Yesterday

Yesterday I went with my Aunt Kathy and my cousin Kimmy to Fair Oaks Mall to shop for clothes to wear at my cousin's wedding. I already have my dress (I am a bridesmaid) but I needed shoes and a bra (I only wear sports bras). Every time I go clothes shopping with my cousin it is a hellish nightmare. She is 15-years-old, so naturally she has taste for somewhat skimpy, showy clothes. Unfortunately, she is also a bit rotund. Dresses almost never fit her, and we often end up with a two-piece outfit, which is usually by definition toned-down.

I have this same problem, but it is concentrated in one area: my feet. I wear size 9 ½ mens. Believe it or not, I am not a man. This means my women's shoe size is 11-12. Since I normally wear sneakers, this isn't an ever-present problem. One time I needed a pair of club boots, so I purchased them from Dream Dresser, a shop in Georgetown that has club boots specifically sized for transvestites. It only becomes a sizeable issue when I'm looking for dress shoes. Especially dress shoes that have to come in a certain color. I tried on this one pair that matched my bridesmaid dress perfectly but it was not to be. As I squeezed in, I quickly thought of my foot as Chris Farley, and the shoe was David Spade's little coat. I ended buying the first pair of plain heels I could find at Payless.

I have found myself spending a lot of time at my Aunt Kathy's house in the past couple weeks. I have a lot of fun there and I enjoy spending time with my cousins. They also have a pool and hot tub. Plus, since she is a single mom, she needs some help with driving the kids to places and doing other minute tasks. Once I even tried to help her grade some papers (she's a special education teacher). I wanted to give them all A's because of their absolutely hilarious answers. Some of the tests went like this:

Q: A dog-groomer needs to buy a 238 dollar air conditioner. She has groomed 12 dogs. What information do we need to know to see if she has enough money for the air conditioner?

(Correct)A: We need to know how much she earned for each dog.

Kids' Answers:
-how many air conditioners there are?
-how big dg is (verbatim)
-238 dollars.

Another Example:

Q: Name two advantages and two disadvantages to fossil fuels.

One kid's answer: they make cars go and they are big. they smell bad and kill animals.

My favorite of the whole bunch:

Q: Why do solar panels need storage cells?

One kid's answer: u can use a pensul charpener. (again verbatim, well I think. The kid's handwriting looked like he was trying to answer while a dog was chewing on his elbow.)

I couldn't finish because I was going through stages of fitful laughter, followed by remorse for laughing at these poor kids. My aunt didn't begrudge me though; she still made me steak, which is the usual Sunday fair. I went there for dinner almost every Sunday in the month of April.

I used to do a similar dinner thing at my mom's house in years previous. I would stop by to visit her and my brother and to get a home-cooked meal. These days, my mom travels almost nonstop. In fact, she is flying in from a conference in France just to go to my cousin's wedding. My brother goes to school at Virginia Tech, and he is really only home for the summers. He might not even be home much this summer if he gets one of the jobs he's trying for. If he doesn't, does anyone have a job for him?

Summer is coming fast and I have a lot of adventures in mind. I will update about those later.

Also, some upcoming updates (mostly to remind myself):
-a review of my favorite mail-in catalogue
-a story about my childhood friend, Andrea
-a photo essay about my trip to NYC (this will be very very long)
-nation's cats protest the depiction of their prophet as a lasagna-eating glutton
-more blurbs.

And finally, last night was my last Sunday layout night for Expulsion. Tonight will be the last meeting for me. I will no longer be a member of the staff. Next weekend I may be going to King's Dominion to celebrate my first free Sunday.