Sunday, November 9, 2008

No matter where I am or what I'm doing, every once in a while I remember, we have a new President. And I can't help smiling.

One of the French guys who own the wine-tasting business next to my work had a baby on the 4th. "I don't know which I cried harder for," he says, "my son, or the election." A new country, a new child, a new life for Luc.

Our regulars have been especially lovely lately. A man offered to nurse our poor bald orchid back to health today. After he had a triple by-pass surgery recently, everyone sent him orchids and he found that the notoriously finicky plants flourished under his care. The secret, he tells me, is to avoid watering it too much. "They don't like standing water."

Honestly, I may miss these people more than a little. The familiar faces break up the workday and provide a short respite from the fake customer service shtick. There's Stan, the lonely middle-aged man with a bull-ring piercing, whose lifelong partner died ten years ago, leaving him a priceless art collection and rare Marlene Dietrich memorabilia; Jonnie, who calls me sweetie and brings me flowers from her community garden plot; and who could forget Charlie, the early 40-something chainsmoking poet with the soul of an ADD five-year-old who works as a clerk in an office to pay for his $400/month shared room but who lives to somehow involve himself in everything else in the city, from radio to making anthologies, to acting in independent movies.

What an interesting time we live in.