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May 25, 2005
Mystery cake!
Luckily I don't live anywhere near here!(The place where, rumor has it, Marcel's Uncle Wininger and his friend, A Very Strange Little Man, are having an art show in September~ stay tuned to the Knit-A-Log for details.) Anyway, if I did, I think Chocoflan would do me in. I would be found on Halsted Street comatose for real, not from ennui but with a big smile on my face and cocoa dust on the corners of my mouth, a chocolatey fork clutched in my grubby hand. Oh cake! Oh cake, how I adore you! Its bad enough that I am within easy biking distance from this place.
Yesterday I went for a longish bike ride in which I rediscovered the lake, which I tend to forget about. It is kind of pretty. Usually I avoid the bike path because it attracts these wandering, seemingly directionless people, on foot, rollerblade, and bicycle. Now, lord knows I have no problem with wandering. But on the bike path its good to have a plan, lest you become a menace. My plan is I go slow and try not to thwack into anybody.
My ultimate plan was to head to John's house to prepare for Marcel to move in (longish story some of you may know), but it was such a lovely day, and the sun was shining and the smell of flowers was everywhere and the streets were quiet and green. So I kept riding, looking at houses and imagining what me and Marcel could do with a nice backyard or a balcony, and what kind of flowers I would plant in my garden. At some point I realized that I was tired and if I intended to get anything done I needed to stop and rest, and since I was near to German chocolate cake what could I do? So I sat in this square little park thingy eating cake in the sunshine, watching pigeons watching me. A pug dog came along too, with his person, asked for a bite of cake, and, receiving none, went on his puggy way. I took out my sketchbook and tried to scribble something but mostly it was nice to watch the people and feel the sun on my face. On the way home I rode through the park where I like to take Marcel on nice days, and where there are smooth, curving, slightly hilly paths. Then I rode part of the way in the so-called bike lane, one of a few that run along busy streets, and which seemingly serve no purpose. A lot of drivers look at them less as bike lanes and more as alterno-parking lanes, which means bicyclists have to go around them into traffic. Somehow leaving their hazard lights on is supposed to make that ok. Do they think they are being clever? Oh, how it boils my potatoes! Anyway. The other thing about the bike lanes is they are also car-door opening lanes. Who thought this was a good idea? Ok, I'm done now. Something I actually enjoy quite a bit about the roads in the city are these speed bumps the size and configuration of Volkswagen Beetles. There is this little bit of excitement to be had from bouncing up one side and coasting down the other which keeps things interesting.
As for knitting news ~ one of the little baby cantaloupe socks is coming along nicely. It is so cute I have to keep from eating it all up in one bite. No! I couldn't do it, because! I already had to do the heel over again! There is all of this short-row weirdness that was weirding me out but I think I get it now. Oh, the cuteness.
Pictures someday soon, I swear.
Posted by at May 25, 2005 06:45 AM
Comments
Posts like this make me adore you all the more, lady.
(I don't know why Marcel is moving. I hope he is happy about the move. I wonder if you are moving with him, and then I wonder if maybe that's none of my business....)
Posted by: cari at May 25, 2005 03:54 PM
I just had to write in, all the way from Bucharest, to register how pleasant it is for me to see some true vintage Pippy, that is, Amy Madden back in full form, touching on all those tropes that make her prose so singular and unmistakable: cake, her bicycle, envying other people's real estate, assorted stray dogs, pigeons, the Manichaean battle between the beautiful and the boring, the Sisyphean struggle with the Winingerian cabinet of curiosities! De courage, ma vieille! De courage!
Posted by: Egg-Head at May 25, 2005 04:49 PM