When did life get so reverse?
Popping out for geera chicken and drinks with friends is no longer a spontaneous fun thing but requires cycles of phone calls and CEO-level strategising because you have to worry about parking and car thieves and random rapists and muggers and roadblocks and having to get up early the following morning to beat the traffic to get to work even though you could do better and more work at home where it's quiet and the fridge is packed with lean turkey sandwiches and fresh fruit but your boss prefers to see your scowl at your desk even if you do absolutely nothing but drink coffee and draw caricatures of him or her all day.
Whatever happened to enjoying one another's friendship with no strings attached, giving free smiles, offering friends and neighbours bunches of green fig from your backyard–oh yeah, nobody plants anything any more.
Crude used to refer to oil. Now it is a new, different currency and talk-show replacement for cleverness. Whatever happened to just being cool–it's not complicated and never goes out of style.
Steups. I have lost some good friends lately to incurable diseases, bad men and bad luck. So maybe I am brewing grown-up thoughts about the meaning of life and why bad things happen to good people, and I am seriously considering giving up my immature ways. Maybe I am mellowing, although there is a limit to how much mellowing can go on inside someone who has been in a crummy mood ever since they cancelled Oprah.
Don't panic. There is no chance of me turning into a motivational speaker or quoting Deepak Chopra but I cherish those tranquil moments before sunrise when a crisp breeze is whistling through my house, and I sprawl on my white linen-covered couch, close my eyes and relive some simple, sweet pleasures. Even a material girl can find her truer moments.
Here's today's real reveal of fave, fab things that glimpse at the way things would be if cool people ran the world:
1. Dry cleaners who use sturdy safety pins to keep clothes straight on hangers instead of thin, dinky straight pins that get lost and re-appear in uncomfortable places.
2. Sunflowers. Golden poui in dry season. Ti-marie. Orchids.
3. Friends who never call or visit but when you meet, it's like no time has passed at all.
4. A celebratory glass of wine for no particular reason. Living is enough celebration.
5. When the dentist says: "You have good teeth."
6. Servers who remember that you don't like onions and are lactose intolerant.
7. Salespeople who remember your dress and shoe size and lie expertly when they say you look like an undiscovered model.
8. Avocado slices and Crix.
9. When someone in the line ahead of you or in the taxi is short of a dollar, and you dip into your pocket and make the day for this random stranger. It could be you tomorrow who left your wallet on the kitchen counter.
10. Everyday kindness.
11. Buying two of a great T-shirt or really comfortable pair of shoes because you never know when you will find such blessings again.
12. Laminating the children's drawings and using them as table mats. I have never met a parent who actually has the time for this, but still a cute idea worth a daydream.
13. Free Spanish classes.
14. Letters and cards written with a fountain pen.
15. The aroma of fresh perked coffee even if you have given up caffeine.
16. The aroma of home-made coconut oil.
17. West Indian proverbs, like "Fowl who don't hear shoo, will hear bap!''
18. Being an early supporter of an artist who then becomes famous.
19. Vintage handbags, hats and paper dolls.
20. The way babies grasp your forefinger like tiny Olympic martial arts champions.