West County

Friday was one of those nights where I didn’t express my opinion, which believe it or not I am known to do every now and then, and ended up having one of the lamest nights I can remember. The first stop was “Capture the Moment,” the Pulitzer Prize Photograph collection from 1942 to the present at Maryville University. I’m not saying that the photographs aren’t worth looking at but they’re all reproductions on some kind of foam core and the crowd gawking at them was so large the volunteers could have used a cattle prod to keep it moving. I can appreciate the composition of the photographs and the talent of the photographer but the reason these photographs got noticed and won the Pulitzer Prize is because of the subject matter. They are all violent or depressing and I just wasn’t in the mood. Each picture is its own tragic little look into the atrocities of the last sixty years. It’s kind of like being forced to watch local news when you don’t want to. It’s terrible to say but sometimes ignorance is bliss. I give thanks to the Xanax gods for convincing me to have one of those little peach pills beforehand because without which I don’t think I could have been as laid back about spending an hour there as I was. From there it was off to what I will now refer to as the lamest sports bar in West County. We all know how many sports bars there are in West County so obviously the competition was pretty steep. This one takes first prize for sure. The rather large crowd of people who didn’t have babysitters for their children (I know this because they were running all over the restaurant) was intently focused on the myriad of NCAA games on the big screen TVs. The food was disgusting and there is no worse place to be than Clayton road west of Woods Mill. At least the Heineken was cold and I got a nice little buzz from drinking it with the aforementioned.

Saturday I was on a mission. I have less than two weeks before I leave for New York to attend my best friend’s bridal shower and bachelorette party. I’m a bridesmaid, yet again, and am giving the shower with the other bridesmaids. I need something to wear so I spent the entire day shopping. Most of the people who will be at this shower I haven’t seen since I was in college. They know me as that hippie girl from Missouri in the tie-dyed t-shirt with frizzy hair who probably smelled of incense or patchouli or whatever I thought I was covering up with that. Am I totally self-absorbed to wish that for once I could be the girl who chooses the perfect outfit, perfect shoes, has shiny hair, and looks put together? Whenever I was in their sorority world, to which I did not belong, I always felt completely alien. So anyway, I’m having a very odd weekend. It’s funny how you go along thinking that old ghosts have been exorcized and then something as silly as a bridal shower shows you they’re right there where they always were.