Hoo, boy.  I had a look at my Skirt!setter welcome letter the other day and found the edict “thou shalt blog a minimum of 3 – 4 times per week.”  (Okay maybe it wasn’t worded quite like that.)  I know that I am often overdue on my blogging, but I usually think it’s, y’know, a day or two late.  So when I logged in today and found that in fact I hadn’t blogged in EIGHT STRAIGHT DAYS I felt a fog of guilt sinking down over me. 

I know that truthfully it would be better for my writing if I plugged away at it with a little more discipline, setting time aside each day to write instead of “getting around to it” as I so often do.  I can’t even pull the excuse that my PhD requires a lot of writing – plenty of other Skirts are professional writers or in the publishing industry, so I know you all have to write at least as much as I do each week.  

But basically I am lazy and my past week has really been boring since it’s mostly consisted of me sitting in front of the computer for hours at a time completing a research report.  The report was interesting (though my supervisor may not agree), but the writing of it made me feel like a Computer Zombie.  Boring week.  But today, today something interesting happened.

My mom and I went out for lunch at a deli not far from our house.  Afterwards we decided to go for dessert at the German Crepe House next door.  When we got inside we found the proprietors eating their lunch in the dining room.  We shuffled around embarrassed, trying to keep them from getting up.  But they did, whisking themselves off to the kitchen with their plates and turning on the house music. 

They had a truly unusual selection of background music.  At first it was a sort of traditional Teutonic mix of marches and drum-based songs.  Then at some point it switched over into German pop/techno tunes.  The best part about the techno tunes?   One of them included an accordion.  Another one was an upbeat ditty partly in German, partly in Italian and partly in English.  It appeared to be a song about wanting a waiter to give something (pizza, spaghetti, and a cappuchino were mentioned, though that seems an unorthodox combination) to Senorina Cecilia.  Unique. 

In a little alcove between two rooms just behind where my mom was sitting a miniature swing hung from the ceiling.  In the swing was a demented-looking statuette of an elfin boy with blue eyes, a fixed grin, and a floppy blue hat.  His head tilted at an odd angle.  His feet were shod in worn-through blue shoes.  His coat (blue) was open in a haphazard manner at the bottom, revealing a substantial amount of his belly.  And here’s the thing: he had three belly buttons. 

I puzzled over this anatomical innacuracy long and hard, wondering what in the world it was supposed to represent.  Unable to come to any firm conclusions that did not make me seriously doubt the sanity of the guy who made the mold for the thing, I was very glad when my crepe, a dental nightmare consisting of a cherry and chocolate chip filling covered in powdered sugar and whipped cream, arrived. 

The crepe was in the shape of a little face.  For the eyes, two slices of strawberry topped with grape halves.  Eyebrows made of half-slices of kiwi.  A strawberry nose, lopped off at the top and placed small-end up below the eyes.  A big goofy grin of whipped cream trembling just below the lip of the crepe.  I almost couldn’t eat him.  But then, the elfin boy with his many belly buttons looking on and the increasingly peppy music wafting over us, I did.