Yesterday, for the first time in my life (including college), I went out in public in my pajamas.But I covered up as best I could beneath a long winter coat and enormous Jackie O sunglasses, so that made it okay.
:: rolls eyes ::
In my defense, I was too weakened by three freaking days of the stomach flu to get properly dressed.
And they were clean pajamas.
And the usual customers at my bodega (which I believe is Spanish for "shit hole that over-charges people who have no other viable option") frequently wear house shoes and hair curlers to shop for groceries...so there's precedent here.
And Hub and I needed Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup, oyster crackers and orange Gator Aid because yesterday was Day One on the road to recovery.
Okay, so we're still only on the on-ramp of the road to recovery, and frankly will the thrilled to friggin' pieces if we feel mostly decent by Christmas Eve. But we needed the soup. The soup is the key. You can't get anywhere without the soup.
Anyway, off I went with my brand-new, blue plaid flannel bottoms peeking out from under a 3/4-length dress coat.
Which wouldn't have been SO bad, if it hadn't been a Sunday. The Sunday before Christmas. When the entire corner grocery customer population - dressed to the nines in burgundy suits and hats as big as flying saucers - stopped for milk on their way home from church.
Believe me when I tell you the coat and glasses fooled no one. Nobody mistook me for an apparition of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis.
After an eternity stumbling up and down not-quite familiar aisles, I dropped my little bundle of highly-processed cultural remedies onto the counter, and took a giant scissor step away from the checkout.
When the cashier failed to divine - from the evidential tea leaves assembled before her - what my problem was, I mumbled, "I've been sick. I don't want to infect you." At which point she eyed me up and down, pausing at the six inches of exposed flannel, and scowled at me like I'd just pissed on the linoleum.
Um...how's about a little good will there, Honey? 'Tis the season? Good will toward men?
Not so much for poorly-dressed relations, it seems.
More like, "No room at the bodega."
Bah. Humbug.
************
Foodstuffs I now associate with being violently ill and therefore will not be consuming at any point in the foreseeable future:
Corn
Oysters
Red wine - yes, red wine. I can't even look at the wine rack.
And possibly eggs
2010 is gonna be a lo-ong year.
Comments
I too understand associating food with something bad. It took me years to eat chili again after I ended up in the hospital with a bowel obstruction. I don't think I've eaten more chili than it takes to put on a hot dog since 2005.