After several hours of selling trinkets, clothing and linens, Opreggano and I had enough money to join MyFace, Q and Bobby’s Girl for dinner in a little resort town that used to be a silver miner’s dream.
Back in the day, the silver mines in them there parts housed the coal from the neighboring towns. Now that the silver industry is silver history, the coal is supposedly graded and covered with a walking trail. One would never know it if they looked at my feet. After walking around the town’s annual arts festival I sat down to take a break and noticed my feet – black as coal. I had everyone else do a quick assessment of their feet only to learn that I, like Loretta Lynn, had the feet of a coal miner’s daughter.
“Even Baby Q isn’t that dirty and look at her – she’s crawling on the ground,” Opreggano told me. “Fine, fine,” I replied. “I’ll just have to clean them in the bathroom.” We got to the restaurant and Q and I headed to the loo. She took the women’s restroom and I took the men’s. Once inside, I started cleaning. As I exited the loo, a man was waiting outside. “Huh,” he said under his breath.
I returned to the table with an announcement, “Now I know how the homeless feel.” “Is that what took you so long? You were cleaning your feet?” Q asked. “Yes, but it was really easy because there was a bidet in the men’s room.” “Gross,” Opreggano replied. “I jest. I really just used paper towels and did a bit of a spot bath at the sink,” I told them, and this was true. If, however, there had been a bidet, I totally would have used it.
We were telling Bobby’s Girl about our previous girls’ trips and how a lot of the girls are afraid to ‘confront’ MyFace. “What is that all about anyway?” MyFace asked, then looked at Opreggano and said, “You know, you’ve gotten pretty quiet since you got pregnant and stopped drinking.” Opreggano was speechless. “Not sure what that is all about,” I told MyFace.
“Remember how much you loved my nails when we went to wine country?” I asked MyFace. “Not true, I did not love them,” she told Bobby’s Girl. “No, no, she didn’t. She hated them. I was quite drunk and riding to the airport when I painted them so the polish was everywhere. The only thing that would have made them better was a linen finish, but I didn’t have time to take a nap and let the sheets make their mark,” I told Bobby’s Girl. “Oh no, she would not like those,” Bobby’s Girl told me while glancing over at MyFace’s professionally French-manicured nails.
Did I say I was drunk when I painted my nails? I jest again. My nails were smudged because, like Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty, I was out “picking wild mountain berries.”