kiss me Kate...

     On April 29th along with the Royals, it was my daughter’s anniversary.  Eleven years.  Boy how time flies, seems just like yesterday I was trying to sell a kidney to pay for her wedding. I had seen Diana (Di to us in the loop...)and Charles’ wedding all those years ago….set the alarm, woke ridiculously early and watched it with my young daughters who could care less about weddings or even boys at that point. We laid on the bed and watched a small black and white TV and marveled at how long (and wrinkled) her train was. I remember attempting to explain to them that the back of the dress was called a ‘train’ as they voiced concern that a locomotive would be following her down the aisle. Fast forward to April 29th 2011...I DVR’d it, got up at a normal hour, pressed play and watched the wedding of Kate and William alone. The little girls who had joined me last time are all grown up with children of their own and I can assure you, none of them would mistake a ‘train’ for….well, a train!  Children have gotten way smarter!

The TV I watched it on has 52 inches of high definition color where zoomed shots were probably taken from two blocks away. A quick sighting of Prince Charles, father of the groom, and I thought wow he looks good…his marriage to Camilla must be a good thing….kept him young looking and he certainly has more hair than his son. William that is, Harry has hair like a poodle…must take after his moms side. The wedding under way, the car pulled up and the bride emerged…her face obscured by her veil. As she pulled and tugged at her train to free it from the car, along came several valets and bridesmaids to help her with the 25 foot wrinkled mess. And I thought…it must be some British tradition. To have a wrinkled wedding dress. Diana had it too. And the Queen, she looked pretty good as well…and then it dawned on me. I was watching a recap of the Charles and Diana wedding from 1981. (I though my high def was looking a little grainy) While Diana dragged herself down the aisle I went and made a cup of coffee. By the time I returned, like Dorothy stepping out of her Kansas doorway into Oz, the high def-I-can-see-every-blemish-and facial-hair-you-have…..was back…and so was Kate and William….and a much older Queen….and the father of the groom was suddenly an old man.

Kate’s dress was beautiful and not at all wrinkled. An Alexander McQueen fashion house design. Even after a successful suicide last year, McQueen is making money. Her sister/bridesmaid wore a simple and elegant skin tight painted on white dress with about a hundred buttons down the back. Good thing she was as slim as her sister or that could have been one button popping disaster waiting to happen. I bet that would have kept the Royals hopping! William, though sporting the friar tuck balding pattern looked handsome in his pajamas dress uniform. (do the Brits not believe in tuxedos, vests, cummerbunds??) I wore a hat to my wedding. So did my bridal party. Ok they looked more like bonnets, but they were hats….I like to think I was way ahead of my time. At Kate and William’s everyone wore a hat. Some quite stylish and some frighteningly reminiscent of a side show I once saw in Coney Island. All the newspapers were heralding the hats as the best part of the British tradition. Then someone in the editorial department surely missed the one that looked like a bow or was it a pretzel? Sarah Ferguson (Fergie to us in the loop…) didn’t get an invite so it was up to her two daughters to embarrass the family a tad more and they did her proud with that hideous headgear.

They showed people singing, people pretending to sing and those that just held the song book in case the camera panned around to them. They showed Elton John singing. His partner next to him. Who was watching the newly adopted baby I wondered? The men all wore very colorful military uniforms that I have never seen on any battlefield in any country. (have to admit I haven’t been to many battlefields lately though) The Queen wore canary yellow. With a matching hat of course. And held onto her pocketbook like she was in a Brooklyn mall.

The bride and groom looked both radiant and nervous. I left them reciting there vows and William nervously trying to get a too small ring onto Kates finger, to make another cup of coffee and some toast. This whole British wedding thing was making me hungry for tea and crumpets or even scones….but I had to settle for two pieces of pumpernickel bread and a second cup of coffee.

I put on the TV in real time. I got to see them kiss. Well…peck. The crowd went wild. They pecked again. Again the crowd went wild. And for some reason all I could think of was when the newly chosen Pope came out on the balcony of the Vatican, his ring got more lip action from his bishops then Kate got from William. (Wills to us in the loop…)

I turned off the TV. I had had enough of the Royals for one day….and besides my pumpernickel toast was ready and my coffee getting cold.

me and julio.....

I went to the mall Saturday to buy my nephew a gift. I know, I know…we’ve been through this before…never ends good. But since an eBay seller I originally ordered his gift from screwed me up at the last minute and I knew exactly what I wanted at the mall I attempted it prepared to fight the good fight and make it out unscathed.

I won’t bother to mention the store I went to since that would be giving them undue publicity and they recently “regrettably” informed me that they would not be renewing my credit card. (Seems I didn’t use it enough or pay on time…or both). I found a shirt for my son that looked interesting but it was hung way higher than I could possibly reach and the only people around were two Mexicans who made me look like I wore stilts. I made my way over to the cashier counter and asked an extremely tall kid who was busy texting even as he struggled to keep a bag full of hangers contained with his one free hand. I told him of my plight and he said he would be right over. As I stood there I watched him, still texting, drag the hanger bag in the opposite direction at a speed that defied logic. Any slower and he would have been asleep. He glanced once over his shoulder at me standing like the fool I felt under the sky high rack. Out of desperation I used a hanger and knocked the shirt down.

As I continued shopping I noticed that the line was relatively short and I thought to myself that the curse has finally been broken, my horrific mall experiences have come to an end. I found exactly what I wanted relatively fast and made my way to the cashier. The line suddenly was twenty deep. I sucked it up and got on the end of the line. Anticipating a longer wait than I expected I reached for my cell phone to catch up on some phone calls and to distract me from the fact that I was the only English speaking person within a 30 foot radius. Of course, as luck would have it I left my cell phone in the car. So I stood there as patient as I could possibly muster….waiting my turn. A lovely Spanish family with a twin stroller got on the line behind me. We exchanged several smiles (the universal language) as little Julio reached from his stroller to yank on my pocketbook. More smiles as he repeatedly and purposely kicked me in leg. And even more smiles as he threw his bottle filled with an odd green substance. I killed three minutes just trying to figure out what the hell poor little Julio had in his bottle and was it the reason I now had an urge to whack the little Hispanic rug rat. Thankfully little Juanita in the other stroller seat was asleep. The two slug-like cashiers got even slower. It was now 7 minutes on line with no movement. None. The Russian man in front of me started to loudly mumble in his native tongue. Since I am fluent in nothing but English, and can glimmer only a tiny bit of Spanish and Italian…I had no idea what Igor was saying but I am guessing it was something along the lines of…’what the hell is taking these slug-like cashiers so long….! I shifted the clothes from one hand to the next as the hangers imbedded themselves into my flesh. I shifted from one leg to the other hoping to distribute my weight so that my ‘good’ knee didn’t join my ‘bad’ knee in the throbbing that was now starting.

Oh goody….little Juanita woke up! She made Julio look like a choirboy. She cried and yelled and pinched her brother making him cry and yell and mom and dad still smiling those universal smiles started to sing to them. Yes, sing. In the store….on the line behind me. You have not lived until you have heard a Justin Beiber tune sung thirteen times….with a Spanish accent. Oh Babeeee Babeeee…jeez, kill me now! I was now the tenth person on line and saw that they added another cashier. Yay! or not. She wasn’t ‘another’ cashier, she was a ‘replacement’ cashier. So in the time it took for them to exchange the money drawers, sign out, sign in and organize the work space I could have brought about world peace. Igor was clearly agitated now and as he yelled into his cell phone I could tell he was planning to go back to his mother country and instigate a mall bombing. (that or he was just as pissed as me that we both thought it a wise idea to brave the mall on a Saturday afternoon).

As the concert behind me continued, Julio and his demon sister cried, and Igor stood huffing, I saw that I was now only 6 people from the register. The anticipation was maddening. After almost a fifteen minute wait, I noticed that the size on one of the items I bought was wrong. Since I had to go back and get the right size I needed to ask someone to save my spot in line. I turned to the singing couple and asked if they could save my spot since I picked up the wrong size. They smiled those blank smiles back at me and I wasn’t sure if they understood or not. OK? I asked. Nothing, just smiles. I tapped Igor on the shoulder and told him the same thing hoping for a clearer response and got a mouthful of words that meant nothing to me as I am sure mine meant to him. I got off the line anyway. I ran as fast as my now atrophied knees would allow, got the right size and went huffing back to the line. Nothing had changed. No one had moved. As I inserted myself back into the line I wondered if anyone even knew where I had gone. Or why.

 

Three people to go and Igor left. (Sorry Igor, was it something I said?) A woman with a ridiculous amount of clothes slung across her arm was at the register. As the cashier finished taking her cash she started the daunting task of folding each item before bagging them. She wasted spent 8 minutes folding and piling the clothes before jamming them into a bag too small for so many items. I knew this took 8 minutes, not because I had a watch or a cell phone to look at, but because I counted to 60...8 times. There was little else to do. I finally made it to the cashier, spent another minute telling her that I did not want to sign up for the charge card that I already had and somehow lost, paid and left. I had been in the store for 67 minutes….37 of them on line. I love my nephew!