe time to read it with the kids out of the house. Oh, my gosh, you guys, I thought it was dreadful. Dread-ful. I had to give up. First of all, I’m one of those readers who needs likeable characters with whom I can relate in some way, and that chick Ana had made it all the way through college without ever drinking or feeling serious lust? Umm. . . . no. Impossible. Plus, it was, like, 100 pages in before there was any sex at all? Wasn’t that why we were all supposed to like this? But by the time they finally got to some sex (I started skipping around), I couldn’t even hack it, because I disliked the characters so much.  I was just: “ew.” It’s like if I saw some gross-tastic couple start to kiss (I’m thinking, like, Woody and Soon-Yi, maybe?) I’d avert my eyes. Well, I’m averting my eyes from the whole book. Blegh.
• But there was quite a bit of more pleasant hammock reading.
• I also did some bloggy maintenance: a back-up, an update, a fix for my Events page, which hadn’t been working quite right. I also changed the tabs above a bit, melding the “Seasonal” and “Travel” pages into “More Fun” so that I could have a “Recipes” page. I mentioned doing this once before, wondering if readers would like to be able to find my recipes easily, and as I recall, there was a deathly still silence in the comments that day. So I blew it off, but then I realized that I would find it convenient to have my recipes organized, so I did it anyway. Whether you care or not.
• Oh, and I cleaned my bathrooms. And vacuumed.
• And I purged our worst underwear, our worst water bottles, and other stuff unworthy of living at my house anymore.
• And I hung up a picture that I’ve been meaning to hang for, like, two years, which incidentally also covers up an unsightly spot in my kitchen.
• And I fixed J’s picture, which kept falling down off of our living room wall.
• I went to visit my sister, niece, and nephew, who were passing through from a trip to Maine. And I held them hostage for two hours, talking their ears off, because I hadn’t seen many people lately.
• I had a meeting about a volunteer gig for school, which reminded me that Reality Looms. Sshshshsh, forget I said that!
• I went and saw Boyhood, which is a very long but very good movie. They grow up so fast.
• And now I’m not even going to proofread this thing, because I only have a few hours of alone time left–gotta go enjoy it.