Monday morning musings

Can I just say how much I like driving down U.S. 1 in my town? I mean, sure, everyone else hates it, but I think it's great. I love the abandoned buildings (no, seriously), because you get to see the unchanged 1950's style of them. I love the buildings that have been renovated, and are now cutesy little antique shops. I love the old car mechanics shops that have been converted to hair salons. [But seriously, how many mechanics shops were there in the 50's? It's like there were 4 on every block.] I even love the empty patches where old buildings have been torn down, because there's a sense of anticipation about them. That someone surely will come in and build something fabulous. I love the Vespa dealership that has set up shop in a 1920's-era drinking club. I love seeing the firemen doing push-ups outside the firehouse in their full kit. I love the people waiting for buses, the people milling about, walking from store to store, or riding their bicycles, because you just don't get that in most parts of this area as the rest of the place is full of gated communities and big box stores where everyone is cosseted in their air conditioned S.U.V.'s as they drive from place to place.

I suppose I wouldn't feel the same way if the town didn't have a sense of being revived. I'm sure I would find it very depressing if it were all run down abandoned buildings and businesses who are barely struggling to survive. It seems that for me, I need a few cutesy antiques shops selling vintage rattan furniture or something, and a kitschy renovated 50's diner or two, for me to think it's all local character and not local blight. And I'm sure that if I grew up here, I might see the 1950's buildings as being horribly old fashioned and worthy of being torn down. But to me, who has a secret hankering for that mid-century modern style, and who was raised in merrie olde Englande where a building's not even middle-aged unless it's over 200 years old, they are interesting. Fresh. Vibrant. Full of that American promise that life after the 50's was supposed to be lived as the Jetsons lived.

Anyway, the reason I was driving down U.S. 1 this morning was to visit the dry cleaner to pick up my formerly stinky purple suede handbag. It was back from the specialist cleaners, and I'm pleased to say that it doesn't stink any more. In fact, it smells like leather! However, the specialist cleaners charged the local dry cleaners $120 to clean my handbag, and the local dry cleaners felt that they couldn't pass that charge onto me because they'd quoted me $25 when I dropped it off. So there was a bit of a delay while the cashier checked with the manager about how much to charge me. I almost told them that I'd pay the $120, because The Cheesecake Factory is supposed to be reimbursing me the cleaning cost as it was due to their nasty skanky overflowing drink fountain that my handbag got stanked up in the first place. But you see, as bad as I felt for the dry cleaners, I just don't trust the manager of The Cheesecake Factory to actually cough up the money, especially not $120 worth of cleaning, so I kept mum. I'm sure the dry cleaners have made enough profit from me over the years, and anyway, they were the ones that volunteered to reduce the charge without me even asking, so not speaking up didn't even register as an evil thing to do on the Sarah bad-karma-meter.

So, all in all, quite a nice start to a Monday morning. But now I'm in work, I'm already in a bad mood. Ho hum. Welcome to the work week.