Sometimes we dress up and do fancy things. Ok, I should clarify: James pretty much looks like this everyday at work. I on the other hand, am paralyzed with my freedom teaching/ being a student at UMD.  Last year I struggled daily with the dress code at the school I taught at, usually resorting to taking a ruler and marker to my leg to make sure my skirt was long enough. 3 inches above the knee is difficult for tall people!!! My clothing had to be appropriately frumpy, but I still wanted to be happy with what I wore. Now, I have to be “presentable” but the spectrum implied by that word is very broad. Which means that now it takes me twice as long to get ready as I can’t just default to teacher clothes, but must take into account if I will be comfortable sitting through a 3 hour class cross legged in a really uncomfortable chair in a pencil skirt. (The answer is always NO, I will die.)

But I digress. For my birthday James got us tickets to see Les Misérables at the Kennedy Center, which meant a chance to get dressed up and go watch the anguished torment of French revolutionaries. I cried 5 times. And this is the third time I have seen it. James had never seen it before and I wouldn’t let him read the summary in the program because I wanted him to be surprised. However, I forgot that the story jumps around a lot and can be confusing if you don’t know that, say, 20 years have elapsed between songs. James’ method for knowing if a song would be important was to see if I was preemptively sniffling and covered in goose bumps, which worked every time.

It was also just fun to go see something at the Kennedy Center. I remember visiting in 8^thgrade and touring it and thinking about how sophisticated the people who actually attended things at it must be. Now I realize they are just people being fancy for an evening. . . but what fun it is. I am willing to play the role of Sophisticated Person any time.

My idea for Halloween costumes . . . which was turned down by James, though I can't imagine why.