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 turned a troubling shade of purple that seemed to suggest suffocation.

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 morning. Maybe it just means that spring is here, but hey, I’ll take that.