In Fact, I Don’t Have Any On, Right Now!

I have a new theory about pants.  I know many of you are unaware that I had an old theory about pants, but I did, hearkening back to when I was a wee girl, and that was that pants were awesome and it was unfair that I was made to wear sundresses that matched my mom when the boys got to wear jeans, glorious jeans.  A lack of pants became to my young proto-feminist mind, a symbol of patriarchal oppression.

My new theory is that pants were a dreadful misstep by the patriarchy. Who wouldn’t, if not cowed by tradition, want to wear skirts?  When it’s warm, you get a nice breeze where you need it and when it’s cold, you can layer underwear under them in ridiculous amounts in ways you just can’t with pants.

No, I think men thought “Ah, pants, that will prove we’re the ones who can ride horses!  That proves we rule!  Hurray.  Let’s start the patriarchy, now that we have pants.” and then, when they realized how hot and uncomfortable it was to sit around in pants in the summer, they were forced to invent the bathrobe, but they could never give up pants because they’d spent so long trying to invent a piece of clothing that would differentiate them from women in some unmistakable fashion and, for some reason, “We’re the ones who can wear this gourd around” did not catch on in places that get snow.

Anyway, it’s general knowledge that pants suck.  I mean, they don’t suck as bad as, say, getting bit by your own cat, but they suck.  And it’s not like men, in the thralls of the patriarchy, can just say “Ooops, we were wrong.  Hand over the summer cotton smock.”  No, instead, they have to try to make pants seem so awesome and cool and like wearning pants will finally mean equality and justice for everyone.

And then, once every woman in the world finally embraces pants, men will suddenly say “Ha ha, we’re the ones who wear skirts and dresses!  Balls dangling freely in the breeze!” and we’ll spend another five hundred years trying to get back to the point where we can wear skirts.

How Did It Get to Be Four O’Clock Already?

I have accomplished very little of what I need to accomplish to leave the state tomorrow.  But I did eat another one of the french dips from that deli at the corner of McGavock and Riverside, which has a name but apparently I can’t be bothered to learn it.  Probably, it’s taken up with Maggiano’s.  Maggiano’s is a chocolate store in the Quad Cities.  That useless bit of information?  That sticks with me.  The name of a deli I think you all should frequent?

Forget it.

I spent the morning having coffee and chatting with Grandfille’s friends, which I didn’t realize were Grandfille’s friends until like the last possible moment.  We saw the cutest purse and the cutest puppy and decided to mug the woman, take her purse and puppy, thus lowering property values in the neighborhood so that I could move in (and then the crime wave would “mysteriously” stop), but then we got distracted by talking about how awesome it would be if the streetcars made a return and that was the end of that.

In other news, someone got visciously bit by the cat after he was bragging about how he taught the cat to visciously bite on command.  I’m not mentioning any names.  I’ll just say that I thought encouraging a cat who is only barely tolerable when he’s trying to behave to misbehave was a mistake.

And I was right.

Damn You, HGTV!

Oh, my beautiful earthlings, yesterday I walked through a house I could love.  Big front porch, two decorative fireplaces, one of which had that old timey mantle with the mirror.  A dining room, a kitchen with a breakfast nook, a back porch, a basement, an upstairs that could be turned over to the Butcher.  Hardwood floors.  Great big rooms.

I could hardly think rationally about it.

Usually, it’s enough in those situations to channel my inner Mack–there’s only one bathroom, the neighborhood is shitty, those hardwood floors are a mess, there’s no dishwasher, it’s not really a breakfast nook if the washer and dryer are sitting there, is that a yard or a home for very ugly weeds, how are you going to afford to replace all those windows, did I mention that the woman who came to let you in the house was afraid to get out of her car?, how are you going to afford a kitchen remodel?–and so on.

But, my friends, so strong was my love for this house, how right it felt to be walking through the rooms, the convoluted excuses I was making for why we could move in even without any visible means of fixing the millions of things that were wrong with it that I had to channel my inner Sarcastro.  I had to imagine him walking through the house, laughing loudly as he noticed all the things that need fixing.  That was the only way I could walk out of the house knowing I did the right thing by not making an offer.

And, I blame the hours I’ve spent in front of HGTV for this nonsense, where every show is about some intrepid home owner who buys a house with problems and magically transforms it into something wonderful.  It’s like the Beauty and the Beast myth for houses.  You see a monster and your love transforms it.

It’s sometimes hard for me to turn that off when I’m walking through a house, the script that says “Here’s what we could do to fix this.”  I’m not Bob Villa and I don’t have a team of carpenters.

But if I did…