4.20.01

woke up to the wet sound of traffic in rain. cars shusshing by in the frantic morning commute. grey light filtering in through the curtains. i’m inclined to pull a pillow over my head and go back to sleep, in fact that is what i do, but zeke won’t leave me alone. that poor animal is ruled by an unearthly body clock, and 7:45 means that it’s time to march around the bed going “merrrow!” and attacking anything that moves under the covers. slowly he drags me from unconsciousness.

two hours later i’m at work and it’s still raining. i can’t hear it now, but peering through my boss’s office to the window, i can see it falling straight down in very fine drops. i want coffee, but i know i shouldn’t keep wasting $2.50/day just because i like buying coffee from the cute chinese couple at cafe dolci. i actually prefer the process of buying coffee to the actual drinking of it, which leaves me jittery and strung out. linda calls me “miss jennifer”, and she and daniel never forget a customer. usually they’ve got your order half-way made by the time you get to the front of the line. cafe dolci is the smallest cafe ever – there is room for two, maybe three customers to pack into the shop, and behind the counter linda and daniel move around one another in a space the size of an airplane bathroom. you can tell they’re married immediately by the way they communicate in half sentences, gestures, a mixture of chinese and english.