I was supposed to be reading...

I've been trying to dry our laundry without a dryer lately. This is both easier and harder as a laundromat patron. It's easier because it saves me a LOT of quarters and time sitting at the cafe next to the laundromat. It's harder because it feels strange to cart wet laundry through the streets and up the stairs to my apartment.

This means that I only have 30 minutes or so to wait while my laundry washes. Unfortunately, my new laundromat (the one I recently started visiting, the one that has a hand lettered sign in the window that says "New Owner and He's CUTE!") plays daytime television very loudly. I actually have a hard time not getting mad in there just because of the fear/shame-based shows, so I started going next door, to the Robinwood cafe. Once, I got a spinach pie there and it was really delicious. I'd looked through their entire four page menu without finding much vegetarian, and not much that I was excited to eat (they have breakfast all day, but I try not to eat factory farmed eggs) when I spied (under desserts!) a spinach pie. Turns out the owners are Greek and the Spinach pie is fantastic!

Today, I started my wash (I added Cocacola to one of the washers to deal with some olive oil stains. My sister told me it would work. The clothes are still on the porch, so it remains to be seen.) then headed to the cafe. Since I'm broke, and I'd bought the coke there, I sat at a table with the half-full coke and asked for water to drink while I read.

I heard the young, enthusiastic waiter plugging a show he was playing tonight at Spontaneous Celebrations, a community center near my house. Then, I heard him talking with an older Greek woman who runs the show at the cafe, possibly an owner.

Woman: What will you wear?
Waiter: Jeans and a Tshirt. Normal stuff.
Woman: Do you play songs? Nice Songs? _______________

(Now,in that blank spot, I thought she said "like, musical?" But the kid (who knows her better and was actually in the conversation seemed to think she said "like disco". I'll never know which it was, but it works both ways.)

Waiter: Like disco? I tell you every time. It's hard core punk. It's fast and loud.

I returned to my reading about how school systems can build schools to teach higher order thinking skills for a moment until...

Waiter: When it's recorded, people say I sound Japanese. (guy is white)
Woman: Japanese?
Waiter: yeah.
Woman: What do you say? What are the words? Are there lyrics?

The waiter then very sincerely explained what the songs were about. But that was so sweet that I didn't write it down. He also explained that they had made their own posters, t shirts, cassettes (?) and cds and then given most of them away. The woman was not very impressed with this business plan and told him so.

The whole time, I must point out, "Your song" by Elton John was playing in the background.

Climbing

I was sitting on a big cozy cushion on a barn floor a few blocks from my house tonight when the man on stage asked us to turn off our cell phones.  I had not yet committed to taking off my jacket or hat, but was encouraged by the space heaters gathered around.  I didn't have my phone with me.  I ALWAY have it but today I dropped it and shattered the screen and so my new one was at home attached to my computer, remembering all the things my old phone knew, in no danger of disturbing the show.

The people around me were wearing lots of wool, and big boots and I wasn't the only one who'd kept my hat on.  The girl in front of me had a sign pinned to her back with numbers of Palestinan and Isreali casualties, that had white out beneath the numbers where she'd white them out again tomorrow to change them.  I hated looking at it, but my eyes kept going there, and I checked them,  18 and 718, as though she might white them out and change them during the singing.  The stage was lit by some strings of lights and a central red bulb, and a humidifier sat on the stage occasionally appearing to be a pathetic smoke machine.  I'm generally very good about remembering to turn off my phone at concerts, and since I hadn't done it I started a few times during the first song or two, remembering and then remembering that I had none.  The music was gorgeous, two groups of singers; one men, one women, one Georgian, one Appalachian, one from JP, one (mostly) from California (now).  We sang together, and by the end I was hatless and breathless. 

Earlier today I made my first trip to an Apple store...

I was cranky because I'd shattered my phone.  The people who worked there were all wearing t-shirts, except for the person whose job it was to open the door for people and cheerfully greet us; that person was dressed wierdly with a t-shirt and a hat and scarf.  I was late for my "appointment" with the "genius bar" and couldn't FIND the "genius bar" and resented having to ask someone how to find it.  I thumped up this huge, central, curving, invisible,  glass staircase awkwardly in my snowboots (we all thumped up and down it awkwardly and treacherously because we were all wearing snowboots) sweating in my long underwear.  I submitted to saying "genius bar" to someone too busy to look at me, followed their pointing finger up the REST of the staircase, stripped off all my over-layers and dumped them on a bench nearbye.  I took stock.  I was cranky, nervous, and shy and I had to shop AND admit that I'd droipped and broken a little, expensive computer that I keep in my pocket mostly so I can end disputes with wikis, don't have to ask directions, and so that I can read my friends witty responses to my witticisms on Facebook.  Yuck.  

I finally had to walk down those damn steps, having paid for and obtained my new phone and hot pink case (don't ask), and then donned my sweater, down vest, wool cape, hat, scarf and gloves. I was sure I'd fall down them and crash into some comfortable, cheerfully entitled-looking people. I teetered in the middle, and then kept going.  At the bottom was a man with a bottle of windex and a swiffer, gazing up at me and the steps under me.  He had a long day ahead of him, because we all were wearing snowboots covered in skunky ice.  I sighed then and smiled and apologized to the universe.

So, really, it was great when I didn't have my phone in the barn.  

It was great, and warm, and beautiful.