Turkey sandwich and a pumpkin cupcake

I sat and ate in front of the museum, all those names etched into the stone, Aristotle and Pindar and Plato and Callimachus and the rest, and thought about time and how much of mine I’ve spent up and down this stretch of Eastern Parkway. Will I regret it, I wonder sometimes, staying this put? But then I think of books I’ve read again as I’ve gotten older, The Stranger, Hiroshima, even A Summer to Die, how different they are after you’ve loved and lost and loved and lost a few times and more. Maybe the reader matters more than the book. I finished up with time not on my side and rushed home through the last two marching bands of the Panamanian Day parade, the air filled with both chill and meat smoke, remembering the time mom was here for that, how crazy, can you even imagine that?

 

Turkey sandwich, red velvet cupcake, and an iced coffee

I ate my turkey sandwich from my left hand and scribbled notes with the Dixon Ticonderoga in my right, moving swiftly through the last of my assigned reading for what has turned out to actually all complaining aside be a terrific classroom experience. (Not grade-grubbing, I swear.) Still, as much as I enjoyed thinking hard after a day of feeling lots, I felt jealous of the folks jumping in and out and grabbing drinks before heading back out to the sun in the park. I’ll get there, I’ll get there. I was plumb out of cash so had to build out my order to the ten-buck credit card minimum. Hence the cupcake, no other reason in the world. According to a recent Facebook Status Update, people keep asking B. to make samples of red velvet cake, even though her salted caramel could run rings around any red velvet I’ve ever tried. But the people apparently clamor, so I went with that for my treat. Yeah, I don’t really see what all the fuss is about.

 

Chicken avocado salad and a cupcake

The cafe down the block has a new incentives program–buy nine salads get the tenth one free. So that’s one down on my little wallet-sized card. Those things are no joke, either–I walked into Gorilla on Sunday and walked out with a free pound of coffee. Cha-ching! The week is such a total bust-up, between the things that matter and the things that don’t and my total stress-o reaction to both, that I went ahead and got the cupcake. Times is tough I said to the guy behind the counter. I’ll take the yellow cake.

 

Turkey and brie sandwich, plus coffee and a cupcake

Sometimes when my life is lacking sensory pleasures, I’ll do the rounds with one I can buy at the store. A couple years ago it was wine, knocked my head against many a glass in an effort to keep my body in play. If I had the dilemma of time and a mouth of wet cardboard these days, I’d pick mustard next. So good and so different, mouthful to mouthful, I loved the dose that came randomly via the turkey and brie sandwich at the cafe today. I could see the mustard seeds like hard dark pearls; I don’t know if it was creamy from mixing with cheese or if that was some mayonnaise swirled through for pleasure. I ate and drank over the remnants of the Merchant of Venice. As much as I whine and kick and complain like a baby, I have to admit I’m getting better at both reading and enjoying these plays as the semester rolls through. When I came to my final exeunt! I ordered a chocolate-chocolate cupcake to go and ate it on my long walk home.

 

Chicken pizza, plus coffee and a cupcake

It’s one of those days, just shocking in its crisp perfection, so I loaded up my activity bag and turned up some music and headed out for lunch. I was the only one at the restaurant, so tucked into a chicken pizza and some reading with gentle workplace banter in my ears. I’m going to work this Friday and Saturday, and J. is taking my Sunday shift, okay? As the site of the only food in the place, two or three flies made themselves my persistent annoying company, so I felt complled to eat half the pizza fast and take the rest to go. Then I headed back down the block for coffee and a cupcake and the rest of the stuff I get to do today.