Saturday, May 1, 2010

Pointy Shoes and Girls Night Out

The end of my first week as a Lady of Leisure was yesterday. It was a schizophrenic day.
It began very LOL. I walked the track at school for an hour with another mom while a group of more experienced LsOL did lunges with a personal trainer. Then it was home to shower and dress to meet a former Inquirer colleague for lunch in West Chester. I had my new necklace, a parting gift from my newspaper colleagues, and my flowery, pointy-toed slingback pumps that look great but feel awful. Five toes are not meant to be squeezed into a point.
We had a delightful sidewalk repast at Teca. The Vegetariano panini is scrumptious. Another friend, who had left the paper over a year ago, joined us. My outfit was appropriately complimented -- which now takes the place of compliments on my stories in the newspaper. Painful shoes worth it. Then it was a bit of a rush, to finish the grocery shopping, in those same shoes, before meeting the school bus.
Then I shifted gears. That evening, I was covering Girls Night at the Kimmel for a story I'm freelancing to the Inquirer. My first freelance assignment post-retirement. It was nice to be back reporting and the play, while no high art, was a lot of fun. But I can't say I really miss the 9 to 5, or more often the 10 to 7 p.m. I've only woken up twice in the middle of the night in a panic, thinking WHAT HAVE I DONE??? But that was the first weekend. Pretty smooth sailing since, especially as I remind myself, pretty constantly, about the freelance assignments.
And then I think of all I got to do this week: I planted flowers in the planters, put down grass seeds in bare spots and took a yoga class for the first time in years. The last yoga class I took was pre-kid. I was working from the main Philly office and the class was in Broomall at 7 p.m. Once a week, I'd have to rush to finish my work and then race -- more like crawl -- on the highways and along traffic-light-afflicted West Chester Pike to the class, barely reaching in time, or late, for the dog pose and thoroughly agitated, making focus on breathing pointless. Yoga was stressing me out. Not this time around.
Oh, and since no LOL week is complete without a shopping trip, I bought my son some shorts, so he doesn't have to continue wearing the ones he's had for the last three years and are so short, he could be mistaken for Mark Spitz in a Speedo.



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