small life, slow life

I am currently writing in a Starbucks. Since having a child, this is something that is totally unheard of. A luxury too grand to even long for.

It happens to be the same Starbucks where the idea for this blog first dropped into my mind, wholly complete and so hot and urgent that I was inspired to sketch it.

It hasn’t changed much. There are fancy tables now with these little circles that you can plop your phone on top of and it will wirelessly charge. The mugs they sell up front are still unkempt at dusty. I’m not even risking trying the coffee, since I don’t like Starbucks coffee. (At least this time I’m not abstaining due to not being able to afford the fifty-cent refill charge.) Across from where I’m sitting used to be the table where you could stir your coffee with tiny popsicle sticks and swirl in your half and half, but now that station is more towards the front, which makes perfect sense. The windows overlook Topanga Canyon Boulevard, and other than the woman whose entire existence seems to depend on the thing she’s watching on her phone, all is peaceful. (More on her below.)

But here I am, through a funny twist of events…someone was accidentally under-scheduled at work and had been asking multiple people to pick up hours today, and I, hearing of it as I was just leaving yesterday, snatched up her offer like a greedy child and was nearly gleeful today when she came in to relieve me a few hours into my shift.

I dropped off my backpack in my car and then walked around the entire mall, from top to bottom. I lingered in stores, I ran my hand along potential Christmas presents, found the most beautiful spoons ever created at Anthropologie (see below), I stood in the potty training aisle at Target and thoughtfully chose V’s potty training underwear instead of doing it in a harried-mother’s rush (sorry for revealing this, future V). I ran into a couple of friends, and even made a chance encounter with someone who used to work for me who will now potentially work for me again. It was bliss.

Anthropologie, why would you make spoons this beautiful? I already own about thirty-too many spoons. Why tempt me this way?

And after all of that, I am here at this Starbucks because I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d love to write in than the actual place where this blog was incepted…but I kid you not, there is a woman two tables from me who is jiggling her leg, watching something on her phone with her headphones in her ears, who has alternated between yelling, “SHIT!” and “YES!” every thirty seconds or so. She is also looking up at the ceiling at shaking her fists as she says both of these things. I wish I was making this up or even slightly exaggerating for storytelling purposes, but it is actually driving me crazy and I wish she would go somewhere else. (Lol.) It has to be a sporting game, right? I can’t imagine what could make such a normal looking person this fanatical.

Now there’s a woman talking on the phone by the window in a very stern voice, who just looked at me like this is her office and why am I looking at her like that, and I feel like Starbucks may not be the most ideal place to write after all.

Anyway.

It poured rain this morning, and when V got up, I got to show her that it was raining outside. She has been talking for weeks about “needing a waincoat” (thank you, Elmo’s World episode about weather *sarcasm*), and she was so excited that she would finally get to wear one today. The drizzle has started again just now, and I’m excited to take her puddle jumping for the first time in about an hour or so when I go home.

Tomorrow is Day 100. I can’t believe it is actually here. I still have absolutely zero plan as to what to do after tomorrow.

Is a twenty-four hour timeframe too late to expect an epiphany?