Pretty, Guilty

A lot has changed in the voodoo bungalow since I last visited my own blog. The most important one is that I have radically scaled back my work, so I can become fully human again and so I can finally finish my novel-in-progress. That's all well and good, mental health yada yada yada, creative fulfillment blahblahblah--but this life of leisure comes with a price tag. A price tag more or less equivalent to my former monthly salary. What's a girl to do, then, when she sees her new favorite dress hanging in a store window?

I offered to tell jokes behind the counter for two whole hours, at a reasonable hourly wage of $200, but the uptight owner wouldn't even entertain the idea. Some people clearly choose to work with people because they hate people.

Emergency trust fund withdrawal? Bernie at the bank would look at me sternly over the top of his horn-rimmed glasses and say something about "octogenarian despair" (like I'd want to live to 80 WITHOUT THAT DRESS).

My car is probably worth $400 if I wash it, but I'm going to need it to go places in my new dress.

I could try to sell Elvis's dog drugs to children but. . . . I can't believe I even wrote that down. I would never do that. I wouldn't. Not that they would even hurt the children, being antibiotics, but still. Maybe some stomach upset, but likely only mild stomach upset, and it is a very cute dress. Okay, fine, no dealing antibiotics to the local urchinry. FINE. I WILL REMAIN POORLY DRESSED AND DIE ALONE.

Except that a very odd thing might have happened minutes after the boys went to tennis lessons: the mountain hotel in which we were to spend a few brief, probably dull, hours swimming in a mineral pool and eating at what has been no doubt hyperbolically called "one of the best new restaurants in Canada" on our way South to the Excited States might have called to say that they changed their mind about having a dog in room 144.

My family was sad to hear that this might have happened, but they're a pair of manly stoics: we will just have to make it to our destination in one long day of driving in the hot sun with a smelly hound in the back of the station wagon. And we've saved ourselves $422 dollars!

Which means I had 22 dollars with which to buy some quality chocolate for the guys. Hopefully they will remember my generosity if they ever discover that I am wearing our vacation.