two things that have made me happy in the last 24 hours
1. Taking the Red Line downtown. I drove halfway to TC Boyle’s reading at the Mark Taper Forum, a benefit for Red Hen Press, parked in Koreatown, and took the train the rest of the way.
I know that people do this everyday in other cities, that the experience is tiring and tedious and full of smelly people. But in LA it feels positively luxurious. As I opened my book and read approximately three and a half pages over the course of five stops, I kept thinking, I am so urban and sophisticated! And I am reading! I’m a sophisticated, urban multi-tasker!
2. My orchid blossoming. AK gave me Kid (as I named the orchid) a few months ago, and I thought I’d killed it by not giving it plant food per the little plastic instruction card. But it didn’t look totally dead, just sort of stick-like but still green, so I kept watering it anyway. I felt crappy because, around this same time, the succulent she’d given me earlier had tu
I try not to get all metaphorical about plant gifts, because I have a black thumb, and if dead plants signaled the demise of a relationship, I’d be doomed, the sure subject of some chick lit novel with a back cover that said, “Cheryl Klein was good at many things, but maintaining a relationship wasn’t one of them.”
Nevertheless, when I watered my little succulent every month, as directed, and it continued to wither, I couldn’t help but think, Maybe it’s a sign that I shouldn’t think inside the box. That just doing the obligatory is not enough for this plant or for AK. Not that AK ever indicated as much, but literature is a world of signs, and sometimes it bleeds into real life in annoying ways.
So: My voodoo-ish self was very happy to see two magenta blooms on one of Kid’s skinny branches this mo
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