The immediate need is shirts. I am your basic hawaiian shirt guy. Went from Reyn Spooner to Jhane Barnes to Citron to Avanti. Aging hippies can really dress up their blue jeans with the proper hawaiian shirt. Even make a large paunch look good. All of the aforementioned brands are sort of unavailable to me at this point, the Citron too expensive, Barnes out of business, Spooner losing the brilliance of its early designs. I wore out all of my favorite Avantis when I carried my phone on my belt. Plus either the shirts are shrinking or I am growing and I really don't want to hear about it. XXL land.
We had to drive up to suburbia yesterday to visit the dreaded mall. I live in the country, in a curvy landscape and the people seem to take on the same general characteristics. I believe that the burbs breeds a race that are a bit more L7. Squaresville. Like an Iowan corn patch. Brains function differently, I do believe. A different species entirely, perhaps.
"Jesus Christ, what is wrong with these people," I yelled, slamming my fist into the steering column for more sparks and theatrics. "Stepford wives on Zanex," my wife drolly intoned.
We had hit Ross and Marshalls, without a lot of success, unless you count the two knits she found for me that I never would have looked at. Ungrateful sod that I am. Before I start my usual kvetching and whining, Sommers boilerplate 127b which states that anybody willing to be married to me is deserving of some order of sainthood. Leslie makes my and our life spin around. With a minimum of complaining and a lot of support. Always.
I stood at the wall behind the registers, with the other forlorn husbands, abandoned by our wives for interminable periods after assuring us that it would only take a second, dear. I was planning on doing a quick hit and run mission on my own but Leslie had agreed to come along and keep me company. I think I might have slightly winced, as most husbands can tell you what happens when we men are hostage for a long day of shopping with the spouses. Would my quick trip get hijacked? Would this become the all day affair? I smiled and assured her that I would both love and welcome her company for the afternoon.
But the trip from 79 through to Winchester can be a killer when you following suburban moms in their minivans that are not of this world and softball boosters driving ten miles under the speed limit and getting utmost satisfaction at controlling the long line of cars in their wake.
We were going to seriously jeopardize the mission but she said that we had to stop at Lowe's to look at front door thresholds, so that the cat would stop scratching the heck out of the carpets. I couldn't figure out if I could do a gluedown over L-metal and she wanted to know just what kind of bullshit general contractor I ever was. And I gritted back,"The kind that knew how to hire the right men."
We never found what we were looking for, since I didn't really know what it was, needing to do a bit more due diligence first. On to Macy's where we got a few shirts for me that were overpriced and not terribly cool but had at least a little creativity in the design and pattern. Most of what passes for men's fashion is strictly boring, plain vanilla, unless you think that the the Ed Hardy knockoffs with the torn sleeves are actually cool. And I suppose some straight men somewhere wear plaid bermudas still. I just can't do trendy and look myself in the eye.
I almost bought a pair of black converse tennies. But can a 53 year old man still look like a New York street punk in his declining years and have any dignity left?
We left Temecula and snuck back to our avocado bearing homeland, lovely Fallbrook, back to our curvy winding roads and our quirky native population. To the odd ducks.
We ended up making our dinner with minutes to spare, a beer pairing at La Caseta with Stone Brewery. The libations were quite tasty, the food not quite up to the tequila dinner, but a lot of plates to serve and a good try and some of it pretty daring, especially the tapas plate with the homemade mustard and chorizo seco, a dry and very coarse sausage. Also was accompanied by sweet potato fries that were really nice and some spanish cheeses and olives.
All in all a lovely sunday. I hope that your weekend was nice as well.
