adjustment

It's fucking hot here. Very uncomfortably hot.

It was too hot in my office to work today and too noisy to move my set up into the air conditioned living room. The maximum volume on the computer is barely enough to get those little bits of speech I need to hear, and when there's an old air conditioner chugging away in the room, it's hopeless. So I decided I'd venture out and run several air conditioned errands. Pretty much up to this week, since the surgery I was having too many bouts of bad pain to go much of anywhere on my own, so this was the first time I was out and about by myself. It felt nice, emotionally.

Physically, it was not so great. My car's air conditioning is going. Or rather the whole temperature thing is a problem for my car, running the a.c. only makes it more likely to overheat. With the window down, I was able to get some air which was slightly cooler than an oven blast in my face. Still, I mostly enjoyed being out doing things for myself by myself for the first time in a month, even with the heat. It wasn't until I was at the fabric store that I started to lose my steam.

The fabric store had not been as air conditioned as I had hoped. I was hoping for arctic blast level chill. What I got instead was the slightly cool but still muggy feeling of standing in the shade at a park. Additionally, by the time I got to the fabric store, I was experiencing some feminine discomfort.

This is obviously the appropriate name for it, right? It's like "feminine products" or "feminine hygiene", or "feminine napkins". The last term calls to mind images of lace and gingham, possibly a nice crisp linen folded into a fan and placed in a glass on a table with tea cups. There might be a small vase of violets, possibly cucumber sandwiches, a bowl of berries, and the faint sounds of chamber music.

There would not be anything like the warm, wrinkled wad of cotton which was working its way onto my mind as I waited for the lady at the fabric store to cut me a 2 and 1/2 yard swath of cream colored vinyl.

"Ooops, this one's just about 2 yards..." she said after unrolling the cream colored vinyl off its cardboard spool.

Shit.

She waited while I trotted back to the bargain fabric table and searched for a roll that looked like it had more material on it. Passing over the ample bolts of superman blue and black leather-like textured vinyl, I grabbed a bolt of smooth pink and marched back to the measuring table.

"This one's 2 yards and 2 inches...will that work?" she asked with genuine sweetness, which is the only reason I didn't erupt into a stream of frustrated swears.
"That's like 74 inches, right? No. Hang on there was another one."

At this point, I was genuinely in serious feminine discomfort but god damn it I had errands and I was going to get them done.

I hunched down to get the last roll of not hideously colored vinyl from the discount table. Bending and hustling back and forth from the measuring table to where the fabric rolls sat was making me more warm. The white leather-like textured vinyl stuck to my arms as I threw the massive roll down in front of her. I apologized, feigning something like weakness of arms to excuse my abrupt motion and the thud the vinyl made as it hit the table.

"So...what are you making?" she asked pleasantly as I stood there wondering if there was any way I could possibly sneak a subtle adjustment in before I had to start screaming and jumping up and down.
"Oh, uh, well it's for my air conditioner. It's a curtain, to put over the doorway."
She looked confused and was still measuring, so I continued.
"It's so the cat can get in and out of the room with the air conditioner. I can't shut the door on him, but I don't want to air condition the whole apartment."

In the car, I managed to subtly adjust the dreaded feminine device into a less intimate position. Carefully, quite furtively, achieving something not very effective but at least different. No matter, one more quick stop at the 7-11 and I was home.

At the 7-11 I parked in the shade of a white van in front of the store. There was a man sweating in front of the open hood of the white van. He stood looking hot and frustrated on the walkway. He was staring quite intensely at whatever it is people stare at when their hood is up. He did not look up as I approached. I noticed he had one arm behind his back and when I got around him, I saw he had this arm stuck way down the back of his shorts, up to about his elbow. The arm was rotated such that the interior aspect of his forearm and hand had to be in contact with his ass. The motions of the part of his arm which was not submerged in khaki made it clear that his hand and forearm were seriously working down there.

Sweet jesus.

This man seemed completely oblivious to the context of his hand in pants behavior. I wondered if he was doing it unconsciously, if there was in fact even anything he needed to adjust or if having his hand halfway up his ass was simply his prefered stance when looking under the hood of this or any vehicle.

Since then, I've been considering how much of the behaviorial contrast, my reluctance to adjust despite a discomfort which approached pain versus this guy's shameless store front ass-mining expedition, is gender based.

If women were allowed to walk around shirtless in the sweltering heat, or to generally care less about the view their bodies inflict on others, I suspect there would be some who would not hesitate to reach down and assertively adjust what needs adjusting - pad, thong, whatever. Would I be one of them? I'm kind of prissy, so I doubt it. It annoys me though, that I can't know whether my being at least in some ways very much a linens, violets, and berries kind of person is a product of years of social conditioning or some property I would possess regardless of that.

got cookies?

Yesterday, A___ and I made a trip to the fabric store. It's a terrible place to be. I mean, it's nice but depending on how busy it is, it can really suck a lot.

The goal of the trip was to pick up some heavyweight fabric for A___ to use as winter curtains. I say to use as since although I own a sewing machine and presumably do know how to sew, the machine sucks severely. It's the Singer Touch and (Don't) Sew. I just found the machine on a page with the title "Relics", so that tells you what we're dealing with here. It's not a good relic either. You can go see pictures here. Years ago when I was living in Ann Arbor, my mother pulled a switch on me. She said she'd bring my machine out but instead used the opportunity to substitute her piece of crap Touch and Don't machine for my own, which was much nicer and genuinely easy to use. Now this may not have been actually as devious as I make it out to be. She might have just been so drunk that she didn't know which machine was hers and which was mine. Either way, I'm stuck with the relic. Which means larger scale sewing endeavors involve glue guns and oversized safety pins more often than they involve any actual sewing. Given this sorry state of affairs, I was not about to use the Singer to teach A___ how to sew. My contribution to this project was helping to isolate areas of the massive fabric store where there would be stuff like cheap heavy fabrics (remnants table in the home decorating section) and velcro ("What the fuck are notions?").

After navigating the parking lot and alternately cringing and laughing at soccer moms and dads in SUVs - they drive as if the SUV could somehow be made smaller and less offensive through ambivalence and hestitancy - we were greeted at the store entrance by a table covered in GIRL SCOUT COOKIES!

Two young girls were dressed up like cookies and two women sat at the table handling the cookie money. One of the girls wore a Peanut butter Patties costume (aka Tagalongs) and the other had on a Peanut butter Sandwich outfit (Do-Si-Dos). As people came through the entryway, the girls were deployed. "Would you like to buy some girl scout cookies?!" they shouted, dancing around. "Oh yes indeed I would" I said. I went into the store, promising to catch them on the way out. Surprisingly, I thought the kids looked cute. I still do. But in retrospect, I realize it may have been the proximity of all those cookies casting a sort of enduring glamour over the scene.

On our way out, A___ got hung up because even though he was buying the entire 2.8 yards of remnant left on the roll, he had to have it "cut" before he could check out...which he found out as the sales clerk rang him up. Who knew? While poor A___ had to go back to the cutting table, I ducked out to choose my cookies. I ended up buying a box of thin mints and a box of what are now known as "Carmel Delites" but which in my cookie selling days were called "Samoas". Standing there in my cookie daze, I watched as women passed the table, looking tempted but refusing the cookies, mostly on stated grounds like "Oh I sure don't need cookies!"

I, however, sure DO need cookies. While my weight is finally no longer going down, I still can't break 120. The antibiotics I've been taking for the ear infection I got (the result of the cold that was kicking my ass all break) aren't doing wonders for my appetite this week. So eating right now is sort of a chore. I was also one day premenstrual and in a bit of a shitty mood on account of having the last week of winter break wasted in febrile, dizzy, and half deaf stupor. I feel I quite legitimately need the cookies.

After I realized it had been a while, I called A___'s cell phone. "Hey...I've got cookies...where are you?" "Still at the table" he said. I could hear forlorn note of store fatigue in his voice. Largely loathing shopping myself, I empathize completely. I came to the table wearing a garland of green and white silk carnations, waving my bag o'cookies, and yelling "Erin go braaarrrrggggh!" The women waiting in a semi-organized cluster around the table glared at me and then went back to glaring at A___. "Is there even the semblance of a line here?" I asked, too loudly. "No, I don't think so," said A___. "Ok, Fuck this, come on -" I said and headed for a counter in a less hostile section. We found one in quilting. "I think they were mad at me for standing on the wrong side of the cutting table," A___ admitted as we walked. Probably. I'm sure my festive Irish foliage didn't help.

As I left the store the second time, the Peanut butter sandwich jumped in my path. "Would you like to buy some..." she started, then pulling her hat off her eyes she laughed and said "Hey I recognize you! You bought cookies!" "Yep. Get him though!" I whispered to her and pointed at A___. A___ bought another thin mints and a box of shortbread cookies (aka Trefoils). We are way stocked up on cookies, to my complete and utter delight (caramel, minty, and otherwise).