All last week I was battling a cold. Over the weekend, the cold won.

I went to bed at my usual time and slept, oh, about 11 hours. Could have slept 13 but I dragged my tired ass out of the bed and tried to reclaim some dignity.

Washed face, fluffed hair, applied makeup, and…

Ended up looking like person who had died after visiting a Clinique counter. Not bad for a dead person, but um, a little pale and abnormal.

Every time E glances at me he says, “Are you OK?”

“Hmmm I think so. I just feel weird.”

Take Tylenol, all-purpose “weird reliever.”

Go shopping with E and kids to Belgium’s version of a Mega Discount Store.

Can’t wait to get out of said Mega Discount Store, which is not like me. Clearly I’m acting as weird as I’m feeling. And oh yeah, let’s not forget I look weird too.

My son, Mr. A, needs sandals. The Mega Discount Store didn’t have any in his size. I hand E a flyer that came in our mail from a chain shoe store. There are about ten locations in the Brussels area. Can Mappy, my amazing navigator, get us to one of them?

Sure, he says.

We take off. I’m breathing through my mouth, slathering on lip balm, thinking sleepy thoughts.

We stop at a light and E says very casually, “Oh look, there’s a mall? Want to go there?”

People, I haven’t been to a mall in 15 months.

Pause and consider this fact.

I’m an over 40 middle-age woman with money to spend who has not set foot in a mall in well over a YEAR. That includes Christmas, people. No, I’m not lying.

Even in my cold-induced stupor, I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity to roam the retail landscape.

E swings the car into the totally cool high-tech parking garage, we find a space, and go inside.

E-Grrrl and I are in our element. We’ve been shopping online for a year now and real shopping is a big thrill.

Still, I’m not feeling so hot.

We stop at the Belgian version of McDonald’s, which is packed to the doors, and E gets us lunch.

I feel a little better.

I move through the mall like a person from a Communist Bloc country who has never witnessed such riches. I peer into the stores, treating the shiny bright-colored displays like art in a museum. I don’t touch. I don’t get too close. I observe, admire, and cruise on by.

Man, I must be really out of it.

E has recently resumed playing soccer and needs soccer socks to cover his shinguards. We go into a big sporting goods store. On our way to “soccer socks” we stumble across a big selection of sports sandals and finally get Mr. A and little E-Grrrl outfitted for summer.

Then we find rollerblades for E-Grrrl, something we’d been unsuccessfully searching for for months now.

And Mr. A, the aspiring playground four-square champion, gets a new ball since his old one literally bit the dust.

E-Man buys ONE soccer jersey and ONE pair of socks.

I sit on a bench in the shoe department and watch my family shop. I don’t try on shoes, yoga clothes, or sweatshirts.

We walk through the whole mall, and the sporting goods store is the only place we go into and make a purchase.

I don’t go into the Macy’s-like store near the entrance and check out the sales or the costume jewelry. I’m not tempted by the lingerie shops. I don’t salivate over summer sandals in the many shoe stores. I skip the cosmetic and perfume places. We don’t’ even stop and get ice cream in the food court.

We buy what we need and we go home.

How un-American is that? 

I come home, take a nap, and then take a shower so I can wake up, re-do hair and makeup, and present a social persona for a cherished dinner invitation from E’s cousin, a fabulous cook and gracious hostess.

I take more Tylenol because my head hurts, my throat is sore, I’m getting hoarse. Did I mention my period started? I know, I know--TMI. Sorry.

We chat happily over hors d'oureves. Dinner, as always is wonderful. There's gardening and holiday talk and stories of endurance sporting events. We whine about the cold, gray rainy weather. Will it never get warm?

After  dinner,  things unravel a bit.  I tell what is supposed to be a very funny story about a bride who is obsessive about planning the perfect wedding—but books a hotel that is also hosting an ENORMOUS gay pride event that same day so that her conservative Midwest relatives are put in close quarters with flaming gays activists trying to shock people. The point of the story is that God gets even with self-centered hyperventilating brides and their sheltered, bigoted relatives in amusing ways.

Um, no one laughs.

As soon as I finish telling the story, a nice Dutch man at the table tells me his brother is gay. Hmmm, is he telling me that because I’ve offended him with this story?  I’m still wondering if I’ve offended him when the French woman seated to my left launches into a passionate treatise on why she doesn’t think gays should be able to adopt children (it’s now legal in Belgium). Oh crap--I’m thinking we’ve painted ourselves into a corner as far as dinner conversation goes.

Lots of wine has been poured, but not into my glass. Seeing as I’m living on Tylenol, I don’t want to further torture my liver with alcohol. But my brain is going, “You’d have a much better time with a bit of a buzz.”

A little wine would help grease the wheels of my light and lively conversation engine so I can get us off of hot button topics like gay rights, immigration, and whether it’s safe to vacation in Egypt and Turkey before the conversation takes a nosedive into discussions of Bush and the war in Iraq.

Oy.

Inexplicably, the table’s conversation moves into Dutch and French. People are smiling again. I have no idea why. Maybe they’re talking about me. ; ) I resolve to keep my English-speaking word hole shut.

We get to bed late.

Sunday, I sleep late.

I get up, eat a granola bar, take Tylenol, cough up musty secretions from my beleaguered lungs, blow my snout, and lay down and sleep some more.

I get up and eat lunch.

I do one load of laundry, read the book Cindy gave me, and then, um, because of all the exertion, decide to sleep some more.

It’s 6 p.m. and I’m still in my pajamas, people.

I don’t think you’ll be reading anything new on this blog until Tuesday or Wednesday…..And well, considering the quality of this entry, that's a GOOD thing.

May 28, 2006