sometimes color counts

Sometimes I just want what I want. And when I'm willing to pay for it, I want what I want with a heartfelt thank you for shopping and have a nice day.

Like yesterday. I'll set this up with a thorough yet succinct history. (Upon re-read, not so succinct)

I've needed new running shoes for a few months now. My old orange ones from the marathon are literally cracking. And the white and green pair i bought last year are now gray and snow/winter-worn down to will-work-for-food, but I've been forcing them through the last few weeks of unpredictable St. Louis weather, knowing their time had passed a while ago.

As a side note, at Christmas, my husband decided he too needed running shoes for some training he was beginning for his new adventures in 9 to 5dom and i decided to buy them as my Christmas present to him. It was about then, Decemberish, that I a: decided to go shopping for both of us and b: discovered the Great River Running Store (the name has been been changed here. it is actually the Big River Running Company) had just opened up near this coffee shop I love called Murdoch Perk (really) in a small neighborhood i that I like, in the city I try and shop within.

Now the Great River Running Store is tiny. And mostly empty any time I passed by. But I love little-businesses-that-could, and I try so hard to support any new start ups in our city that aren't pawn shops or check cashing places or dollar stores. So I decided to buy my next pair of shoes there. And my husband's Christmas present at the same time.

At Christmas I went inside and found out they "didn't carry Asics yet but would in a month or two, so please come back." So I purchased my husband's shoes at The Running Center on Manchester (always, always good service). And decided to wait for a hole to form in my own, or at the very least, for another month or so to check back at GRRS.

So on Saturday, I stopped into Great (Big) River. They now carried Asics. Woooohoooo. But they only had one style of Cumuluses. Orange ones that looked a little like my crackalack pair I have from 2007. I tried them on, knowing that barring a misplaced staple or string there wouldn't be a thing wrong with my favorite brand and make of shoe. Except for the dang cheap looking orange stripes on the side. I stood there feeling my feet all at home inside this ugly pair of shoes. And my brain kept saying: don't do it, you hate these orange shoes, but my feet kept saying ooooh these feel yummy so my feet let him ring me up and I took them home.

By Monday morning I realized i was never going to wear those orange shoes. They were still snug as orange bugs in a rug in the box on my dresser. I'd rather wear my OLD orange crack n peels than put these cheap looking orange painty new models on (the orange swooshes aren't even dyed plastic, they are paint on white plastic). So I bagged them back up and searched for my receipt. Unfortunately, for someone who never never loses a receipt, I've suddenly become one of those people who let the receipts fly around my car with the windows down just moments after purchasing something. how did i become my husband?

So no receipt, but I was certain it wouldn't matter since Ben (also not a made up name. a very real running boy named Ben works there) would certainly remember me by all the personal info he gathered when he made the sale. So I went in with my bag of shoes and with my research done (they come in black/limeade/steel stripes and would've cost $85 with free shipping, no attitude, and arrived on my doorstep by wednesday, if I'd've just bought em on Amazon instead of paying the upcharge for the pleasure of shopping locally and supporting other entrepreneurs like me.

Here's what Ben said, seriously: you know we're not supposed to just let anyone come in here and get whatever color they want. i mean if we just did this for everyone we'd never sell the colors we order ourselves, you know. i really shouldn't do this, because now how am i going to sell the orange and white ones if you are now buying the green ones? you are really lucky you got me today, because nobody else would do this. and he said it all with a really sincere smile, in between making the phone call to asics, like he was doing me a really big favor by selling me something I'd driven to his store (three times now) to pay him a profit for.

i promise I only mentioned once that maybe I should just return them instead. (but without the receipt I knew I should only mention this in a whisper while he was lecturing me, because I could not likely not get very far on that front anyway.( i'm reminded of this time i heard someone say: you should not write checks yo ass cain't cash.

but he made the call and let me thank him profusely and he ordered the green ones and sent me away to await a phone call in a week or so when i could drive back a fourth time to get the shoes i wanted.

and i left feeling, i don't know, disappointed? in myself for letting this bad customer service leak out into the world on my watch. silly for wanting "what i wanted" and was willing to pay a hundred dollars plus tax for. annoyed for having gone out of my way to support the little guy (the store, not Ben, though he IS runner-skinny). I felt like i had bad hair and was obviously such an amateur because a REAL runner wouldn't care what color her shoes were.

sadly i'll never shop at the overpriced, cute, empty running store again. and I'll only ever see Ben again at the 11th mile mark of the half marathon I'll run in April. He'll be walking in the opposite direction, eating a bagel and wearing that tin foil blanket, having finished his FULL marathon in the time it'll take me to ALMOST finish the half. but i'll be wearing some fine looking limeade & steel colored asics and smiling from my head to my happy green feet.

bad waffle mornings and all

I need to write more often. I need to write more often. I need to write more often.

Or maybe i'm just not a writer after all.

But I have to be. Because my master plan is to save myself from all this stuckness by selling something wonderful to the world so i can go ahead and move into my own fairy cottage with my own clean floors and my own clean bathroom and a guest room or two for my kids.

Here is something that moved me recently: my youngest daughter was having a meltdown over some waffle-without-enough-syrup tragedy that had taken place in my kitchen before she ran upstairs to where I was trying to force myself into grown-up work clothes which generally repel me. This began about ten minutes before her bus was to arrive, and included a sobbing girl with wet hair from the shower we had finally insisted she take (she prefers crusty skin and crumply hair even under her princess crown) which was soaking her shirt down the shoulders toward her sleeves. She was sobbing and insisting nobody listens to her and that daddy promised he'd get her more syrup but then he ANSWERED THE DOOR AND IS STILL TALKING TO THE AIR CONDITIONER GUY AND HE DOESN"T EVEN CARE ABOUT ME ANYMORE AND NOBODY LISTENS TO ME. And I had to start brushing and blowdrying her hair and her shirt over the commotion, risking the bus pulling up before the waffles were inserted into her sobbing cheeks with or without syrup and realizing this was one tragedy i just didn't have the energy or the time to make all better. She was having a bad morning. It was more than the naked waffles, but i had no time to dig deeper. These happen more days than not, and in my next life i will fix mornings. I will be a morning repairman. The world needs morning repairpeople more than airconditioning guys anyway. But I digress.

Abby was bawling and I was blowdrying and telling her she needed to pull it together and I watched her secretly try this thing I had mentioned to her a few weeks ago in passing: I'd told her that I learned if you force a smile onto your mouth even if you're really really mad then some endorphins get released in your body and you actually accidently start to feel a little better. And I caught her trying this out (which she NEVER would have admitted). Tears were shooting out of her eyeballs at an alarming speed, while she covered her mouth and nose with her hands. She didn't know I could see the indentations of her dimples on either side of her hands. She was force-smiling behind her hands and trying not to let me know she was doing it. it was a strange sight: tears from angry eyes and dimples at the same time. kind of like when it rains while the sun is shining. which sort of explains abby in a nutshell now that i think of it.

I don't know why this made me so heartachingly happy and sad at the same time, but it did. To see my daughter trying out something that I had told her might make a person feel better. she must have believed me, she tested my hypothesis and it worked for her. i'm one notch farther away from totally annoying mom with the blah blah blah. she got on the bus, syrupless waffle in hand, and smiling in her dry clean hair.

It was like I had gotten some sort of sign that things were going to be ok out there in the world with me and this one with all the drama. she listened. she actually put my words of wisdom to use--of course without ever admitting it, and I'll never never let her know I saw it go down--but i got some sort of sense that everything's going to be fine, bad waffle mornings and all.

maybe i'm not doing such a bad job pretending to be the grown up in this family afterall.

because i swore i'd write SOMETHING tonight

to the tune of "if you're happy and you know it"

oh I take out my frustration on my skin
by my face you'll see what kind of shape i'm in
if i'm happy then you'll know it
and my face will surely show it
but for now i need a mask to hide the sin

seriously, i totally beat the hell out of my face just now obsessing in front of the mirror just to delay getting into bed because my head is so spinning with this day and my work and the bank and the buildings and my husband and. why do i do this? it looks very bad afterwards and takes three days to heal. and then i remember the wolfman children i just saw on the discovery channel, or was it tlc, but anyway it was the most disturbing and sad thing that i've seen in a long time. these children have a chromosomal disorder which makes hair, thick furry long hair, grow on their faces and bodies like the wolfman. and they are so painfully beautiful and sad and will live such a different and difficult life than me and my children without the wolfman disorder and i am so lucky that nothing should ever drive me to pick at my skin or even bother looking twice in the mirror, right? its good skin, mostly. and i am lucky. i will treat it nicely tomorrow.