Quel Dommage

One day I'll develop the sleep a normal person enjoys.

Who am I kidding? No, I won't.

Last night I had a lovely time at a joint birthday for friends, who are a married couple the Dude and I know and love. It was meat, cheese, wine and an amazing dance game on the X-Box that the Dude did surprisingly well in. Me, not so much, but I burned some calories, which alleviated my guilt in eating a quarter wheel of brie. Plus it was amazing fun. I love my friends.

We got home late and were in bed by 2:00 and I never was able to fall asleep, despite being tired. My moon time started and woke me up around 5:00 with aching cramps. I had to make several unrelated-to-moontime trips to the bathroom. Sprinkles caught me up around 6:00 and by 8:00, I had no choice but to go upstairs and feed her and Bea. I went back to bed and sweat under the covers and that woke me up, too. Now it's noon, I've been officially up since... I'm not sure, and I feel mentally disconnected.

I have a manicure/pedicure appointment soon, which will be nice. But then the Dude and I are going to the Eaton Centre because we both need shoes/boots. And that won't be nice. It's a Sunday a couple weeks before Christmas at the largest mall downtown Toronto. We're talking zoo central. But I have no winter boots. My only pair, which were three or four years old, developed holes in them by the end of their second winter. I kept wearing them and avoided puddles.

Some women love new shoes. I... don't. I look at every new pair as something new and pinchy that will hurt my feet and scrape skin off my toes or heels. My feet are also 1/2 a size different from each other, so finding a comfy and attractive pair I can afford, which fits both feet properly is a pain the ass. So I hang onto footwear as much as humanly possibly, mostly until they disintegrate off of my feet. And that's what happened to the boots. The soles broke off the front and were catching on escalators. And I looked like a hobo in them.

So before the snow comes, I must get a new pair. And I have to venture out there into the hell that is Christmas shopping season. Quel dommage.

Maybe a movie would be good after all this. My aunt called me to leave me a message telling me that the child in Hugo reminded her of me very much. Call me narcissistic, but now I'm intrigued.

First day of school-- adult version

I've taken yet another small leap into adulthood and bought my first couch. My first couch was my college boyfriend's futon in the apartment we shared our last year of school, which was achingly uncomfortable. And really, it was his couch.

My next couch came in the form of a large, heavy, seemingly permanent monster of a sofa that came with the apartment. It was my first place in Toronto, I moved in with a friend and we had no couch of our own, so this leave-behind suited our needs. My cats tore it a new one, and we left it behind two years later.

My third couch I bought used off a friend of a friend. It was a blue Ikea Ektorp and I got it for a whopping $500, haggled down in the 11th hour from $600. Why so much? Because I'm a sucker. The friend paid $700 plus tax and delivery for it a year earlier. Having never bought anything so large off someone and too shy to haggle with someone I know, well... anyway, it was $500. This was in 2006.

Three years later, the couch is now sitting on the side of the road. The cats murdered it some time ago, in the large window of time when I didn't have a scratching post for them, and it stopped smelling right some time this year.

So now I have a spiffy new couch from Urban Brick. A real live grown-up couch that has never been owned before. It's got an ottoman, it's sectional AND it turns into a double bed.

I went shopping for this couch with two friends of mine, lovely men who both had an inner Rolodex in their heads of all the good furniture stores in the downtown core. One of them took a picture of me buying the couch ("First grown up couch") and put it on Facebook. I was charmed and felt like a kid going to their first day of school.

All that's left for this godforsaken move is packing up and throwing things away.

As for the old couch, it's still on the curb, missing a couple cushions we kept to sit on until we move. It's been drizzling rain and the old ratty thing is a pathetic sight. I'm somehow reminded of this commericial.