Spendage

"They never come to visit you anymore," the woman said, weaving across the Gone West sidewalk. "It isn't that they don't love you a lot, because they do. It's this weather. They can't drive in this rain."

I glanced behind me to see that there was no one else on that side of the block.

Yup, she was talking to me. Yup, I love this town.

I drove up to Gone West for a retirement lunch for a former coworker. She and I snuck a little bit of chatter about friends and boys between the rest of the conversation, and then I set off in the rain with purpose(s).

I needed a new umbrella. My trusty old lost-and-found turquoise one from four years ago met its bitter end two days ago on the streets of Universe City. The gusts of wind that were hurricane force at the beach had lost force over the mountains, but they still tore it inside out. It has blown inside out before without incident, but this was too much for the old thing.

I wanted the same one, though, because who has ever gotten four years out of the same umbrella? Certainly not me, before now.

The store that sells them had two options: a tan one and a black and blue splotchy one. I am not really one for splotches, but tan is an unacceptably boring color for an umbrella, so I got the bright one. My choice was vindicated later when I smiled at a couple of hotel bellhops and they told me that my umbrella (and my KLM coat) were very cool. Compliments from strangers are always a win.

Also on the agenda: a coat I can wear for work. I adore my KLM coat, but it is fraying just a little around the edges, and also, it is getting very tedious not to have any other options. And it is not waterproof.

Somewhere on the internet, I had seen a coat whose website said that brand is sold at a particular trendy boutique in Gone West, one into which I had never dared enter because of my tiny issue with thinking that boutique type stores are not intended for the likes of me. (What? I do not come from a family that spends $500 on a sweater, and I feel like the employees can smell that I am out of my league from the moment I walk in the door.)

My issues with buying coats are myriad, but they can be summarized by saying that coats intended for the average woman do not fit me. My shoulders are too broad and my arms too long and if a coat fits me in the shoulders and arms, it is inevitably too big around the midsection. Harrumph.

My first glance at a price tag in said store confirmed that I did not belong, because, again, $495 for a blazer? This is no T@rget, folks.

I persevered, however, and found a 50% off sale of coats in the back corner. Coats, as it turns out, that are made by a local, sustainable, socially and environmentally conscious company, and just so happen to be cut with broader shoulders and longer sleeves, and just so happen to look great. It was only the prospect of imminent broke-ness that kept me to one new coat, with which I am now having a torrid love affair.

On the way back to my car, I stopped for a cappuccino and a rosemary black pepper shortbread cookie at a snobby coffee place, and I picked which roast I wanted them to use of the three carefully described by tasting notes on the board, and I drank a quintessentially Gone West cup of snobby coffee.

I love this town.

Yes, Universe City has grown on me. But, I thought, looking around nostalgically and remembering that a mere two years ago I got to live here, Gone West is, really, the best.