This morning I went to breakfast at Chez Machin for my friend Nelle’s birthday. She’s the prettiest little thing and has the most gorgeous olive skin I’ve ever seen. We used to work together at a stock brokerage firm downtown, which we’ve since dubbed “Hell.”
Oh, so you and Nelle used to work together?
Yeah, the three of us here used to work in Hell.
You’re not there anymore?
Nah. We all got out of there . . . For obvious reasons.
They sat our party at the back of the tiny restaurant in an added room with a latticed roof and old metal things nailed to the wood paneled walls. One of the ladies brought her son, I forgot his name, but he had big blue eyes and ate only the jam off of the crispy toast his mom gave him. Hmmm, I thought. He does the thing I always think of doing but fear licking the jam off the toast in public wouldn’t go over very well.
I made this fun card for her.
This is the outside, then the inside
I’ve been doing more collage stuff lately and it’s really exciting me. I’ve been fascinated with collage for a long time, but couldn’t get myself to “feel” it. I have recently, and it produces a different kind of Happy than painting or drawing. There is something raw about it. A gritty quality, something more edgy and rebellious about it and I like that a lot. So the front of this card is a very basic type collage, but it lights my freakin’ fire. I’ll call it “hawt.”
I’ve done some other collage things that I’ll post later once I get the scanner back from my brother. My camera just can’t take good enough photos. And my hand isn’t steady enough.
Anyway, the French place was so lovely and the coffee was mellow and fantastic and I drank way too much of it. My other friend brought her baby, a super social relaxed Libra girl, so we were fully entertained waiting for the food to arrive. I ordered something I couldn’t pronounce but it looked like this
for only a brief moment before I devoured it rabidly. It was filled with sausage and cheese and other creamy drizzles of Heaven and my friend Sula and I shared a sweet crepe bursting with apricot jam, chocolate, slivered almonds and powdered sugar. Coincidentally, I had a crepe yesterday from a food cart, a cinnamon sugar butter crepe (no joke, my mouth just filled with saliva thinking about it! Ha!), that was also excellent. Only that one came in a piece of triangular paper stapled at the sides, and ended up all over my face and the thighs of my jeans.
I don’t know what it is, but crepes also produce a very specific kind of Happy for me. Like I feel fancy and beautiful like I’m a fantastic cultured regal sophisticated French girl sitting at a round metal table on a slanted street somewhere in another country, instead of a goofy tall plain-looking uncultured (but has cultured friends) white girl with a foul mouth who never quite feels “cool” enough and is getting slowly and suspiciously more soggy through the mid-section.
Maybe it’s the crepes?
No. Absolutely not.
If you get a chance to eat at Chez Machin, I do so recommend it. Also for crepes and French-type yummies, Le Happy is super as well, and it has more of a bar situation than Chez Machin. Crepes and alcohol?! Sign me up. Every day, sign me up.
