Monday, September 21, 2009

Wide Open Spaces & Negative Butt Brush

To spend over ten hours outside my apartment is both a challenge and a gift. Ah, the freelancer's life. Such new challenges I never thought I'd consider challenges, let alone confront and survive.

This looks nothing like anywhere I was today - but it does look exactly how I felt. Here's to wide open spaces outside the dwelling-place.

The Novel-T party, by the way, was an out-and-out success. I have no idea what sales were, but from the monochrome eye-scape, it looked good. (To explain that: the shirts are all gray - so if all I saw were gray, all Novel-T saw that day was green. Well done, fellow liberal arts kids. Shirk that 9-to-5. Shirk it all the way to the bank.)

Here's the line-up. And I think we all know the pitch by now...

Today was spent on errands. I may well be the only woman running mid-day errands on Court Street without a stroller. Every mother I pass is looking at me like I used to look at those "Spot the Difference" illustrations. No, the tea kettle isn't floating in this frame; I just don't have any offspring in tow. The negative space of my non-Bugaboo is extreme and offensive, I know, but I think we can move beyond this. At least it minimizes the butt brush effect.

No.

Post-errands, I returned (sans bebe) to the Teat Lounge. No breast-feeding this time. However, there were ample 6- to 10-year-olds around, playing games like Clack This Loud Plastic Thing on the Cafe Counter Until Mom Screams at Me and Even the Barista Blushes and Looks Away Demurely. An awesome game I fondly remember myself. That was good fun for all involved.

Kids scream the darndest things.

The night then segued into the search for a well-lit bar, so I could have a glass of wine or two ( or seventeen, you damn Clacky kids) while still working. Mission accomplished at the most unlikely of places, a small Irish pub with slightly-too-often Karaoke nights, blood sausage brunch, and an abhorrent Pinot Grigio for cheap. Two hours and $8 later, I was done for the night and somehow, proudly, heading home after multiple hours in The Outside World.

Well done, I think - and the phantom baby agrees.

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