i'm at a coffee shop because today i got a snow day FROM MY JOB (i
am no teacher). i woke up and i felt normal for the first time since
2013 and i checked my email on my phone and the email said something
like: there is a higher power, you have a snow day. i scissor kicked my
legs and pumped a fist in the air and squealed and took karmic credit
and forwarded it to my mom because i am a grown up.
i began immediately ruining the day by planning an aggressive agenda
for the 4.5 hours of remaining sunlight. because an open day that is
not a weekend day? is different from a weekend day. in that you are
allowed and in fact required to do productive but also indulgent and
creative things, as opposed to a weekend day which you should spend
texting on the couch. so in my head i was like "i'm going to learn to
knit and go to 1.5 hours of
yoga and make eggs and write 8 blog posts and put
every single obligation for 2014 in my calendar and make, write, and
send all of my christmas thank you notes and figure out how to become a
high school english teacher and begin becoming one, if possible, today,
and write all my resolutions down in glitter pen and finally get my gas
bill to be e-paid and finish a novel and start a new one and try to
figure out in my dumb head if i'm in love with my best friend and do all
of this from my bed where i will be sleeping in + napping after
changing the sheets and putting the bed ruffle back on which i took off a
couple of months ago because i spilled coffee on it." and i forgot
paint nails which is always on the t-d list.
but instead of that, and sort of because emily also had a snow
blessing (BLAME EMILY jkjkjknever), i just wandered to this coffee shop and i bought/ate a
bagel and two $4 chai lattes, which is a drink but is so creamy and
carb-y getting it down is really more like eating, and now i'm here
growing on to my chair. i'm an observer of coffee urchin culture, an
ambassador from a very foreign faraway planet of 10-6 workdays and
shared refrigerators and meetings with people who have children.
it is
noon on a friday and i'm wearing leggings outside of my house and they
are leggings that i extracted from beneath a dirty dish towel in my
hamper because they are the least see-through. (i am at the west. if you
want to come see.) i made fleeting and bashful eye contact
several times with a guy wearing a lot of fashionable outerwear sitting
behind emily. he looked european. one of the baristresses iphones is
playing a combination of accessible david bowie songs and bon iver but
it keeps being loudly interrupted when she receives texts. there is a
polite young man reading a paperback called the art of recklessness.
everyone knocks-before-entering the bathroom. i'm considering getting an
IPA. what i am it's 2:15 now and i'm working by that i mean i'm making a
list of books.
and running through my head, aside from
the tired "what are all these people doing and how do they afford
apartments in this neighborhood if they're here right now on a friday
highlighting fiction novels" question that all of the parents ask and
the times style section asks every third sunday when it doesn't have
enough interracial or same sex weddings between socioeconomically
homogeneous people to profile, is the larger question, how do i how can i
do this where and how every day but also have it be meaningful
especially if global warming is happening and ny is so expensive? or maybe that's the same question? ok i'm going to yoga.
~useless fran
