Mmm, coffee. Aside from water, coffee (usually black) is my favorite beverage, even more so than wine. Why is coffee so good? It’s the cleanness, yet simultaneous complexity of how it hits the taste buds. “Clean,” because slightly bitter – the “edge” of coffee’s bitterness has a “clean” – or maybe clear – impact. At the same time, the type of berry and how it was roasted and possibly blended with other berries and roasts provides complexity. And that’s just on the tongue. And not dissimilar to wine, probably my number three favorite beverage, after water and coffee. But wine has a completely different effect on the brain than coffee. Already at slight overdoses, the effect of wine on brain is deleterious, while coffee tends to do the opposite. This only applies, obviously, if coffee doesn’t set you off. Some people can’t (or don’t want to) handle it – they claim it impedes rest and makes them nervous. They were probably nervous to begin with, worriers who lie awake at night worrying about whether or not that 4:30p.m. coffee was a “good idea.” Just forget about it.
What I’m going to worry about is how to deal with today and the next two days following, which all three are supposed to hit the 90s. I don’t yet have the A/C on, but I’m sure by midday I will, just to take the humidity edge off and provide some air circulation. There’s an ozone warning in effect all day today, too, apparently air quality is not going to be great.
Yesterday was lovely, weather-wise. We walked to I.-Park (beach-side) and back through downtown, stopping at T.-café. A woman and what I’m guessing was her daughter sat down at the table next to ours, both were quite blinged out. The younger woman wore a lace mini-dress in orange neon, long hair very well-coiffed. I didn’t notice her jewelry since she sat next to me and I didn’t want to stare. The older woman was easier to observe since she sat across from me, next to W.
I say “older,” but it was hard to tell. I thought she had obviously had lots of “work” done, especially around the eyes and mouth. It looked like eyelid lifts, possibly, and collagen injections at the lips – and definitely plenty of Botox. The overall effect was eerie. She definitely looked younger, and yet she didn’t. When their specialty coffees and the pain au chocolat arrived, the presumed daughter had to capture the moment with her phone camera and put it – but of course – on social media. The older woman was immortalized taking a coy sip from her latte. I noticed her over-the-top diamond-encrusted blingy wristwatch, and the big rocks on her fingers, her manicured fingers, which a moment earlier had returned her credit card to her designer bag – a pastel-colored thing reminiscent of the Kate Spade line.
Back to the face: the overall effect of its immobilization gave it an exotic cast, and I first wondered if she was Asian in any way. Then I realized, no, she wasn’t. It’s just that her eyelids couldn’t make the movements (anymore?) they had grown up with. They were curtailed, being surgically lifted, as well as burdened by lots of mascara – or possibly eyelash extensions. The lips – impossibly smooth, unwrinkled, and plump. Not too plump, just enough. The face immobile, except for the eyeballs themselves, along with the periodic showing of teeth, emerging into view from the mouth whenever she managed to pull back her lips at all. At some point you have to wonder about the interventions, I guess.
One of the young staff had half her hair dyed blond, the other jet black.
