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content by Nicole Willson.
Copyright 2000. No stealing.
9/24 -- Money Therapy.
On Thursday night, Bill and I met after work at Pentagon City Mall. We stopped at Borders, where Bill wandered around the shelves and I settled on a sofa at the café with a stack of "MS and You"-type books next to me. Bill wandered over after a while and said "Getting anything?"
I looked up at him, looked down at the stack of dreary MS books, looked back up at him and said "You know what? Fuck this MS shit. I'm sick of it. I'm getting something fun tonight."
And I did. I grabbed a pro-wrestling magazine and a SoopahDeluxeLimitedEverything DVD edition of "Men in Black" on my way to the counter. Next to the cash registers were stacks of free Powerpuff Girl stickers, as if the universe were somehow affirming my decision to have fun that night.
We had dinner and hit the rest of the mall, and I managed to avoid purchasing so much as one practical item the entire night. Well ... you could call the mugs I got with various renditions of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portrait vaguely practical, I suppose. If we needed four more mugs. If we needed even one more mug -- unloading the dishwasher and trying to find room for all the mugs and cups and glasses the two of us brought to this marriage generally involves rearranging cans in the cabinets, knocking stuff down, and cursing. Especially cursing.
But the mugs looked so cool that they stopped me dead in my tracks as I passed the Museum Company, and that was pretty much my criteria for buying stuff. I stopped there on the way to my real destination, Nordstrom's. Nordstrom's is the home of my favorite cosmetics department, with lots of new 'n' hip blue-lipstick-and-glitter lines sharing space with the older tried-and-true lines. And I've found that when I'm feeling down, buying makeup and facial stuff I'll probably use twice chases those Giant Clouds O'Gloom away like nothing else. Some people drink. Some people eat chocolate. I do those things too, but if you wanna make me really happy, give me some cash and point me in the direction of counters selling La Creme Formule Jeunesse Bioactif Tres Expensif SPF 30. Ahhh. All better.
Beyond all this conspicuous consumption, though, I think the "Fuck this MS shit" attitude did me a world of good. On Friday I went to work feeling genuinely cheerful and upbeat for the first time since the big diagnosis last Wednesday. It helped that I had my own peppy mental soundtrack going. When we got home from the mall the night before, I'd watched the "Homicide" rerun on Court TV. Detective Munch ends up as the primary detective for a case involving the murder of his high-school crush. (That I'd get lucky enough to have the "Homicide" rerun be one featuring Munch in a primary role just put the cherry on top of the feelin'-good evening.) His whole history with the girl is played out in flashbacks, the first one set to "Shimmy Shimmy Co-co Pop." (Or maybe "Bop." That one's before my time. I really don't know.)
As annoyingly catchy pop tunes are wont to do, the song lodged itself in my brain for most of Friday.
Shimmy shimmy co-co pop.
Shimmy shimmy pop.
Shimmy dear God make it STOP
Shimmy shimmy AAAAAUUUGGGH!
Your Basic Pathetic Plea for Online Companionship: I tried installing ICQ for the Macintosh and found it unsightly, confusing to run, and utterly unhelpful about how to transfer your account info from one platform to another. Last night, I dug up AOL Instant Messenger for the Mac and installed that instead. Aside from heinously annoying sound effects that I haven't managed to disable yet, it works about the same as it did on my Windows machines. I gave myself the handle "Insomnicole". Corny, but still easier to remember than ICQ's 98880099880000-style number IDs.
Anyhow, feel free to say hello if you see me online, as I'm trying to rebuild my buddy list.
One year ago: I answered that survey from that "guy known as Stee."