Another Wednesday rolls around…

Item! There is a little shoe repair place in the basement of Macy’s in downtown Minneapolis. I know because I was sent there when the sandals I bought there broke on their second wearing. A little rivet came flying out, causing the gladitor-like straps to go wonky. Sigh.

At the store, an equally broken sales person directed me to the basement, to a corner across from luggage, where a woman was standing at the counter considering buying some brass cleaner. At this little shoe corner they sell things like brass cleaner along with shoe laces and polish and inserts. I wish they had a hand-chisled wooden sign that said “Ye Olde Shoe Shoppe) and that the counter person wore a leather apron, although I guess then he’d be more likely to be fixing horse shoes than people shoes. Also, I wish there were big glass jars of old-fashioned candy on the countertop. But anyway, this woman was really hemming and hawing over the brass cleaner while I stood there waiting my turn. The counter guy didn’t say, “Be with you in a second,” he just kept chattering about testing a spot on her brass lamp first to see if it cleaned it before slathering it all over the damn thing.

“Do they put coating on brass now?” she asked.

“I’m pretty sure they do coat brass now,” he said. “Didn’t use to do that.”

Finally, he said he’d sell her the polish for $3. I didn’t know Macy’s employees were given free reign to lower prices as they saw fit or I would have bargained for my sandals, but in any case, the woman got super excited. “Oh, you’re such a sweatheart!” she screamed. “Well,” he said. “It’s actually a discontinued item, so if you love it, I probably can’t get you anymore. But if you hate it, you’re only out $3.” “You’re such a sweetheart!”

Meanwhile: I’m still standing there with my broken shoe. Eventually, she drifts away, rather reluctantly, and I get waited on. After some discussion, he admits my shoes to the shoe hospital (and can I just say that he seemed to be discouraging me from trying to fix them until I said that I loved them and would probably wear them broken if he did not intervene). Then as I was leaving he told the woman who came up behind me while I was being waited on, “Thank you for being so patient.” As if I, with my legitimate shoe emergency, was the one causing the back-up and not the woman in the business casual with Reeboks on who was worried about her 1970s brass lamp.

Item! Poppycock is better than Crunch N’ Munch but not better than the Chicago Mix at Candyland.

Item! Here are things that rub me the wrong way this week: people who guzzle Mountain Dew as they drive Impalas, the plastic “SLOW” turtles holding flags people place in front of their houses to try to slow drivers down, a person who brought a copy of one of the Twilight saga books with her to a job interview (!), cats that are never satisfied with anything, not even if they have open windows, a running faucet and pieces of ham to eat.

Item! Things that are making me happy this week: that Harry Potter is over. Like an abused child, I constantly need to be reminded that I’m safe now. All that muggle bullshit can’t hurt me anymore. Cranberry juice, toast with butter, items procured at Value Village, bike riding at night, that the Walker Art Center exists, thin walls that allow you to hear crazy conversations in other offices, cleaning out the room where I do my writing so that it has a more austere look. Nothing is allowed on my desk now except my notebook and my laptop. Oh, and a pencil holder in the shape of an owl and a stapler in the shape of a fish. Writing again after stopping. Stopping is not a good idea. Bad things happen.

Item! I’m currently reading Spoiled by Caitlin Macy. It is a book of short stories so I read about one per day. A few stories warrant a 6 or 7 on a 1-to-10 scale but the opener was more like a 9.

Item! I’m currently watching In Treatment, Season 1 because yes, I’m horribly behind the rest of the world.

Item! Among other things, I thrifted a pair of roller skates last night. I walked right over to the shelf they were sitting on, picked one up and just KNEW that they were going to be mine. Turns out, they were my size and fit perfectly. All the sudden I really wanted to own a pair of roller skates. They have purple shoelaces and are scuffed with some red stuff. But I know just the thing for that – white polish from Ye Olde Shoe Repair Shoppe, where I have to go on Friday to recover my sandals. Now all I need are some of those giant pom-poms teen girls attached to skates back in the day – both ice and roller. Freja hates my skates and tries to bite my ankles as I roll around the house. If I get good at roller skating, perhaps I will take an adventure to Dreamland someday.

Item! The movie UP comes out on Friday. I enjoy the imagery of a house being lifted up into the air by colorful balloons with a cranky old man inside. Someday, it might happen to me.