if the shoe were on the other foot

the other day i am walking across that skybridge that connects nordstrom with pacific place and i see something that stops me in my tracks: a shoe. it's a man's shoe, off-white with woven leather, something between a sandal and a slip on. i've scoured men's shoe sites and can't find anything that bears more than a vague resemblance to it. (which doesn't bode well for the guy who lost the shoe.) unfortunately, i didn't think to use my camera phone. and that was a prime camera phone moment. what was i thinking?

anyhow, it's a new-looking shoe, so i'm wondering what the heck it's doing in the vestibule of a mall (or pseudo-mall, as the case may be).i mean, every once in a while, you run across a kid's shoe in the grocery store or wherever, and it's understandable. kid's lose shoes. but how does a grown man lose a shoe and not notice? ok, maybe it didn't fall right off his foot. but that begs the question: why was he carrying this shoe around with him at the mall in the first place? and why would he not notice that it had gone missing? when that vestibule is empty, it has quite the echo factor, so he'd surely hear it drop if he was alone in there. and if there were a lot of people around so that the noise was muffled, surely one of his fellow shoppers would have rushed to return the shoe to the guy. c'mon, this is seattle.

i've been baffled by this lone stray shoe phenomenon for as long as i can remember. i most often see them abandoned on roads. however, i finally did get an explanation for those that sort of makes sense. or amuses me, at least.

years ago, my ex-boyfriend was involved in a road rage situation. i forget what started it or how it escalated. anyhow, the then-boyfriend does some final-straw move like flip the other driver off or something and a representative from the other car THROWS A BOOT AT HIM! A BOOT! i thought it was hi-larious! of course, i wasn't in the car when it happened. if i had been, i would've been mortified and would've long before been telling him not to act like such a moron that it got to that point, but since he did, i thought it was a hoot that somebody actually launched a boot at him. they missed his car, thankfully. i don't think i would have been laughing so much if they'd caused damage. anyhow, i told him, i always wondered where those lone shoes on the road come from. now i know.

so if you see a proliferation of abandoned shoes on the road, blame it on road rage.

i am still not quite certain about all the socks that make it onto the roads and sidewalks. however, my theory is that these are the socks that have escaped from the dryers and are heading to florida to retire. that is how far they make it until they just give up. i have to say, some of them go a respectable distance.

long lost cousin

so a couple of years ago, my mom tells me that i have a cousin who's going to be on some show called "lost." i say, there's no such show as "lost." (my first reaction is always to tell my mother she has no idea what she's talking about. often, i am right, but just as often, i am wrong.) she's adamant that she's got the correct name of the show, so i google it and sure enough i find said cousin's name listed among the cast members. so then i google him: josh holloway. and he is HOT. well, i reckon, most people know this by now, but i was just finding it out.

so my mom says that my cousin used to be a model and was on the cover of esquire and had now landed this gig on this new tv show. and then it dawned on me: this was the model/actor/wannabe cousin my dad had told me about when i lived in LA. the one he was always trying to get me to call and hook up with because we are related and were both living in the same sprawling metropolis. (parent logic, you know.). i always thought, a. why do i want to hang out with some stupid cousin? and b. right, like somebody in OUR family was actually on the cover of esquire (this is still unconfirmed). needless to say, i never called.

well, the as the months went by, even someone as out of touch with the entertainment world as i am knew that "lost" had become a hit tv show. so then i figured that if i'd called my cousin back when i was living in la, maybe i'd be two degrees from george clooney by now or something. but, of course, the time has passed. i can't call him up now on the premise that we should hang out because i'm his cousin. a. because neither one of us lives in LA anymore and b. because how lame is that? so basically, i've got this cousin who's semi-famous, but i've never met him. to tell the truth, i've never actually watched the show either. and i haven't given him more than a passing thought other than to tell this story a few times.

my sister, on the other hand, is unnaturally obsessed with the idea that josh holloway is our cousin. it's weird. first off, she watches the show religiously. not that that is any tip-off. plenty of people do that. heck, even my parents do, although my mom threatened to stop watching it when she thought josh's character was going to get killed off. i think he lived because she is still watching it.

but one of the reasons i think she's unduly obsessed is that she tells EVERYBODY she runs across that josh holloway is her cousin. (i suppose she might be lamenting that she took her husband's name as she now doesn't have quite so obvious a connection.) i think she neglects to mention that she's never actually met her cousin. that he doesn't know her from adam. and that he's her second cousin. (but at least he's not the once-removed kind.)

she seriously would like to get my dad to ask his brother for a signed photo for her. i think she would also like to get his phone number, but that might be asking too much. she and and one of her friends are thinking they should go out to california and meet him. i'm not sure how serious she is about this. i hope not too much. especially since she hasn't yet made it out to seattle to see me. (which is a whole other can of worms i'm not going to open right now.) and also because, as i have recently learned from an astute blog reader (my boyfriend), j.h. actually lives in hawaii where his show is filmed. anyhow, her husband and i both agree that her level of interest in this particular cousin is unnatural. but at least she's not trying to date him or something, even though we are from mississippi.

nice people give me road rage

well, i guess i am finally turning into a seattleite. tonight, i actually stopped in the street and let a pedestrian cross. ack! i sort of felt obligated since he was already halfway across the street when i showed up. i figured it was best not to let him stand out there and get hit. so i let him cross. normally, i wouldn't do this. unless, of course, it was an actual intersection. or one of those annoying marked crosswalks. it's not that i mind stopping to let pedestrians pass (except when i'm in a hurry, which is actually most of the time), it's that here in seattle pedestrians EXPECT you to stop and let them pass because EVERYBODY ELSE DOES. so you get pedestrians darting out into traffic all the time, figuring people will naturally stop, and i'll admit, i'm not the most observant of drivers, so i don't always notice when stray people wander into the street. I'm sometimes on autopilot, and because i'm not expecting people to be in the road, i'm not conscious of them. until they're RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. and then i'm screeching on my brakes. and do they scurry? no, they continue in a leisurely pace as if they haven't just narrowly escaped death. it's unfathomable.

alternately, it bugs me as a pedestrian, as well, that people stop in the middle of the road for you. i am perfectly content to wait for a break in traffic to make a dash across the street. but no, a person stops for you and you're obliged to step out into traffic, but then there may be a car coming from the other direction that won't stop, so you're stuck there holding things up. it's much better if drivers just leave pedestrians to fend for themselves. but, no, in seattle everyone wants to be "nice." heck, i've had cars stop for me when i was just standing on the sidewalk with no intention of crossing the street. it's that crazy! oh, but the flipside of the "nice" drivers, is how rude pedestrians get if you don't stop for them. they're so used to people stopping, that i reckon they think that's the law or something. that drivers are required to stop anytime they feel the need to jaywalk. um, no. as far as i know, i'm not allowed to actually run over them, but i don't have to stop and let them walk out in front of me just because they feel like it either. even if i do have a seattle driver's license.

the weird thing is that while i'm driving, i encounter a lot of people who jaywalk, even though seattle has this reputation for being a city that's tough on jaywalkers. i do think there are a lot of people who are paranoid about this, however. When you're waiting for the walk signal at an intersection downtown, there are always a couple of people who are checking to see if the street is clear and crossing against the light. the rest wait on the corner till they get the go ahead to "walk." i am always among the band of evil jaywalkers. i can't help it. i have no patience for standing around and waiting to do what i'm told. never have, never will.

as a total tangent, i tried to preserve the straight hair one day too long. today, i do not feel cosmopolitan. i feel kind of grungy. can't wait to wash my hair in the morning.