There was a brief sunbreak around lunchtime and I had a phone call to make, so I headed outside. Suddenly, I found myself in Westlake, Seattle’s shopping district. The next thing I knew, I was trying on bras at Victoria’s Secret (so unlike me). As I stood at the counter, I asked the salesgirl if she had any unbranded bags. Did I really want to show back up at work with a pink striped frou-frou VICTORIA’S SECRET bag? But no, that’s all they had.

Then, since I was already under the black cloud of femmey-ness, I went to Sephora and bought some sparkly purple eyeshade, blush, lip gloss, and eye liner. Hell: if I’m going to have an embarassingly girly inadvertant shopping trip, I might as well do it up.

Then I slunk back to work before something equally uncharactaristic could happen to me, like, say, an enormous block of pink, glittery, underwired ice falling from the sky and killing me.