03 August 2008

Sunday afternoon ramblings

I waste most of my weekends, but I was determined to make something of this Sunday afternoon. I set off to my usual park, where I wrote for a while and nearly fell asleep in the grass with my top half under the gentle shade. I rolled my jeans up to my knees to get a little brown on my legs where they tend show under skirts. Time passed. Frisbee and soccer players came and went. The sun chased me further and further under the tree.

At last I got up and walked again, somewhat aimlessly. I finally headed in the general direction where I thought there might be a gelato place. There wasn't. Instead, I ended up on a street that I would have said was far too far away for walking. This city often surprises me that way. Things are more compact than they seem.

I didn't find gelato there, either, but I did find a tea shop. I have a strange reluctance to go into new restaurants by myself, as if they were intended for someone other than me, but enter I did, to find a wonderful world of tea that I have been missing since New York. "Is it as cool as Nearby Little Tea Place in New York?" my sister asked later. "No," I said, "because they have more of a menu, so you don't have to be quite so in the know." But they do have almost as many lovely teas, and it has that lovely smell of tea when you walk through the door.

I got a latte of black tea with roasted coconut pieces and sat in front of the window, reading the New York Times in hard copy. Happy.

On the way home, I succumbed to my new laziness of housekeeping and bought dishwasher powder. Until now I've been washing dishes by hand and using the dishwasher as a drying rack, but my laziness has now exceeded my cheapness. That and I heard that dishwashers use less water than washing by hand. That was all I needed to let the lazy win.

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