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December
15, 2005. I had a meeting online last night, so I decided to suck it up and brave the Mag Mile tonight for some needed Christmas shopping after work. Look. I really tend to dislike shopping, in general. I am mostly a necessities-type girl. I don't window shop, and I dislike browsing for things with the possibility of actually spending money. Maybe it's because things have been so tight for so long, I dunno, but the mere act of shopping has almost never been full of happiness for me. However, the holidays being what they are, I needed to purchase somewhat-spendy gifts for two separate family grab bags. Having a wrecked car, and a gas bill that makes me go ouch makes me just the tiniest bit resentful of these obligations, but of course I didn't have these issues when I agreed to draw names a month or so ago. The bus took an entire historical era unto itself, complete with battles, coups, and consanguinity in the royal line of bus drivers, but once we crossed the river, I pulled the cord and hopped out into the damp cold. NBC, Wrigley, Tribune, floodlights, river. Clear and dark skies. The crosswalk was wide and empty, and I was soon swept through gigantic glass doors into a lobby with frightful dudes dressed up as gigantic ears. My peripheral vision told me something about cellphone plans, but my fight or flight response had kicked in, and I wanted to get as far away as possible from the gigantic foam ... things before it was too late, before having promotional junk pressed into my hands, and clipboards pressed onto my eyeballs. Sephora was supposed to be first, but I took a side trip into the Body Shop, since I am a sucker for their body butter - specifically, the nut-scented one. I always thought the stuff smelled vaguely chocolatey, so I was even more pleased to see that they'd added a cocoa butter scent to the collection. So I bought a big container of that, since I was out of the nut stuff at home. This is just scintillating, isn't it? I was a little sad that they'd not brought back the chocolate orange special holiday scent, but, you know, the wallet is not limitless at this time. Like I'd said. Out of sight, out of mind. On to Sephora, a store which really shouldn't even be in the small repertoire of stores that I really like, but there you have it. I don't like a great many perfumes, but I do like finding the rare new one that I will adore. Ever since my friend Nova (I call her The Enabler) got me into the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab stuff (that is like a cult plague for a strange cross-section of the internet), I've really been able to narrow down what scents I like, pretty quickly. So it only made sense that I crossed into the aisle that would have the Fresh line of perfumes and related thingamabobs (I wish I could communicate to you how insane it is that I hate shopping so much, and yet can still find this section in Sephora every single time), and immediately see that they had a body butter scented with orange chocolate. So, I treated myself to the tiniest container they had, which was still insanely expensive. It also seems that the Lemon Sugar perfume I picked up months and months ago is a lot more popular now - little side baskets were filled with the yellow boxes, right by the registers. I picked up the family gift I needed there, managed to sidestep those giant ears (scary!), and burst out onto the sidewalk outside, shwagless. The Virgin megastore was loud and boppy, but not terribly crowded. I feel a sense of dismay nowadays when I see these racks of CDs stretching off into the distance, all filled with bands I will never get to know, get to hate, get to love. The dismay deepens when I realize that I am looking only at one genre, and that everything else is situated on the other side of the store, or, in this case, another floor entirely. Too much to know -- not enough hours in the day. I took the escalator up and into the DVD section, where I found the second family gift, no problem. Checking out the prices of the DVD sets of TV shows I'd been watching via Netflix made me even more glad of the service than I had been previously. I also purchased Shaun of the Dead for myself. I've been wanting that movie for ages. Maybe I'll watch it over Christmas. Emerging outside for the last time, I found myself in a wonderland of giddy shoppers and schoolkids and taxis and buses and lights and SNOW. Snow flurrying about in a perfectly cinematic sort of way, falling and sticking with alacrity. There's this part of the back area of the Mag Mile where I always end up wandering, whether by myself, or taking friends along. I knew I needed to go into that section to get to a train tunnel, but I never really have memorized where the entrances for it are. I just know that if I zig-zag just enough, one will appear, as if by magic. This time was no exception, although I was distracted by just how much of my recent history this little area has gathered unto itself. Over there is where Disney Quest used to be, and over here is Uno's, Due's, and then the Shriner Auditorium which is now a Macy's, of all things. And here is the hotel where the rehearsal dinner for Ann and Tim's wedding was, and oh, the chardonnay, and there is the Rock Bottom Brewery where I topped that chardonnay with beer, and where Sean Stewart nearly toppled a table on me in April (there was a fight over the bill, and he won), and there's the movie theatre I saw Kill Bill 2 at with koroshiya and Jared, and etc. and on and on. So, one bus to the stores, and then two trains and a bus to get home. I made the deal even sweeter for myself by stopping in to Penny's Noodles before that last bus, and getting a noodle bowl takeout of sauteed chicken. I hoped that it was still above freezing enough outside to keep the food from going completely cold before I got home, and sure enough, I was able to chopstick noodles that were almost steaming a little out of the takeout container, and into a bowl. A solitary evening, yes, but productive, I suppose. Everything according to plan. No surprises, no real epiphanies. I sometimes worry that this is all there is to life, and then other times, I worry that this sense of plodding familiarity will disappear. But oh, at the very least, my skin will be soft, supple, and smelling of cocoa. There is that. go
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