November 28, 1999

Sunday, November 28, 1999: Ouch!

After I wrote the short entry last night, I decided to try to lie down and take a nap after all. It was about 6:45; I asked Bob to be sure I was up by 7:30 or so, which would give me plenty of time to shower and dress and dry my hair and be ready to leave by about 8:45.

At 8:00 I woke up, the bedroom dark, faint sounds of his computer game filtering through the almost-closed door. I got up, got into the shower, washed my hair, and only after I was out and dried off, hair combed, did I go down the hall and ask him why he hadn't woken me up. I figured he had forgotten (my fault for not setting the alarm), but he said we had plenty of time and he wanted me to get some sleep.

It was okay; I wasn't terribly rushed, and we really didn't need to leave quite so early. We left the house around 8:45. I drove, since we were going to the Japanese restaurant and Bob has a tendency to overdo it with the hot sake.

Most of the group was already there; we got drinks at the bar and sat down to wait for the last couple, who never arrived. Our reservation was for 9:30; by 9:45 we gave up on our friends and went to see if we could be seated. It was 10:00 before we sat down. Everyone was starving and sleepy by that point. Dinner was fun, though--it was a Japanese teppanyaki place where the chefs cook on the grill in the middle of the table.

The chef had finished cooking and had placed the food on our plates, cleaned up, bowed, and wheeled away his cart of sauces and condiments. Bob picked up a fork that was lying near his place, and handed it to me, asking me to set it on the side of the table (I was sitting at the end with no one beside me; Bob apparently was feeling crowded). Problem was, the fork had apparently been lying about half on the grill--the end that Bob picked up (the business end, on purpose, he said, so that he didn't hand me the dirty part) was cool, but the end I took from him was red-hot.

I shouted SHIT!! and dropped it--I doubt if our friends had ever heard me say that word before. It just came out unbidden.

I grabbed a piece of ice from my water glass, and tried to downplay it for the sake of the evening, but I was fearful that it was going to blister. I just kept putting ice on it, at one point simply sitting there with my thumb in the glass, and eventually the pain subsided. It's pretty much okay today--just a little tender. It never did blister.

Bob was extremely contrite. He certainly didn't do it on purpose, and I wasn't angry with him, but it was very late, and I was tired, so I'm sure he thought I was. We got home around midnight. A long, somewhat stressful evening.

Today I mostly lazed around the house, reading some stuff on the web, writing some, doing a little laundry, then decided to go out to Target in the middle of the afternoon and scout around for some more Christmas decorations. Me and the rest of the world, apparently.

I hadn't given any thought to the fact that the "biggest shopping day of the year" would spill over into the rest of the weekend, but of course that makes sense.

The Christmas decoration aisles were packed, as was the toy department. I hadn't paid any attention to the newspaper, either, but there were probably a lot of sales going on. I occasionally look at the ads, but I don't make a practice of it. I usually end up buying more stuff I don't need if I do that.

I ended up buying some Christmas kitchen towels and a placemat to sit in the middle of the dining table and put my stuff on--the creamer and sugar bowl, the napkin holder, a couple of candles and the salt and pepper shakers--a cool silver wire holder to put Christmas cards in, some pink glittery nail polish, a couple of small Christmas presents for friends, and a frame for that Polaroid that Dad took of Bob and me on Thanksgiving.

I had a good time wandering around. It helped that I didn't really have any goal in mind, or any time limit. The crowds didn't bother me too much. I just avoided the most crowded aisles. I would have abandoned my cart, but I had too many small things to carry around. Oh well. It worked out okay.

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