Back to School?

I don’t know why I hate shopping so much, because having the new stuff is so damned much fun! Dr. Vet-Friend was telling me recently about an article she read explaining why we love shopping (as a species). You know – women who buy umpteen pairs of shoes and collect depression-era glass, and men who can’t drive by a Home Depot without buying some new tool or other. It’s because humans are “hunter-gatherers.” We need to hunt and gather. Since we don’t have to do this for survival anymore, like hunting game and foraging for fruits and edible plants, all we have is shopping. We go out and hunt (shop) and gather (buy), and it makes us feel good. Maybe not the process itself (in my case), but the end result. “I went out, found this stuff, and brought it home! Now I have it!”

I was actually excited to get ready for work this morning. I put on my so-cute wide legged brown pants, my brown, tan and green crinkle blouse, and my wicked-cool brown high-heeled wingtips. Then I fluffed and sprayed my freshly trimmed, perfectly colored and highlighted hair, and felt gooooood. I chose to ignore the fact that I currently have almost no eyelashes on my right eye for some reason, and the ones I have are long and curly. Not good curly, either. Just sort of randomly curling in whichever direction they choose.

It sort of felt like the first day of school. You have your new fall clothes, probably just got a haircut, put on the shoes that your mom got you a month ago and you were forbidden to take out of the box until school started, loaded up all those great fresh new notebooks, and headed out to face the world. I got tons of lovely compliments on my outfit (especially the pants and the shoes), but I’m a wee bit perturbed that my hair has thus far escaped comment.

Last night, I learned that Jolene the Hair Goddess lives about five blocks south of The Boy and Fabulous Fiancée. This is a long-ass commute for her, clear up to Elk River, and although she’s working only two days a week right now, I wonder (fear) how long she might continue to do it. If she decides to work closer to home, I know I will have to drive there. The thought of anyone else colorizing my hair makes my stomach hurt.

I have made one observation today. I noticed I’m so busy looking down at my swishy pants and awesome shoes while I’m walking that I’m much more likely to run into things. I figure it’s a trade-off, though, because if I’m looking at my feet and the ground I’m less likely to fall down.

Speaking of falling – which I do a lot, both the speaking of as well as the actual falling – I had a near miss last week when I forgot about the very bottom stair while heading down to the laundry room in the dark. Didn’t actually fall, though.

But the newer (stranger) problem has been that I’ve caught myself almost falling up the stairs. I have no idea why, but I’ll be half-way up some stairs, and I’ll hear my brain trying to tell my feet, “You’re there, start walking forward now.” This is not a good thing for my brain to tell my feet, because if they listen to it I will trip and bark my shins on the stairs, and that will really annoy me. Hard to punish your own brain for such carelessness, though. I could threaten to kill off a few billion more of its neurons via alcohol poisoning, but I suspect that would only lead to more problems.

Thus far, I’ve intercepted my brain’s message before my feet could act upon it, thus saving the shin-barking and thoughts of cerebral retribution. I must assume that my brain is so far ahead of the rest of me that it thinks it’s giving the appropriate signals. The rest of me is just too far behind. I guess I should be grateful that Brain-o isn’t giving this command while I’m walking down the stairs.

Maybe I’ll have a talk with my feet about that this weekend. They should be very receptive to whatever I have to say, since I bought them such cool new shoes.