bad day in a good way
July 1, 2003 04:07 PM

Some days are so bad they turn comical.

Case in point: Saturday, 28 June 2003. Last Saturday.

I got up in the morning, which is in itself remarkable for a weekend (I am a devotee of till noon sleeping, a devotion in which I can only indulge on the occasional weekend).

Yes. I got up in the morning and proceeded to debate the relative merits of protogoth vs. Bauhaus fan vs. eighties punk as potential costumes for this party we were to attend. A party that meant driving for a few hours - but hey, never let it be said that we won't suffer a bit for fun. I ended up with punk, because that meant drawing on an old t-shirt in this way that paralleled my youth and Martha Stewart quite nicely.

Somewhere in there is breakfast [Also a rarity on weekends. Did I mention the noon sleeping?] and exercise and the usual get up in the morning shtick. And packing a light bag.

My partner's car broke on Friday (despite being newer and more substantial-looking than mine, it's clearly much more flimsy), so we load up (it doesn't take much) my petite little Corolla, which approaches clown car status the second my looming giant of a boyfriend slides into it. Really. Car, completely fine size with me. Car, ridiculously small with him plus me. And we drive up to DC, where we've made hotel reservations for the night as a way to make travelling for this party seem like less of a whim and more of a vacation.

The directions we have turn out to be for a street on the other side of town from the hotel we're seeking. This takes nearly an hour to realize. We drive around trying to figure out why we can't find what we're looking for, find what we're looking for, and realize it's on the wrong side of town. All the while, my car is feeling very fragile as we go up and down hills. I don't remember this many hills in this town. And my car has to be manually shifted into neutral to avoid stalling while stopped on hills in traffic on hot days. Sometimes. It's one of those things you experience occasionally, yet your mechanic seems unable to pin down or even replicate.

And then we're narrowly avoiding stalling, feeling really quite hot and stuffy (having turned off the AC) and wondering if maybe I should have bought a new car earlier in the spring, while we backpedal to the appropriate side of town and continue to be utterly incapable of finding anything at the advertised address.

There is cursing and laughter.

In a burst of amused frustration, we just get on 495 and start heading to Maryland, which used to be full of lies but is now clearly where things of beauty and value are to be found. Figuring - hey, either there will be party or there will be shopping. Whatever strikes us.

We go (this was planned, by the way) to the Torrid (it's Hot Topic for fat girls) in Bethesda - it's in a mall called the "Shoppingtown", and after two hours driving confusedly around our nation's capital, there was great praise and affection for the town of shopping. Great. I acquire adorable clothes and replace my faux eyeglasses; the boy gets gargantuan Chucks trimmed with flames.

There is shopping. And this huge meal, after the sweaty exhaustion that was the abortive DC trip and our failure to eat lunch. And we're so impossibly tired that we just go home and read until we fall asleep.

It was mad fun. Seriously.