I am so weak.

I had the whole day in front of me. Most of it, anyway. I planned to do some writing, catch up on my email (which is in a woeful state), clean house, clean cupboards, read, watch some tv, do some yoga, meditate-- all those things that I want to do, need to do, get too busy to do. Me Time, in other words.

Angie called, wanted me to go out for lunch with her and Maggie, plus return some books, etc. I should have said that I was busy, I'll see you tomorrow. Instead I said Sure! Complete with that vacant blonde little swing: Su-ure! Absolutely!

Ugh.

At least I did the cleaning, I suppose. Forced my self to, by telling them to meet me here, mainly because I didn't want to haul those returned books around all day. In my defense, such as it is, I did think that the ones on Venice would be included in the books returned to D.'s Guidebook Library. (Yes, I do have a Serious Guidebook Problem.) After all, we are going to Venice next week, and could reasonably do with having them back. Wrong. Angie returned the London ones, plus a couple on yoga. Both of which I have no use for now. Belatedly, of course, I realized that, hey, Angie and Doug are coming with us to Venice next week, so of course they want to hang on to those. Good thing I kept the best one back. Felt like a bitch at the time, but now I realize that I was right. And if they try to return those to me on, say, the train to Venice, I shall refuse to accept them. They can haul the damn things around.

So, we went to lunch. In a hotel dining room. I kid you not. Seems that Angie and Maggie had been there before, thought it was great. "And the service is wonderful!" I ordered tartare with bread, tomatoes, egg and onion. I got a hamburger on toast, with tomatoes and egg and onion. It was an extremely rare hamburger, with tomatoes, egg and onion. But not raw as, oh.... tartare, for example. If they meant hamburger, they should have said so. Aha, says the waiter, it does say sandwich. My mistake. I was thinking open faced, Danish sort of experience. But, and this is probably crucial, we're talking hotel here. In Italy, I should have know better, despite the fact that I've had some very nice tartare in this country. All I can figure is that they wanted the tourists to feel that they were ordering something exotic, without challenging their oh-so-delicate sensibilities. Still, I checked out the menu again before we left-- in English this time-- and I still don't see how you can extrapolate "hamburger" out of that. Maybe they expected people to ask "Duh, what's this?"

In the place's defense, we walked in at 2:30, and did get good service-- no sighs, no rushing. A veritable miracle in Milan, and Italy in general, where if your presence is likely to impinge on lunch, or closing, or maybe even a really good conversation, that's too damn bad, we don't want your business anyway. No joke, a friend of mine was in a rather swanky store a few weeks ago, had an armful of clothes and was heading toward the register, when she was practically strong armed toward the door. Lunch time. She said, well, that's ok, I just want to BUY this stuff, and I'll be on my way. They suggested she could come back later to make her purchases. After lunch. She is still ashamed that she did, in fact, go back and make her purchases. And rightly so: I wouldn't, and haven't.

So after that, we wandered around, etc. Ended up at the Cafe, where, as usual, Remo gave us wine in the "Gigante" glass. Plus free refills, despite our efforts to stop them. Girls with big boobs two tables over, so, although he brought us lots of elaborate snacks as per usual, he stopped short of actually feeding it to us.

I did make it to PWA, in a fine old mood by that time, mainly because I'd promised to "volunteer". My job consisted of herding the ladies to the woman armed with the digital camera. A good job, as after that second refill I didn't feel any shyness. Or pain, although that goes with out saying. I ended up stalking through the conference room, stuffed with women networking like mad, strong-arming anyone who looked in any way defenceless. That would be anyone shorter than me, and I was wearing 3 inch heels. No makeup? No problem, it's in black and white. Camera shy? No problem, it's a digital camera so you get do-overs. I guess they're doing a sort of almanac thingy. A good idea, especially for me. I can do faces, but names are usually beyond me. Names and faces together are a real toughie, even when completely sober.

Had an interesting speaker. Aside from a truly bizarre accent, which was mesmerizing in its own right, I really enjoyed what she actually said. The topic was, ostensibly, leadership. She mainly talked about cultural gender relations issues, and gender relations issues in general. Translation: women have to put up with a lot of shit from men, don't we? If it weren't for their shit, in fact, we'd be running the place. I rather enjoyed her blaming Italian Mamas for the jerks they turn out masquerading as sons and men in general. Example: it's possible to re-train men, but it's easier and far more effective to do it yourself from scratch. She is, by the way, married to an Italian, I believe. Actually, a better summary (but less fun) would be: We as women want to do it all, but we can't, so we have to decide what's imortant-- and more importantly WHY things are important. When we look at the base, what underlies our notions of what we "must" do, we often find it's not really important at all, or at least not to us.