Finishng out my lunch hour at my desk.

I tried sitting in the lunch room, and I did as long as I was eating, but there is a tool show coming to town this weekend and the men I work with are all back threre salivating over air compressors and compound wrenches at ridiculously low low prices. If they would salivate quietly, I wouldn't mind, but hell no, they have to one up each other with tales of the torque wrench or the miter saw they got at this travelling carnival of tools the last time it came this way and whatever one has, well by golly damn, the other one has the same thing but he's had it longer and it works better.

Shit, will you shut the hell up? Or can we at least change the subject to shoes, something we all need and use. Or, since the sound of your voice has now started to make me as sick as this Healty Choice frozen entree I'm eating how about you just shut the hell up?

Ok, so I've made up my ind that this is the year I finally get my act together and get this gut off of me. I'm sick and tired of it. So I'm eating Healthy Choice and drinking Atkins and trying to keep my carbohydrate consumption at a minimum. It ain't easy, but I've also decided that this is the year I want to learn how to belly dance, and with as much as I've got to throw around, it could turn into a massively choreographed and well rehearsed belly flop.

You can take the girl out of the east side....

You can take the girl out of the east side, but you can't necessarily take the east side out of the girl.

For now it is a fact that I was born, raised and reared east of I-45 and continue to live in the cache challenged east side of the "Greater" Houston area. There really isn't much going on in this side of town, it's not experiencing a tech boom of any kind, we haven't had a new mall go up in over twenty years and we have only had Starbucks for about three years now. We've got thousands of nail salons offering twenty dollar acrylic nails and free fungus with purchase of a fifteen dollar pedicure. Superbowl parties on this side of town will occur at places with names like "Skeeters" and "Choppers."

So last week while I was on vacation I decided to venture to the west side of town and see what was going on over there. And yes, I refer to anytime I leave the geographical boundaries of the poltical subdivision I live in as "going to town". Anyway, I'm going somewhere to expand my horizons and the Hong Kong City Mall seems like a good place to start.

First off, it felt like I was driving to Hong Kong proper. Ok, so it only took me 45 minutes to get there cause I have a lead foot, but it was still a long drive. I got there early and got an excellent parking place, it was kinda cool and windy but not altogether unpleasant. I get inside and am greeted by the aroma of fish market and urine. No kidding, there was a puddle of urine in the mall outside the grocery store. Needless to say I skip the grocery store and head for the fabric shop.

This fabric shop has some absolutely gorgeous stuff, silks, jaquards, all kinds of stuff that I have no idea what they are and the little old lady behind the counter can't tell me because she doesn't speak much of my language and I don't speak much of hers. Between sign language and pointing we work out that her son will be back in an hour and he can help me. Ok, I've seen something I want and I'll be back in an hour. Next stop, the shoe store.

Lucite, buckles, platforms, grommets! I am in love and ready to whip out the plastic and be a shoe buying fool.

Except.

When I ask for a size 10 (yep, I' a big footed jerky eating girl) the fella at the counter says "that man's size". He said it with a smile and in a helpful tone. But I guess from the look on my face he figured out pretty quick that I want to beautify and showcase my feet, not buy shoes for somebody else. "Nine biggest size made for women." Really, ok, thanks.

Is there a Moscow City Mall in town? Maybe it I check the Sunday paper I an find a Prague Pavilion. They've got to have shoes in my size because that's where my ancestors came from.

I've got fourty-five minutes to kill until the fabric guy gets back.

I walk passed several store fronts that have nothing in them but tables and chairs and people are filling out forms. There is no window with a clerk to process the paper work or computers that I see, looks like eveything is done with paper and pencil. Whatever, by now the smell of urine and fish has been over come with the smell of institutional disenfectant and fish. Slightly better.

I go into one store that has all kinds of bags hanging in the window. Hello knock-off world. Phooey Vuitton's in all shapes and sizes, fake Gucci and Coach, the place smells like a jar of liquid vinyl. Hot liquid vinyl. "and we have shoes," the lady behind the counter indicates their selection with a sweep of her hand. Shoes? Ok, I'll take the bait and check out the selection.

They have lots of shoes all right. Rows and rows of them.

Used shoes.

Some of these shoes are so damn used that I am pretty sure I sold them in a yard sale about ten years ago. Thanks, but no thanks.

As much as I like shoes and the way my feet look in shoes, I don't covet anybody else's shoes enough to wear used shoes.

It's a thing. It's my thing and I acknowledge that.

Jeez, isn't the fabric guy back yet?

Walking the mall again, there is a restaurant that people are literally lining up outside for. I don't expect there to be a menu in English by now, but I figure I'll look inside and see what's going on.

I walk up to the window just as a guy is hanging a whole pig on a hook that is suspended over a carving table.

A whole, intact, skin is singed all over it pig.

I'm not naive by any means. I know where meat comes from and I eat it anyway. But this guy is standing there with a knife taking orders and is about to start carving hunks off this and I just don't think I can handle that. It's not butchered, honestly I don't even think it's been gutted so not only has it been cooked in some fashion with it's hooves still on and the intensines (and whatever was in them) still inside.

I've got plenty of fabric at home still folded on shelves that I haven't done anything with.

And the toll road comes out just a couple of blocks from here, that'll shave a good ten minutes off my drive.

I haul ass at seventy plus the whole way home.

By the time I get to the interstate, pass downtown and get on another section of the toll road, I'm starving hungry. The smells that assaulted my brain previoulsy have loosened their grip on my brain, and I pull into a place that serves up plenty of deep fried seafood and french fries. As I plunge a stick of fried cheese into marinara sauce I wonder if somebody would look inside the window and be completely grossed out by the sight of my eating this.

And as I savor the golden deep-fat fried goodness that is fried food I'm thinking, yeah, probably so.

Here's to home and the familiar.

I'm a little more pedestrian than I would like to admit.