My Trip Home - Day 7

This post is part of an ongoing tale of my trip back home to Mississippi to visit my family. To start the story at the beginning, begin reading from October 30, 2007.

Let's just skip over day six of my vacation. It's not that nothing good happened - I was busy every day of my vacation - but this day was nothing particularly noteworthy.

Day seven of my vacation saw me taking a trip back to Tupelo. My BIL had an appointment with his doctor so Sister and I tagged along so we could do some shopping. Our first stop was to an outlet mall. I found a pair of shoes for $29.99 and although I didn't need them I bought them anyway. Now that I have them home I find that I am not all that crazy about them but I got them for cheap and they'll be fine to wear when it's a bit snowy or rainy outside. As I was waiting for the clerk to come ring up my purchase my sister told me she was going up to a clothing store and for me to meet here there when I was done.

The clerk rang up my shoes and said to me "You know it's senior citizens day and there's a 10% discount for everyone over 55. Of course I don't imagine you're over 55 years old."

Holy crap. I'm only 45 years old. If I look 55 I'm going to look around for the sharp-instruments-with-which-to-impale-myself outlet store.

I replied "Oh no ma'am. I'm not nearly that old."

"That's okay. I gave you the discount anyway. You were with that other lady so that was good enough."

My sister is 52 years old. And I was all but running up the mall to find her and tell her she got me 10% off my shoes.

After we picked my BIL up again it was time for us to seek out some lunch.

"Sushi!", Sister exclaimed.

Damn. I had been hoping she'd forgotten my promise to have sushi when we returned to Tupelo.

Until that moment I had spent the 45 years of my life as a sushi virgin and I was happy to do so. I have nothing against fish. Or uncooked fish. Or off-beat food. Or rice. Or seaweed. I've eaten my share of freaky things and sushi hardly qualifies anymore as freaky. I just had a feeling that I wasn't going to like it.

After being seated at the restaurant Sister explained the things on the menu and suggested that she get a couple of orders of sushi for us all to share and then we could have another menu item for ourselves. I couldn't tell from the sushi varieties what would be good to order so I let Sister handle that and I ordered for myself a chicken teriyaki bowl - chicken, rice and vegetables in a teriyaki sauce.

The sushi arrived, I put a weency dot of wasabi in my soy sauce, dipped in my piece of sushi - this one was cooked tuna and some other stuff -, popped it in my mouth and waited for the taste riot that was sure to follow.

Ugh. I barely had any soy sauce on it and all I could taste was wet something and soy sauce. Already things were starting off on the wrong foot. I was determined, however, not to give up. Sister loves sushi. My BIL was sucking it down like he was born to eat it. It's one of Darling Mollie's favorite things to eat. I was not going to be left behind by the I-Love-Sushi bandwagon so I tried another piece, this time something with raw tuna. The soy sauce seemed to be ruining my enjoyment so this time I ate the piece plain.

Ever eat something really repulsive and you can't seem to get it down? That's what was happening to me with this piece of sushi. The more I chewed it, the bigger it got. And I can't decide what was gagging me the most - the fish or the creamy gooey stuff that seemed to be wrapped with it or the wet, limp feeling it seemed to have against my tongue. If I could have spit it out in any way even approaching discreet then I would have. Surely this was Sister's revenge for me laughing about her getting me a senior citizen's discount at the shoe outlet.

"I'm sorry. I've tried. I can't eat that stuff. Just accept it that I will never love sushi and that it means there will be more in the world for you."

Sister had stopped laughing at me by the time my teriyaki bowls were served and I was happy to eat some lovely, crispy steamed vegetables and rice but I have to say I wasn't too keen on the chicken. I'd forgotten that a little teriyaki flavor goes a long way with me and after a few bite of chicken I stopped eating it in favor of the bits that weren't screaming at me "SOY SAUCE BASED MARINADE!".

I left lunch with a rather dissatisfied feeling. I think I ate myself hungry.

But there was more shopping to do! New jeans! And new short sleeved tops! Short sleeved tops weren't really anything I especially wanted to buy but I'd packed for mild to cool October weather and that week we were having gates-of-hell October weather. As it was I was in a long sleeved cotton top and was about to burst into flames from the heat.

We dumped my BIL off in Sears for him to drool over the power tools and Sister and I headed out to find those jeans and tops that I sorely needed. And you Lane Bryant shoppers! Have you tried their new jeans with the new sizing? I liked the jeans but the sizing thing was so complicated. I jumped through fewer hoops to get a German residency visa than it took me to get some properly sized jeans. And you know what? They still don't fit right. Oh they fit like a dream in the store but they don't tell you that they stretch out like crazy once you've worn them a couple hours so I'm still hitching up my britches every ten minutes. Too bad I didn't buy a belt while I was there.

Afterwards we headed over to the one place where B wanted me to go while I was in Tupelo - Reed's. Reed's is famous for their t-shirts and B loves them. I picked out for him a couple long sleeved t-shirts and found one for Gerd that says "The Cradle of Rock 'n Roll - Tupelo, Mississippi" that has on the back a print of an old photograph of Tupelo with a banner over the street saying "Welcome Home Elvis" and you can see the corner of the original Reed's department store in the photograph. Gerd doesn't really wear t-shirts as far as I know but he really likes Elvis and this t-shirt isn't your run-of-the-mill Elvis t-shirt.

We got back home from our shopping trip and later on I went back into town to drive Sam to his play practice at the high school. After dropping him off I went to get some supper at Sonic, ran into my niece, Misty, while I was there and then went by to see my mother at The Plantation. Trips to Sonic so far during this trip: three. Three trips to Sonic in seven days. A bit obsessive sounding, I'm sure, but I needed the treat. I'd survived sushi.

Tomorrow we'll skip ahead to the beginning of a very big weekend - Day 10: A Cajun, a Diver, ducks, ribs and a lot of loud, lovely women.