With a song in my heart

I really wish that I had a little spy camera in, like, a pen or something. The kind of thing that Marshall would have made for Sydney on Alias. Because if I had a spy camera, I would be able to properly share with you some of the strange clothing choices that I have seen in the past two days. Instead you'll have to settle for my award-winning descriptions:

Twice yesterday, both going to work and returning home, I saw a woman in the most bizarre shirt/skirt combo. The skirt was a fitted chiffon number that ended in a sort of graduated ruffle a couple of inches above her ankle. It was a watery floral in wintery shades of burgundy, black, royal blue, etc. The shirt was a very casual white polo shirt with thin horizontal stripes in alternating yellow and blue. The whole thing confused me so profoundly, because she looked fairly put together - as if she was going to work at an office - but the top and bottom halves just didn't go together.

While on an escalator during my lunch hour today, I noticed that the woman a few steps above me was wearing nylons with her strappy sandals and long white peasant skirt. Not full nylons, however. Not even knee high-nylons. They were weird sort of nylon ankle socks that were in no way hidden by the length of her skirt. This on top of the fact that her sandals had an ankle strap and she was wearing an anklet meant that her ankles were seriously over-accessorized.

And then on the subway home, a lovely looking older woman was wearing a very innocuous beige cotton baseball hat that literally had a clump of multicoloured fake pansies glued on the front, sort of spilling onto the brim.

I'm not entirely sure why I felt the need to share these discoveries with you, but there you have it.

I am reading this book:



You may recall that I was very excited when the DP first bought it for me. And I was excited the whole time it was sitting on my night table, while I finished reading library books that needed to be returned. I was even excited earlier this week when I read the first few pages on the subway. A few parts of the opening made me chuckle in recognition. (I, too, know what it's like to be a teenager who owns a Vera Lynn album, but has no idea who is in the top 40. In fact, the first concert I attended wasn't until I saw James Taylor in my early 20s. I didn't follow that up until my late 20s. And that time the artist gracing the stage was Bette Midler.*)

Sadly, I have to say that the book is not all I hoped it would be. What's even worse is that I'm having that awful feeling that we creative people sometimes get, which is: I should have written this book.

I'm not saying that I would write it better! The author is totally competent and being completely true to her own experiences. I just mean that if this book didn't exist, I could have written my own version of this same story. But she got there first. And good for her! Truth is that I didn't think of the book - she did!

It's just that she speaks mostly about film musicals rather than stage musicals, which are very different creatures. And she even lumps some films in there that don't include any singing, such as Gone with the Wind. And she doesn't sing. And she doesn't challenge us very much with the variety of musicals - at least not yet and I'm about half done.

I often think about what kind of book I could write. I don't have a particular gift for creating a story. I can never guess what the twist will be in a plot, so I would be pretty surprised if I could concoct one. What I can do is construct sentences and make pretty good paragraphs that all fit together nicely. So I think I could manage to write a book, but I have no idea what I would write about.

But since the very early days of our courtship, the DP has been telling me that I am the physical embodiment of musical theatre to him and that I should "do something with it." And that chick's book idea would have been the something.

Ah well, no time to cry over missed opportunities. To quote a little Sondheim: "Stop worrying where you're going - move on. If you can know where you're going, you've gone. Just keep moving on."

There's got to be another good idea out there!

Total debt: $5564 (I have officially paid off more than I now owe! Your applause is appreciated.)
Spent today: $4.50 (But it wasn't from this week's budget. It was the leftover $5 in my wallet.)

*You'll be glad to know that the DP has helped me along in this area, taking me to see both Coldplay and U2. And I have a much better idea about what's popular now than I ever did during high school.