Golden Opportunity

Today’s post comes with some visual aide. These pictures are of my dress, shoes and bag that I’ll be rocking at the end of the month when D and her fiancé fly out to Arizona to get married on the south rim of the Grand Canyon. And they’re doing it at sunset. It is sure to be spectacular.

The odyssey of finding just the right pair of shoes took me the better part of an entire shopping day to track down. Between the mall and a few other freestanding stores I must have scoured the racks in fifteen places. Of course I found them, and the bag, in the last store I intended to shop at that day. Oh well, at least I got them. And on sale to boot, score!

The real reason it was so complicated was because it’s a wedding so they needed to be somewhat dressy (especially considering the dress) but the wedding is taking place on top of rocks and dirt at the edge of the Grand Canyon so they had to be durable enough to withstand that. And I wanted at least a little shoe around my foot because in April the Canyon at sunset is going to be mighty chilly on my little piggies. It was fun explaining this to sales people all day and watching their faces read “um…yeah, good luck with that.”

I should probably confess that I haven’t stepped foot inside a shoe store (hello, Aldo my old friend) or even a mall for that matter in a very long time. After the Springfield debacle I’ve been like the Gestapo over our finances. You know, to ensure that we have some. But of late Matt and I have both been pawing through our respective wardrobes only to realize we haven’t updated them in close to a decade. And it’s really starting to show.

Really, it got so bad for a while there I actually considered rocking a jean jacket with jeans like 1992 hadn’t called for their very bad fashion choice back.

So every month for the past few months I’ve been slowly but surely turning over my wardrobe. But because I’ve also started working out again I didn’t want to go and pay Dillard’s prices for something that I know for a fact will be too big on me in six months to a year. That fact alone had me combing through the racks at all the local thrift shops for that perfect thing that will look good on my current body shape and show off my best assets while still staying budget friendly since it may end up replaced soon.

Don’t get me wrong, I love thrift shopping – the hunt, the thrill of the find, the dust bunnies rolling around a big warehouse sized building stuffed to the gills with items other people cast aside – but there’s that former retail worker side of me that still thinks

“I love the smell of commerce in the morning!”

So when the time came to start hunting down the right outfit for a Matron of Honor in a second wedding at a truly breathtaking but sketchy-footed destination, I knew the mall was the place I wanted to start. And here’s what I learned by shopping in the mall on a late morning mid-week:

*        No one shops in the mall during the late morning mid-week. Well, close to no one. The place was as inactive as the mall in Mallrats.

*        Directories seem to be a thing of the past. I saw two in the whole place and our mall is pretty big. I guess there’s probably an app for that.

*        Shoes have gotten bufugly. Seriously, can’t I buy SOMETHING other than 4” stripper heels or gladiator sandals? What happened to the slides? The mules? The kitten heels? Thankfully I didn’t see a single sneaker peep-toe pump which means that awful trend has phased out but what the fuck is up with this:

Or this?

Or most of all, this leg breaker?

I guess art-as-shoe, wood veneer, and whatever the hell that disc is under shoe 3 are technically something other than only-a-stripper-can-walk-in-them heels and gladiators-don’t-even-look-good-in-them sandals so I shouldn’t complain. But these aren’t haute couture, they’re on sale in multiple different sizes at DSW. Maybe I’m officially considered old now because I just don’t get it.

So when I found my adorable satin heels and the sparkly disco ball-esque clutch at DSW (after spending more time fascinated with the sculptural art in front of me than the actual wearability of the shoes in the store), I secretly thanked the other old ladies out there who understand that not everyone wants to be sky-high or wielding a lance.

Posted for April 2013 A to Z Blog Challenge G is for Golden Opportunity

Mallrats image from http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1228705280/tt0113749

All shoes can be found at DSW 

Food

Things in the southwest are a little different than where I grew up in the northeast. Aside from the weather (which is the primary reason I decided to get my ass out here) there are a laundry list of additional differences. The extreme heat impacts housing style, design, and placement. Speed limits are much higher due to expanded width of all roads (and to quote Tyson Nash “I don’t mind that a bit.”). The Farmer’s market can run all year. The food out here is delicious but some staples of the northeast diet are harder to find as agreeable to my biased palate.

Of course I’m talking about pizza, subs, and Chinese food. All of my former favorites in Boston are now some of my least favorites out here. But try to get that good a steak, veggies that fresh, or decent (authentic) Mexican food in Boston and you’ll know why the southwest has its own flavors that make it great.

So when Matt texted me a week or so ago to say he bought himself lunch and had “the best steak and cheese sub ever” I was of course skeptical. In my mind the best steak and cheese I’ve ever had was from this hole in the wall place in Lynn, MA. I can’t remember the name of the spot – Angelina’s is coming to mind? – but that hardly matters. I could still drive there if dropped in Lynn; I still drool for their subs sometimes.

Now before I go on any further I should probably explain that sub is short for submarine sandwich. AKA grinder, hoagie, hero. Every place in the United States seems to have their own term for this 6-12” bread receptacle of deliciousness.

In Phoenix they’re usually hoagies but I’ll likely never stop calling it a sub. Some things are ingrained from birth; personality traits. And when I looked at the menu for this local spot Matt raved about, Corleone’s (a small chain of four locations), only to see their carbohydrate vessel referred to as a ‘hoagie’ it put me even more on the defensive.

But then the other night Matt picked up a couple subs from this place and I was instantly transported to a crappy table in Villa Pizza (the original location thank you very much). In my head I was sitting in a sub shop in Boston. I was eating one of the best steak and cheese subs I’ve ever had.

Not the best (like I said above) but I’d for sure rate these guys in the top five ever.

Now, if Phoenix could just import their water from Boston and convince one or two of the guys from Bianchi’s to move here with one of the original pizza baking ovens I would know without a shadow of a doubt that Phoenix is heaven on earth.

Posted for April 2013 A to Z Blog Challenge F is for Food

Early Days

Back in high school I was fortunate enough to be able to choose my own English classes in Junior and Senior year. Freshman and Sophomore years I took the standard definition of English – read books, write papers, learn vocabulary and the like – but in Junior year I was able to break free of that by selecting Journalism and in Senior year I satisfied my necessary requirement by taking Creative Writing. It’s safe to say those were the best moves I ever made in school because both classes helped to shape the Writer I am today.

In Creative Writing we were frequently given “pop quizzes” as I liked to call them. Our teacher, Lucile Burt, called them ten minute writings. She’d establish four or five topics per class and for ten minutes we had to write the first thing that came to mind on each subject or theme. I still make use of this technique sometimes when I’m struggling to come up with a good topic.

On September 9, 1990, right at the beginning of the school year, Lucile assigned one of these days. There were four topics that day – Blue Shirt, Two People in a Canoe, A Green Apple and a Promise, and Leftovers.

Brilliant subjects right? I mean out of thirty people in class she easily encouraged 120 different types of stories since each of those things would bring out something completely different in each of us.

I don’t remember the class or the specifics of what we were required to do with each subject but I’m guessing, due to the random symbols located throughout the original pieces, that we were supposed to select our favorite lines and favorite piece written during the class.

The one I starred was Blue Shirt.

When I went back and read this short piece today I started laughing in a fairly ironic way. Apparently I’ve always been a crazy person trapped within my own head because even at seventeen years old I had a penchant for rambling interior monologue. Perhaps this is the very thing I should be focused on writing. Or maybe I just like that this style allows for as many adverbs as possible.

Anyway, without further rambling, and in its original state (one long paragraph) word-for-word (including insertion of symbols, excluding names), I present you with my ten minute writing. Bear in mind this was 1990 and I didn’t have the benefit of a computer so I’m transcribing this from my hand written journal and it’s likely to be much shorter than if I’d been able to type.

Blue Shirt

I’m supposed to be concentrating on my breathing but all I can think of is the topic “Blue Shirt”. --> When I take a breath in I see all my ideas and imagination getting tossed and jostled around. When I exhale my mind relaxes and my thoughts come together again. But just when I think they are going to be put into a perspective where I can write or think about one of them, I inhale again and all of the ideas are tossed around once more. When I exhale again there is a certain calmness about my mind, like I have no worries or thoughts at all and all of my problems have a solution. But when I take my next breath I feel like a human being again. [Friend’s name] has a blue shirt on today which makes me wonder if she’s writing about herself. I have on a white shirt yet I’m still writing about myself in this entry. It makes no sense why I’m not writing about a blue shirt when that is the topic of this whole thing. Lots of people wear blue shirts. Why was that the topic? I have to wonder if I’d have written about myself or something totally different if the topic had been white shirt. --> But it wasn’t. So I didn’t. And now I’m curious as to what our next topic will be.

Posted for April 2013 A to Z Blog Challenge E is for Early