sarahcentric

I’m still running the numbers on this weekend’s 80 degree Maximum Comfort time. Early estimates are coming in around $432,738,015… and 22 cents.

The biggest pile of receipts by far comes from Australia shopping. With just a little over a month until I leave, I have gone into full-on International Freakout mode. My brain is generating pages and pages of a list which I like to call What You MUST Bring to Australia in order to have fun and avoid a “Brokedown Palace”-like Situation. I realized I was getting a bit carried away when I caught myself thinking, “Oh God, I need shorts. I seriously need shorts! What inseam should I order, what color?!…oh wait. I’m wearing shorts right now. Don’t need shorts.”

I pared my shopping list down to the big ticket essentials:
-Contact lenses
-Blonde highlights
-ice cream cone

Contact lenses are a no-brainer. I will definitely go through several pairs from severe dehydration brought on by a mind-boggling 21 hour flight to Sydney. If I’m going to eaten by a Great White on my first surfing lesson, I am going to damn well see it coming for me. Plus, I may have a chance to live out my best friend Andrew’s recurring fantasy of cuddling with dangerous animals, by quickly throwing my arms around the shark’s big head and smiling with it like we’re best friends. I can’t miss that.

Going summer blonde may not seem as necessary, but you have to factor in the two weddings I’m attending as soon as I get back. I really don’t think I can go to either one of these without looking like Dolly Parton, or at the very least, Beyonce. The highlights are also working well with my bathing suits. I know because I tried them both on immediately following my hair appointment. Fantastic! It was pretty weird when I realized an hour later that I was still wearing my bikini as I cleaned my apartment watching a “Real Housewives of New Jersey” marathon. Well, not that weird considering last week I was dancing around with English Muffins.

And the ice cream cone, well duh! It was 80 degrees which means that Baskin-Robbins is in season. I needed the sugar fuel and the clarity that can only from ice creamy-coldness to get it all done. It’s a scientific fact that my errand-running is 10 times more effective with a scoop of Cookies and Cream. You can find the results of that study in any medical journal. It was hard being experimented on like that…but boy, was it delicious!

So done, done, and DONE. All in enough time to share beers with some friends on Saturday and have brunch with another friend on Sunday. Brunch conversation is always great, but this one came with a “particularly” amazing bonus. My old friend Evan reminded me of a hilarious moment a few years back when he misspoke in front of Andrew and I about some concert tickets he bought for 25 dollars. So excited about his great deal he burst into the apartment and said, “You guys, you guys! I got 25 dollar PARTICULARS…I mean, tickets!” Ohhhhh… poor Evan. Brain vocabulary freezes are our second-favorite joke to exaggerated hypothetical situations which meant that Evan was dead meat. For days following, Andrew and I worked “25 dollar particulars” into every conversation imagining what it could possibly mean. It eventually turned into a ra-thah genteel Southern woman spending a lovely day at the Kentucky Derby. “Well, well, well..hellllooooo! My my! It’s ra-tha hawt out hee-yah, isn’t it? I’ll have a mint julep and a 25 dollah pahhh-ticular.”

A million receipts to still go through from my perfect summer weekend, but here’s what I have so far…

Ice cream cone: $2.75
Pahhhh-ticulars: $25.00
Maximum Comfort…priceless.