I went to Lodi to find a Bank of America branch and buy a rocking chair.
I found the bank right at the outset and did one of the two things for which I had come. The second one seemed to confound the teller. I sat waiting for “a banker” for fifteen minutes before deciding that it could wait for my next trip. Back outside, I asked the Google lady for “vegetarian restaurants near me” and for my troubles got a list of chain fast foods. I tried “coffee” and headed towards School street.
I discovered a personal-pizza place with Gluten Free flatbread as an option next to the coffee place and decided I needed food more than caffeine. A half-hour later, I found myself the new owner of a Mid-century Modern sewing chair. Another hour brought me to Secondhand Rose, where a four-foot tall woman hauled a white rocking chair from her storage room and I bought that, too.
On the way out of Lodi, the caffeine urge hit me. I drove through Java Stop and asked for Chai with soy milk. I watched the lady take a bottle of commercially fabricated brown fluid from the refrigerator case and pour it into my cup. The house-made chai at Crow’s Coffee flashed before my eyes. I drove away with the tasteless beverage chilling in the cupholder.
At Marshall’s, a toddler in love with her mirrored image caught my attention. I stood in awe of her abandon as she blew herself kisses and waved to herself like a beauty queen at the Rose Bowl Parade. The cackling of a lady whose progress my cart blocked startled me awake. I moved forward, ruefully, wishing for a few moments of the kind of self-acceptance that I’d seen the child display.
I headed out of Lodi with CCR echoing in my ears. I went home and found an accoustic version and played it loud through the tinny speaker of my ThinkPad as the sun set in the California Delta.
It’s the third day of the forty-ninth month of My Year Without Complaining. Life continues.
