Week in Review: Week 242

MONDAY

Yay! Finally! Some fun! Some getting the heck out of dodge, seeing some new sights. It was a beautiful night…but melancholy, as my one good friend is moving to FL NEXT WEEK and a sweet light will go out of my life. This was our LAST HURRAH before she goes. Not to say she won’t ever be back, but…

TUESDAY

Have I told you HOW HARD I AM ADULTING THIS WEEK?!

Sunday: ALL THE ERRANDS! I hate errands.

Monday: Went to the bank and finally canceled the missing debit card. Yes, it’s been a month,  but I’m just so sure it’s around SOMEWHERE. But it was getting too inconvenient to have to keep going to the bank to get cash.

And today, I finally made a hair appointment, which may not seem like adulting to some, but THE PHONE, MAN. I hate making telephone calls. And this was a new salon (well, a new old salon – it’s where I’d been going before I got sick and then had no more hair to cut) and I wasn’t sure of the name of the young man who’d been cutting my hair and I wanted him cuz he did a nice job. I decided against returning to head shaving Melissa after she gave me the unfortunate pageboy cut in February. Anyway, it was quite an ordeal getting the phone man to look back in my records, yadda yadda yadda. But I did it. Though I’m disappointed at having to wait til NEXT Friday, a-week-and-a-half from now.

AND I called the ophthalmologist to schedule a consultation about cataract surgery. He told me about them 1-2 years ago (can’t recall exactly when I was there) and I was like pheh. But in the past six months I feel they’ve gotten worse. It feels like I always have Vaseline in my eyes and I can’t blink or wipe it away. Surgery on my EYES terrifies me, but so does my vision getting worse.

WEDNESDAY

Zoom meeting with Katherine, the marketing/blog consultant I’ve just started working with. We meet weekly each Wednesday afternoon. She’s trying to whip me and the blog into shape 🙂  The current situation is that I’m trying to carve out some time to do this homework. I may need to cut back on my weekly postings a bit for the time being just so I can spend time working on growth. That’s a very hard thing for me to do. But I’m thinking I’ll keep Monday/Week in Review; Saturday/Workday Wardrobe, and Wednesdays will alternate between outfit posts and style sessions. I don’t know that I can go cold turkey like that, so there may be an extra post in there now and then.

THURSDAY

The day between Wednesday and Friday.

FRIDAY

Oh the thrill of laundromat day. But I DID reward myself afterward with a slice of pizza. Yay.

SATURDAY

One more day with the soon-to-leave friend. We spent a lovely day in the city (which is NOT DEAD – THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SAYING THIS ARE REALLY PISSING ME OFF).

We started at the conservatory garden in Central Park, which is exceptionally lovely this time of year. Autumn gardens may be my favorite.

We had a nice lunch at a sidewalk cafe. The weather was perfect.

Stopped into some galleries and then had coffee and dessert at dusk on an outdoor patio with twinkle lights strung overhead. It was very charming.

And went into Times Square for big pretzels. All the people who say NYC is dead need to visit Times Square on a Saturday night.

SUNDAY

Sunday Funday: Flushing Edition. I had found a Japanese Dollar Store in a shopping mall in Queens, so…obviously we had to go. I got a bunch of Christmas stocking stuffers for Katie.

I’d planned to shoot an outfit but the mall was hot and I got overheated and sweaty and once I’m sweaty all bets are off. I’m done. I can’t focus, I can’t do.

We had dim sum for dinner and knocked like 3 activities off the lost cuz we were both tired (two days of weekend fun is just too much for me!) and I wasn’t feeling that great really. I would like to lay the right side of my face in the ice cube tub. I took a bunch of Tylenol when I got home so hopefully there’ll be some relief soon.

WHAT I’M READING

I read a really great article in The Atlantic about the significance of powerful non-sexual friendships.

This bit, “In the 1897 novel Diana Victrix, the character Enid rejects a man’s proposal because her female friend already occupies the space in her life that her suitor covets. In words prefiguring Kami West’s, Enid tells the man that if they married, “you would have to come first. And you could not, for she is first.”

This made me think of how I’ve always felt that my then best friend’s move out of state was the impetus for the end of my marriage. Not that the marriage didn’t have its own issues; of course it did. But I think we were both just powering through CUZ. Cuz we were married. Cuz we had a child. Cuz we’d made a commitment. BUT. Once she was gone (or as I thought of it at the time, “once she left me”), I realized SHE was the reason I was ABLE to power through. SHE was My Person. She was my companion; the one I talked to, and played and laughed with. With her gone, I started looking to my then-husband for that companionship…and realized…it was not there. WE were not playing or laughing or talking.

It didn’t happen overnight, but I think that’s when I started to realize I was unhappy. With the marriage. And I don’t believe he was any happier than I was. And it was several more years before we split up…but I’ve always felt like that was the first big crack. The thing that made me go OH. THIS isn’t a great relationship.

It’s probably unfair that we put SO much pressure on one person to be our everything – friend, companion, partner, co-parent, (sometimes) financial support, etc. I hear magical stories about relationships that ARE like that, but they are few and far between. It’s probably time we really stop thinking that the romantic relationship is the be all and end all of life.

It’s like me thinking one pair of black flats is going to go with EVERY OUTFIT I HAVE. They’re not. I can try and force it, but…they really don’t go with everything and I should really just find some OTHER shoes/people to fill some other roles.

Yes, I just compared husband/boyfriend/partner to a pair of shoes, but you know what I mean.

Anyway.

WHAT I’M WATCHING

I TRIED to watch an American thing this week. I. Could. Not. Do. It. Ha. I mean, that had been a long time coming for me. I was watching less and less tv and finding fewer and fewer appealing movies. The introduction to Asian TV and movies came along at just the right time for me.

There’s just something…so sensitive about them…so insightful…I feel like characters explore inner feelings more. And they’re not all about sex!!! Not that I have anything against sex, it’s just…so nice to have to go eight episodes in before he is finally reaching for her HAND! The innocence! The anticipation! As opposed to so many American shows where they’re in bed within the first ten minutes. And I so enjoy watching the Asian customs. The respectfulness, the language, the food, etc. I want to bow to everyone now! I don’t want to turn my back on the sweet couple at the bagel shop when I walk out!

Anyway, I do love how the series go. They’re mostly one 16-episode season long. Episodes are 60-90 minutes with no commercials. So the storyline is way more involved than a 90-minute movie would be…but you know that everything is going to wrap up in 16 episodes and not go on endlessly. You know how some shows, as much as you love them, they just go on too long and inevitably jump the shark and go downhill. 16 episodes is a nice length.

And I have always enjoyed watching movies with subtitles. Not sure if it’s cuz it forces me to pay attention? There’s no picking up the cell phone for even a second cuz I’ll miss something important! AND, sometimes I have a hard time hearing/understanding what’s being said, with subtitles there’s never any of that.

This is Us returns this week. I’ll make a point to watch that as I did like it. BEFORE. Ha. Before I knew what else was out there!

Anyway, what I did watch this week was another Korean series called “Radiant,” which also goes by the title “The Light in Your Eyes” (a lot of them go by multiple titles, I think because of differences in translations). I didn’t know if I’d like the premise: basically a 25-year-old girl turns into 75-year-old woman to save her father’s life (as one does when one has a magical time-turning-back watch) and she has to bear witness to the difficult changes in the lives of those she loves due to her 25-year-old self disappearing. But it had me at heartbreaking. And both of the leads were darling.

Also, the 25-to-75-year-old was fun to watch from a style perspective. On the inside she was still a young cute girl…but she had to adapt that youthful mindset to an older person’s aesthetic. I was quite inspired by some of her outfits: cropped hoodies over long dresses with sneakers (right up my alley); oversized sweater vests over dresses with converse. Yup. That’s the kind of 75-year-old I want to be. That’s the kind of SIXTY-YEAR-OLD I want to be!

Alrighty. I hope y’all have a good week.