January 18, 2009

8:15 p.m.

A Longish Entry Recounting Our No-Boyz-Allowd Excursion

Thirty-six hours later, one girly trip accomplished.

I arrived yesterday morning to learn that not just one, but ALL the pipes in Rose's house had frozen overnight. There was cold water coming out of one upstairs sink, that's it. They hadn't showered, Rose hadn't packed, and they were filling a bucket to flush.

Rose offered several times to stay home and offer Marc moral support while he thawed pipes, and I chimed in and said it would be okay and we could do the trip another time, but he said no, it was all right. There was nothing she could really do to help, practically speaking. He was going to get out the Geek Power Supply and try turning all the pipes into heating elements with jumper cables. So we headed out to Northampton.

After getting terrible coffee from the local general store, we hit the highway and switched into Sisters mode. Burping contests, howling laughter, reminiscing about Mom and our childhood. Everything we've heard about everyone we know, with particular emphasis on her ex-husband and his friends. We can switch from heart-to-heart conversation to something totally irreverent in a moment. We understand each other, we allow for each other. The miles flew by and soon we arrived at our mini-vacation town.

It was too soon to check into the hotel, and too soon to go to our yarn store because we were waiting to see if a friend would go with us. So we went to Thorne's Marketplace, an indoor shopping market with some cool stores of various types. We killed an hour there looking at cards, house stuff, clothes, jewelry and books. I got a cup of soup from their cafe because I'd eaten breakfast way early and was starving by 11:00. I thought that wouldn't spoil my lunch. We were meeting ex-ex-boyfriend and now-friend Steve at 1:00.*

(*Steve, although not a girl, is very Girly in some ways, so we allowed him to bask in our company for the duration of lunch, without penalty.)

We were in a one-hour meter space so we had to go out and get another hour ticket. On our way out, there was Steve coming into Thornes. I think he was taken aback, seeing us before the expected time, and my hair is totally different from the last time he saw me. Plus his eyesight isn't all that great to begin with. It seemed to take him a few seconds to get up to speed when I called out to him. He was looking for something in the marketplace, so we said we'd meet him in a few minutes across the street at Faces, our favorite store in town.

We love Faces! It starts off as a funky clothing shop, but as you go deeper in you see silly toys and string lights (including "Bodhi Lights", which I have in my living room and which Rose bought), cards galore, furniture and lighting, curtains, books, sunglasses and legwarmers. I walked out with a lovely pair of mustard-colored legwarmers which will keep my extremities warm all through the winter in my apartment. There's that problem solved.

Steve met us and we went a few doors down to a middle eastern restaurant. It was so cold, walking anywhere outside was dangerous. I kept pulling my scarves over my face. We resigned ourselves to major hat hair and just bundled up as much as we could.

The lunch was good -- best lentil soup any of us had ever had. I had a lamb curry which was very tasty, though the lamb was not so tender. We made Steve take all the leftovers. He was doing interviews and photos at an Obama party that night, for his local paper, and didn't know if they'd feed him. We took care of that.

Then we parted ways with Steve, and Rose and I hit a smaller local yarn shop, then 10,000 Villages, and of course the chocolatier next door. By then it was time to check in at the hotel. Seemed there was hardly any parking there... so many spaces full. Hm. Wonder what's going on in town? We forgot all about it because Webs was right down the street. Her friend hadn't called so we were obliged to go without him.

Oh, Webs. It's the largest yarn store in the country. The main room is pretty impressive, but then they have this huge warehouse room in the back where you can get yarn in bulk, so you just wander up and down the aisles of metal racks feasting your eyes (and fingers) upon just hundreds of yarns, bundled up 10 skeins to a bag. Lambswool, merino, cotton, silk, acrylic, alpaca, angora, bamboo. My fingers learned the differences in feel. Worsted, sport weight, sock weight, bulky. Rose and I didn't see each other for about half an hour as we drifted around. I found some blue to recreate a sweater I made many years ago that was ill-sized. I've always wanted to redo it. I love the pattern, a double seed-stitch. I also got two balls of a brightly multicolored, variable thickness yarn for a special hat. Then there was the one fabulous skein of silk/merino wool, a bright, deep mustard yellow, that I thought I might get a hat out of. Rose bought it for me. It is so soft I could dive in. It's the type of yarn of which I get only one skein because it's expensive, and then I save it for something really special. Rose got yarn for a baby blanket, for a friend who's due in March, and some other things.

We were there a couple of hours, til they closed. By then we were looking at pattern books, and we looked up suddenly and they were shutting down. We paid for everything and then later I wished I'd had more time to look at patterns.

But then there was the issue of dinner. I'd brought my computer and an Alfred Hitchcock movie, so we got takeout sashimi and a bottle of wine and went back to the hotel. Boy, now there wasn't a parking place anywhere! We finagled one and got our food and bags of yarn inside. The restaurant forgot to include rice, so we had seaweed salad and LOTS of fish. It was so good. I gorged on fish. We watched our movie, knitted a little. Around 11:30 we decided to go to bed. But fate had other plans.

The heater unit cycled on and off so frequently that it was keeping me awake. So I turned it off. The beds were amazing. The pillows were perfect. And then the noise started...

There was a big concert in town somewhere, and our hotel apparently was Party Central for all the teens and twentysomethings who had gone to the concert. That's why there were no parking spaces left. They partied ALL NIGHT. Did I make that clear? All. Night. Yelling, laughing, slamming doors, stomping up and down stairs. When we compared notes this morning, we learned that each of us considered calling the front desk about 300 times but was concerned about waking the other one. Actually we were both awake all night, aside from some cat naps, thinking the other was asleep. It got funny when things just started calming down and then there was a dog in one of the rooms who started barking constantly, and some of the young kids got all pissed off because THEY were now being disturbed and so they started yelling at the dog to shut up. By this point I was no longer really anxious about the situation, but had accepted it, and was just wide awake with my earplugs in and eyes closed, thinking about yarn and waiting it out. The fish decided to start swimming in my guts too and it was a gastrically very unsettled night. (However, I don't regret a bite of it.)

At some point I started to sleep; still, I got up by 8:30 because I didn't know what my guts would do and I knew I needed to shower and be out by checkout. When I got out of the bathroom Rose was awake, and we laughed about the night and got all excited about what we would be doing today. I was feeling somewhat better and the fatigue hadn't caught up with me yet.

It turned out there was some semblance of breakfast in the lobby, so we had a bit before leaving. One of the young guests was leaning on a railing there with his head on his arms, and he was so close to being asleep he kept almost falling over. The guy at the desk kept calling out to him trying to get his attention, but he didn't respond. Finally he stood up and it became apparent that he was still drunk from the night before. One of his friends told him to go back to his room. He stumbled outside.

We decided to go back to Webs for a second look, but they weren't open on Sunday. It had snowed several inches too, very pretty and light, and we were glad for Rose's four wheel drive Jeep. Some places weren't plowed yet.

The highlight of today was a specialty bird shop in Southampton where Rose wanted to look at Conyers. We stayed there for an hour and a half while she played with exotic birds! I'm really wary of the larger ones and have not much desire to mess with them. The smaller ones are cute. She had a bird once who bit me one day when she was particularly anxious (the bird, not Rose), though I'd handled her before, and ever since then I don't really want to have my fingers around bird beaks. I hope she gets a smaller one.

Anyway I was really tired by then, and my guts were grumbly again. I was feeling like the drunk guy in the lobby, just wanting to lean on everything. Finally Rose tore herself away from all the flapping, bobbing, chirping, talking, preening beasties and we headed out on the last leg of the Girly outing: Trader Joe's and Wholefoods.

Lunch at Wholefoods, then fun food shopping. We found little red grapefruits and chocolate and I got my favorite kefir and some sunflower seeds. I even found some clove soap for my friend Jonnie in Texas. It's awfully hard to find, and it's her favorite.

Time, then, to head home. I dozed off on the way, dreaming about yarn. When I opened my eyes were were almost at her house and it was getting dark. We divvied up our stuff in her driveway and I completed the last 8.5 miles to my little place. The back parking lot had been plowed and my sweet apartment was here waiting for me... rather comfortable, as I'd forgotten to lower the heat. Oops.

All in all, it was a thoroughly successful Girly Road Trip. And while we were out, Marc thawed all the pipes with his power supply and big cables. They're taking tomorrow off from any work. I think I'll sew my wall hanging and continue my 2 knitting projects. Life does not get better than this.