Day Off

Saturday was a good day. I met Fran after she got off work at Popovers for lunch and wine. The mistake I made was that I decided to wear these fabulous boots and the boots led to the sweater. But first came the boots -

I love these boots and I got them for a good price but they are as uncomfortable as they are beautiful! Not only are the soles slightly curved so that you need intense concentration and strong ankles to walk in them but they require a kind of confident walk from the wearer that speaks of grace, poise and an "owning of all she surveys" that takes some real character acting for me to pull off.

I had optimistically decided that I would undoubtedly find a parking spot right outside the restaurant and I could just (confidently) limp the short distance inside and find a table. As it was, there was no parking and after circling the block several times in growing desperation, I ended up parking in the parking garage. When wearing flat shoes, the garage is mere inches from everything in Portsmouth. Today, however, it was an epic journey, complete with all the appropriate suffering of the martyrs!

I left the car, went down the stairs,


up the street toward the church,



navigating the crumbling brick sidewalks

with as much dignity and poise as I could muster.

It was with great relief that I finally (three minutes after leaving my car) made it to Popovers and found a table!


Fran had not yet arrived, so I ordered the beef and barley soup and got the tomato bisque instead which is what I really wanted anyway.


After a few minutes of awkwardly sitting alone and feeling the growing panic that comes to me when I realize I may be sitting alone indefinitely and have not brought anything to camouflage myself against scrutiny, a book, note cards (Why do you think I started the letter writing kick?), a large hat. It's not that people can't see me, it's that I can forget that they can. Kind of the adult equivalent of hiding under the sheets to be safe from the monsters.



I tucked my hair my hair behind my ear for the seventeenth time and accidentally made eye contact with a middle aged woman sitting near me. She locked eyes with me for a long awkward second and then turned back to her friend. Just as my mind began to play her inevitable dialogue with her friend discussing everything from lunch choice to my sweater - you have to understand about this sweater, it's great and it goes perfectly with my boots!

I knew I was going to wear it to Popovers since Fran suggested that we meet there this morning. I'm trying to think of a way to explain how I feel about "outfits". Once I know what I'm going to wear on any given day, there's not a lot of flexibility in my mind about it! Certain clothes work together. And if they're together, I look awesome, seventy pounds lighter, brimming with youth and vitality! And if they're not, it doesn't matter what I do. It's just an ugly day. Which is why, when I left the house and dropped this sweater in the mud on my way to the restaurant, I didn't once think about going back inside and getting another sweater. This was the only acceptable way these clothes work for me! And there was no way I was going out with Fran for a late lunch on a Saturday ugly. A little mud on the sweater? It's brown anyway! However, with this woman looking at me, I felt that the sweater was shouting the story of it's neurotic owner and of the abuse my inflexibility heaped upon it!

Luckily, just as my mind turned down this dark and dangerous path, Fran showed up and saved the day!

She proceeds to order us a bottle of Riesling

and tell me a hilarious story about her boss, a woman who sounds like she lacks any internal monologue. A woman who'd spent the morning holding the phone to her ear while she shouted into the speaker phone. A woman who repeatedly curses her customers and interjects into delicate negotiations over pricing with enough hostility to effectively sour the exchange.

As she was telling this story a couple came into the restaurant with their very young baby and took a table near us. They had a stroller/baby carrier/car seat with them and used it to block the entire aisle between the tables, effectively cutting off our escape route.

We had no real desire to escape at that very moment but that hardly seemed the point!

This, of course, led to the inevitable conversation about people who not only choose to have children but who also see fit to take them out in public!

We relaxed into our comfortable, lazy criticism of those around us,

drank our wine,

and made plans to go see a movie!

Ah, Saturday! You should have seen me trying to walk back to my car after the wine though! Definitely worth the price of admission.

Sara's Return

My name is Mehera and I've decided to start documenting the some of the events that happen to me throughout the day in order to remind myself that the richness of life is often in the mundane details. I expect this impossibly lofty optimism to save me thousands of dollars on therapy and antidepressants, making me an irritatingly happy person who constantly annoys others with my proclivity for filling the role of the Pollyanna in the room!

This is me:

I'm thirty-one and often mistaken for much younger. Not, I'm convinced, because of my youthful beauty but because of my chronic braces, my general immaturity and lack of social ease.

Yesterday, my sister Anne and I went to pick up another sister, Sara, at the airport. Our parents,having had their fill of children long ago, had elected to go to a James Bond musical murder mystery party on the night Sara's flight was due in and I was tapped as the one with the time on a Friday night and the one with good brakes who could pick her up. I will not comment at this point on the fact that my parents assumed that I would not be participating in a glorious and sophisticated social life at the end of my long week but the fact was that I didn't have plans.

Anne and I are the fourth and first daughters, respectively, in a family of seven kids, six of them girls. Sara is the fifth daughter and has been busy immersing herself in college life in North Carolina. Anne was a little reluctant to participate in my photo documentation of our adventure but with a little persuasion she gamely went along with it.

She assumes that I will quickly tire of this new habit and that she will just have to ride it out until then.

The airport is about an hour from my house and Sara was scheduled to get in around 9:30 pm. Here we are getting ready to leave.

We had a good time driving over, listening to a debate on Cosmo radio about the difference between call girls and gold diggers. I use the term "debate" loosely and had to turn it off eventually for fear of letting Anne in on my secret habit of attempting to out-shout talk radio DJs when I'm alone in my car. As a diversion, I stopped to get windshield washer fluid and snacks. Just as we finally reached the exit for the airport, my phone buzzed and I checked it only to find a text from Sara saying that her plane was only just now taking off from NY! Delayed!

It had started to rain. I should have known it was inevitable as soon as I made the decision to stop and get washer fluid. Anne and I quickly deliberated about how we would like to kill time for an hour. We decided to go to Barnes and Noble.

Once inside the warm, cheery store and out of the rain, we made a bee-line for the Starbucks and got hot drinks to help us shake off the raw weather.

After a little bit of random browsing,

I realised that I actually need an address book since I'm on a new letter writing kick (now destined for failure since I've officially labelled it a "kick"). I am famous for my high and lofty creative goals and have left a great many worthy projects half completed in my wake!

I found the address books

and had just selected the one that I feel best encompasses my personal identity, the way I feel about the people I would pencil into it (in case they move in the future) and the way I feel about this letter writing endeavor in general,

when I got another text from Sara saying she'd landed. Or more specifically, in response to my message to her saying, "When will you be here?", a message simply saying, "Now".

Due to the long lines to registers that Barnes and Noble always seem to have when I'm in a hurry, I had to abandon my chosen address book. (A bad omen when comes to my aspiring letter writing!)

We rushed over to the airport, where we found Sara standing in middle of the walkway laughing into her phone. Anne shouted her name across the airport, which came out at a peculiarly low volume for Anne. In her defense, she had just been leveled by the flu for five days, the last two characterized to us by her desperate whispers and sign language. Her voice has mostly returned but her shouting for Sara was the ultimate demonstration of love and rendered her close to speechless for the rest of night!

Sara quickly disentangled herself from her call and hugged Anne back,

waved enthusiastically to the camera,

and gave me a hug.

She and Anne then raced off to the bathroom while I stood awkwardly with her bags.

I resisted the urge to take pictures of strangers mostly because I didn't have enough faith in myself to get away quickly were they to approach me to ask what I was doing.

Luckily, the girls returned quickly

and after comparing the colors of their skin, (Sara has a tan from the forestry work she's been doing. Anne aspires to be classified as an albino.)


we took a picture of the three of us,

and headed for the car.

Sara regaled us with her stories of college life including one about environmentally conscious students with meal plans who decided to protest the waste generated by the kitchen and elected to eat out of the compost bins instead of the kitchen, resulting in their near-starvation, illness and subsequent hospitalization!

When we arrived home, our parents were there and after they greeted Sara,

they enthusiastically described their night of fun!

Around midnight they insisted that they had to go and we sent Sara on her way with promises to return for a more in depth examination of the starving students and the other joys of college life!