bookofmirrors | Birthday, Part One

I woke up today not quite knowing what I wanted to do. The plan was to spend today with

lunenoire, and tomorrow with

blckwngdorcl. We did get up and all three have breakfast together at the Original House of Pancakes, which is so far by far my favorite place to have breakfast. Then we dropped

blckwngdorcl off, did a few things around the house, and

lunenoire and I headed out. We kinda meandered over to Toco Hills to look for a French restaurant and a drugstore. The former 'cause that's what I considered having for dinner later, and the latter because my period picked a most inopportune day to arrive. In the process, we found a place offering a manicure/pedicure for a reasonable price, so we stopped in there.

lunenoire wandered off while I got my toenails painted a spring green and my fingernails painted a baby girl pink.

It wasn't as fun as I expected, though. Between

lunenoire and Core, I have been spoiled by people being present with me - a namaste of touch, if you will. This guy wasn't present while he did my nails. So, yeah, the end result was still the same, but I didn't feel pampered during the process. I've decided that I want my next pedicure done by a foot fetishist, or at least someone enamored of the human race, and who loves his (or her) job. Anyone who knows someone like that, feel free to point me towards them. (Also... I used the word "spoiled" earlier, and it's really inaccurate. That's just the way things SHOULD be.)

So, from there, we went to see MirrorMask. I can't really say much about the film. I'm still digesting it, and I was very quiet and contemplative afterwards. It was visually stunning, to say the least, and beautiful. Everything else, I'm still chewing over in my head. I'll likely go again with

blckwngdorcl tomorrow. Two things, though. One, they had obviously just stripped the floors, and I dislike that smell. Had I not already taken painkillers for my cramps, I'm sure that I would have had a headache. I know that, whenever they used to strip the floors at the prison, I would always get headaches. Plus, the noxious olfactory ambience didn't allow me to lose myself in the movie as much as I would have liked. Two, I was missing acutely the presence of Frog. Don't get me wrong, I was very much enjoying the company of

lunenoire, but it was Frog who introduced me to Neil Gaiman back in the day, and there was part of me that felt that I should be seeing it with him. It's one of those things we would have shared. And I loved sharing things with Frog. Strangely enough, and contrary to outward appearances, I think Frog respected me more than any of my other Illinois friends. *nostalgia*

Anyway, from there, I wasn't hungry yet, so we headed over to Little Five Points to wander around. We petted a couple of dogs, and I made the mistake of going into Soul Kiss, where I bought a skirt and a pair of earrings. (I really need to get my ears re-pierced...). After that, I realized I didn't have as much money left as I would have liked, so we decided against dinner. I did, however, have an agenda of sitting down somewhere with

lunenoire and just talking, connecting. I wanted a date, which we hadn't had in a while. I said that, now that I didn't have an idea of a restaurant in my head, I wanted more of a coffee shop, perhaps a dessert bar kinda place. After discarding the obvious Starbucks, Bou's, or Intermezzo, and also Sweet Stuff, just 'cause it was so far away, we ended up just driving. Luckily, when I described what I wanted,

lunenoire knew what type of neighborhood it might be found in, so he drove thataway. When we drove past the San Francisco Coffee Roasting Company, it looked like exactly what I was looking for.

lunenoire had a Mexican hot chocolate (quite tasty) and a croissant with honey. I had the nice girl there make me a French press of coffee (she picked it - it later turned out to be mocha java) and I had a piece of harvest cake, which turned out to be this spicy deal, of just the type of spices one expects in autumn. And we did sit down and talk. It was a good talk. We talked about our relationship... where it's been, where it is, where it's going. I felt good about the talk we had, and enjoyed it immensely. We kinda parted the ways when we got home, though. Not because of anything in particular... just because it was getting late, and he wanted to digest our talk, and still be able to get up for work tomorrow (his first day back since his operations). I think normally, we would have slipped into bed and let things occur as they might, but it just didn't occur that way, and we were both OK with that. Which, now that I think of it, is a pretty big step for me. Of course, I had already resigned myself to celibacy due to being on my period, so that might have been part of it. (And yes, I know that that doesn't need to stop anything, but both my husbands have a thing about that... and with the mood of the night, we just didn't feel the need to be creative about it.)

So, anyway, I'm home now, and just kinda chillin' out with myself, doin' the email/LJ/chat thing, and just being.

Which is a good thing.