Some Kind Of Wonderful

And yet, some kind of terrible, too.

Things seemed too easy, so I should have expected them to get more complicated.

Here's how it all went down. A bunch of us were chillin' at 8th Street (coffeehouse) on Wednesday because I was there waiting for my writers' group to start. Chris's phone rang. He looked at it and saw a Washington DC exchange. He assumed it was our esteemed Congressman Bart Stupak calling him back, because he had phoned in a question to the man's office. He was trying to find out if he was still in the running to be Michigan's First Congressional District Democratic Party chair, a position he has applied to be appointed to after our friend Stacy stepped down from the position to be the U.P. coordinator for the DNR. Chris answered his phone.

The voice on the other end proclaimed that she was Rachel and she worked in Congressman Stupak's DC office and she was wondering if Chris would be able to set up a 1 o'clock phone call with the Congressman on Thursday. Chris, who was slightly confused because the Congressman himself usually calls and has even given Chris his cell phone number, agreed to the call.

And when he finally got the call on Thursday afternoon, that's when my world fell apart. In a most wonderful of ways.

The Congressman first explained to Chris that he still wasn't sure about the First District Chair position because he was considering someone else for purely political reasons. Then he asked Chris who was coming with him to the Inauguration and if he needed another ticket for the Michigan Inaugural Dinner Dance, a $200 a ticket even we had both been invited to but had to decline because- well, because we're broke. The Congressman (this is awkward- usually when I am talking about him, I just call him Bart, but that would seem inappropriate if he somehow got his hands on this blog, so I am being a little more formal) said, "No, no, no. You have a ticket. I got you one. Hold on." He was gone for a few seconds and then came back and said, "Okay, no problem. I snagged you another ticket."

I wanted SO bad to be able to go to one of the balls you keep hearing about on the news, but I couldn't afford to. So this was the some kind of wonderful.

Now, for the some kind of terrible:
1. The Michigan Inaugural Dinner Dance is from 7:30 pm until 12:00 am on the night of January 20th, in the Museum of American History in Washington DC.

2. We are staying at the Quality Inn in the Inner Harbor area of Baltimore, Maryland, an hour away from Washington.

3. The only trains that will be running on Inauguration Day are ones with reserved seating. At all. I already purchased the tickets for these train seats, and we are set to go into Washington around 7:30 am and return to Maryland around 7:30 pm. You can see the problem here, I'm sure.

4. The Dance starts at the same time that our train leaves. And after that train leaves, there is almost no way to get back to Baltimore. Our options are to A) hang out in the 'hoods of Washington between midnight and 5 am, when we can catch a train back to Baltimore, or B) take a cab back to Baltimore, which will cost us in the neighborhood of $100, if we can even get one. We may have an option C), which would be to catch a ride back to Baltimore with someone we meet along the way, or to stay with someone in DC for a few hours, but those are only possibilities if we meet someone along the way.

5. Now we'll move on the other part of the issue. It is going to be about 35 degrees on Inauguration day, and we are going to be standing and walking a LOT.

6. We are now, obviously, going to a ball. When a congressman snags you $400 worth of tickets, you do not decline.

7. We cannot bring any bags with us that are larger than 8" by 6" by 4".

8. Following this logic, then, whatever I wear to the ball, I will also have to wear to the Inauguration and the parade.

9. I suspect I will have to wear a dress and, if not heels, at least dress shoes.

10. I do not own a fancy dress and I do not wear heels, especially if I have to walk around Washington D.C. for approximately 21 hours, with only 4 and a half of those hours guaranteed to be inside of a building.

11. In the next 36 hours, I need to come up with a dress and shoes and accompaniments that I can wear all day long, outside, in 35 degree weather, and walk around in all day, and still look classy in at midnight. Oh yeah, and not get mugged or raped in if I'm walking the streets of Washington for 5 hours.

12. Some kind of terrible.

I may stop somewhere along the way and try to buy clothes. I can do this. I know I can. But at the moment, I am rather panic-stricken. Oh, well. I will survive.

Now I'm off to find clothes. HELP!