Good morning, world. Today is a new day, with sunshine and heat. For the time being, I have a coffee and the mental acuity to type up a proper post this morning. Yesterday was a long-ass day. I set the alarm for a little earlier than the normal time. Shawshank did the morning things. I did fewer morning things, skipping the coffee and morning post, instead opting to assume the human form before anything else. His parents showed up around 8am, as planned, and we started the trek towards the city.
We probably could have left an hour later and still had time to do everything we needed to do. The appointment wasn’t until after lunch, so we made Walmart our first stop. I think we set new records while there; we spent less than half the time or money we normally spend. Our list was small to begin with, and we only grabbed a couple of extras. Shawshank joked that we should get lunch at the McDonald’s inside Walmart. His mother told him it was too early, it was barely 10:45. At 11:05, we pulled into Burger King for lunch. Then we got the 90’s teenager treatment: they dropped us off at the strip mall and said they’d be back in a couple of hours to pick us up.
Shawshank and I split off in our separate directions. He went off to look at books, and I started looking at toys and craft shit. I found a 1st-gen My Little Pony, which I carried around for a little while and eventually left behind. Shawshank added to his Twilight collection. We looked through the bedding together, and I picked out enough for another seven or so projects.
When we had finally picked through everything in the thrift store, adding a glass somewhere along the way and a small art project at the literal last minute, we walked across the tile to the secondhand bookstore.
This is my kind of bookstore: barely organized, with books crammed into nooks and balanced on any remotely flat surface. Shawshank was a book hipster, and tried to stump one of the owners by asking for strange books he thought she wouldn’t know about. He found something to buy, and we added it to our bag of sheets.
We killed some time in the dollar store, bought some sodas, and sat around outside to wait for an hour or so for his parents to pick us up. A woman complimented me on my Batman pants. “I love them, did you make them yourself?” she asked. When I replied in the affirmative, she said “I fucking knew it.” I don’t know exactly how I’m supposed to take that, but I’m choosing to think my eccentric style led her to believe “this gremlin is a goddamned artiste“.
We stopped for an early dinner along the way home. The rain clouds started rolling in while we ate. Fortunately, we weren’t caught in anything more substantial than a 2-minute shower during the drive back.
We spent the remainder of the day trying to stay cool in the house. Both cats are miserable and are keeping their activities to a minimum. Today will be more inactivities. Shawshank isn’t feeling good and called out of work. Shawshank‘s new birthday vacuum is wandering around the apartment, Pipping trailing behind. I have plans to finish a pair of pants and maybe iron some of the new/old sheets, but we could just chill on the couch all day.
