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August 07, 2000
Weekend with Mom
I'm still tired from my weekend. Mom was here -- we always manage to have fun, eat too much, and wear ourselves out. This time, I'd gotten tickets for a Mystery Cruise -- one of those things where a comedy group acts out a murder, and you have to try to solve it. I figured it would be fun, and even if the show was lame, it would be a nice three hours out on the water, eating catered food.
We spent some time wandering around Quincy Market, mostly looking for stores with good air conditioning -- it was hot, and we'd dressed for cooler weather, knowing it would be chilly out on the water. We found the first bits of Harry Potter merchandise in the Warner Brothers store -- while I was happy to see some, I'm also unhappy knowing that Warner Brothers will market it to death. The books should be enough on their own... but that said, I now own a very cool notepad with the Hogwarts crest on the cover. My mom bought us each one. And there's a shirt I'm saving my pennies to buy...
We had iced coffees and sat in the shade, people-watching. There was a man sitting near us doing the dollar-bill-on-a-fishing-line trick -- I didn't know people still did this! He's sit nonchalantly, with the dollar a few feet away on the ground, and when someone would try to pick it up, he'd twitch the string, flick the dollar away, then roll on the ground laughing. Really, on the ground. Screaming laughter. It was a bit creepy... so we wandered down to the wharf to watch the boats and wait until it was time to pick up the tickets.
When we got to the gate, there was a large crowd of well-dressed people milling around, flirting with a sort of steely determination. Turns out they were all part of a singles group, and they thought they'd chartered the whole trip for themselves. They hadn't, but they had bought the majority of the tickets. I think if I were part of that group, I would have thrown myself overboard -- the women outnumbered the men, and the tension was so thick I expected a wild catfight to break out any second. Way too much cooing and hair-flipping for my taste...
We pretty much ignored the show. It was cute, but once we'd eaten (surprisingly good Italian food) the lure of sitting on the top deck watching the skyline was too much. It was quiet up there, and the boat's path took us near Logan, so the planes came in to land right over us. Mom saw a shooting star, we talked a lot, and just generally relaxed. I could have stayed out all night, just sitting on the boat. We watched the beginning of the show, then wandered down to see the very end, but we didn't make any effort to solve the mystery. While we were relaxing, the singles were getting drunker and drunker... one woman apparently thought she knew me, and kept coming up and draping herself over me and talking to me incoherantly. She was nice and all, just had had a few too many glasses of wine. My mom pointed out that it was nice just sitting and listening to the people on the lower decks having a good time, without feeling pressured to go join them. And she was right -- I enjoyed just watching and listening -- I wouldn't have had any where near as much fun trying to join in.
And I think I'm a sick woman -- there was a kid working on the boat, no more than 18 or so -- and he was absolutely beautiful. Tall and thin, shaggy dark hair, lovely tan -- nice looking from a distance, but uop close, he had gorgeous pale blue-green eyes, with think dark eyelashes... he should have been required to wear dark glasses or something, just to keep from perverting older women like myself.
And now it's hot here, and very sticky. Eric will be here one week from today, and I'm praying the weather won't be like this. I hate this kind of summer weather. I need to find a place that's 80 degrees, with no humidity, every day.
Posted by Mary Ellen at August 7, 2000 04:16 PM