The Pink Shoe Diaries

This Saturday, one of my best friends is getting married. This, in and of itself, is a momentous occasion but it also marks the First Time I have ever been in a wedding party.

So far, it has been a good time but the part I am most nervous about is the actual wedding day. And while my tasks that day are basically limited to walking down an aisle twice, in my experience the simpler a task seems, the more likely I am to find a new and inventive way to f*ck it up.

In fact, as the day approaches my sleep has been littered with mini wedding nightmares. In one instance, I get to the front of the church only to realize I have on hot pink knee socks (which i am wearing with SANDALS to add insult to injury). In another nightmare, I cannot stop myself from breaking into song in the middle of the ceremony. Repeatedly.

In my waking hours, I worry that my hair will look terrible, my tan streaky, my dress (which has kind of a funny zipper) will burst open mid aisle-walk. My sandal will break in half etc...

And this past Saturday has not done much to assuage my fears.

Saturday night was the bachelorette party and as of Friday night I felt I was all set for it. I had bought a new top & shawl that looked smashing. I had made a mist on tanning appointment for the following morning, and since Adam was away for the weekend I looked forward to having my "getting ready time (which with me is like a 2 hour process) to myself.

Saturday, if you recall, was a little wet. When I was getting ready for my tanning appointment it was only spritzing out so I was glad to be going now, rather than later when it was supposed to get worse. So I drove over to the salon, and although I normally have no trouble finding parking, I could not find anything within a 3 block radius of the salon so i parked in a lot down the street. I trotted into the salon, did my Charlies Angels poses in the mist machine and was ready to be on my way 5 minutes later.

Only outside was the monsoon to end all monsoons. I mean I could not even see 1 foot in front of me. And all of this happened in the 5 minutes I was in the tanning machine.

And, of course, I had left my umbrella in the car.

"You DO have an umbrella, right?" the receptionist asked me. Which is the most annoying question ever because if you see me standing there with no purse and no coat and only my keys and credit card then tell me where exactly would I pull this umbrella out of.

"No", I told her. "It was hardly raining at all when I came in".

She looked at me like Don't Think You Will Get Your Money Back and said "Well be really careful, you will probably streak!". (Did I not mention earlier my intense fear of streaky tans!?). So I wrapped my body up in my pashmina, burkha style, and SPRINTED for my car. unfortunately i was wearing stiletto sandals (owning only one pair of flip flops means never finding them when you need them) which is non conducive to sprinting so I took them off and ran barefoot to my car which of couse washed all the self tanner off my feet, lower legs. Awesome.

I endured a very damp ride home and then examined myself when I got to my apartment. With some of my own self tanner and some bronzer I managed to make myself look more uniformly tanned and chalked it up a yet another reason I should always have an umbrella on me even if it is just "spritzing".

And then things went smoothly until late afternoon when I attempted to get dressed. Now I have mentioned before that I am not a big jeans wearer. I only own two pairs: one "going out" pair that are a little darker and slim fitting, and one "futzing around the house" pair that should not see the light of day. My outfit for that night hinged on wearing the going out jeans. Black pants would have made my outfit entirely too dressy (the top was a black tank top and black lacy shawl pinned semi poncho shyle with a rhinestone clasp) and it was too wet out to wear a skirt (especially since more rain might further streak my legs). Now what do you think happened when I put the going out jeans on?

The left butt pocket ripped off. OF COURSE!

So it is 4:15, I have to be at Jeanne's house at 5:30 and I have no pants to wear.

So of course I do the logical thing and head out in the driving rain (did I mention that I already did my hair and it was PERFECTO) to Old Navy (the closest store guaranteed to have jeans long enough for me) to pick up a new pair. I swear I have never driven 7 miles more quickly in my life nor have I ever seen it rain QUITE that hard nor have I ever picked out a pair of pants quicker either. I literally ran in (dressed from the waist up in elegant going out clothes and from the bottom down in sweatpants), grabbed a pair of jeans in my size, length and cut, tried them on in about 1 minute and was back in my car 3 minutes later.

It was epic.

And then to cap it all off. I couldn't find the new MAC eyeliner that I had splurged on for the night and was dying to use. I hoped silently it was in my car somewhere and as I made my way out to the car I found it, in smithereens, in the driveway behind my car. So I somehow managed to drop it in the precise spot that would enable me to then run it over.

In the end, the night was a success and I had lots of fun depsite my tan/pants/eyeliner debacles previous in the day. I just hope that the wedding day runs a little more smoothly for me, because I really can't be running down to Davids Bridal at 6AM on Saturday because I ripped my dress open.

Although that is another recurring nightmare.