Dear Very Cute Bagel Shop,

I love this place.

I could spend way too much time here. And money.

The funky topiary is neat. The hot pastrami bagel is fantastic.

But, a small suggestion?

This place needs a public restroom. If you want, I would be happy to conduct a small focus group on the issue.

I could poll your customers, for example.

"Check all that apply:

____I like to wash my hands before I eat.

____I like to check my teeth in the mirror after I eat and before I head into my meeting.

____I have children, and sometimes children need to use the bathroom on short notice.

____I would like to be able to order from your gourmet coffee menu and not have to rush out quickly to use the bathroom at the Togo's next door, risking adverse looks from the harrassed-looking Togo's employees.

____ I would be more inclined to visit in the future if I knew there was a public restroom available."

I think that about covers it.

Sincerely,

Person About to Rush Next Door to Togo's

Dear Mystery Liquid on the Floor of the Women’s Restroom in this Fine Establishment,

We’ve met before.

Last week, in fact, when I was passing through the area and set my bag into a puddle of you that was somehow temporarily obscured by the flickering fluorescent light. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize it at the time, and it wasn’t until I had hoisted the bag onto my shoulder and found that the side of my blouse (dry-clean only, if you must know) was damp, that I was able to identify the culprit.

It was you.

Sometimes you are not wet, but sticky.

Sometimes you are dry, with muddy footprints.

But mostly you are slick, and I have to negotiate each step carefully, hiking up the hems of my dress slacks.

This is curious, because the hallway outside the door is dry. The line at the counter, full of angsty patrons, is dry. Outside, on the concrete walkway and in the asphalt parking lot, it is dry.

In fact, it has not rained here for weeks, and it’s possible that it won’t rain again for months.

This leaves only a few possibilities for your origin.

But I’m going to go with bioterrorism, since it is at least slightly less icky.
 

Regards,

Girl Who Needs Galoshes

Dear Coward(s),

You did not win.

Sincerely,

Me (and the rest of America)

Dear Man Eating a Carrot,

It's kind of refreshing, in a way, to see someone eating an actual carrot -- ten inches easily, unpeeled, with a literal clump of green foliage hanging from the top.

Mostly when I see people eating carrots, they are eating them from little plastic baggies, where they can float around in a bit of moisture. They are sliced or whittled and resemble chubby baby toes.

This is what I do, at least. I don't like to be caught away from home for an extended period of time without a little baggie of carrots.

Someone told me once that eating so many carrots would cause my fingernails and the whites of my eyes to turn orange. I found this relatively easy to dismiss, and have filed it away under Bad Advice I Have Received, Completely Unsolicited.

The state of your carrot causes me to wonder if there is a garden in your backyard, and if on the way out the door each morning, you stop and pluck a carrot from a neatly tilled row.

And to this, I say, Eat on, Carrot Man. Eat on.

Sincerely,

Your Kindred Spirit

Dear Girl with the Ponytail,

You remind me very much of me, fifteen years ago.

Except for the sweats. I wouldn't have worn sweat pants in public unless there was some kind of natural catastrophe (power outage, broken washing machine, break-up with boyfriend). And even then I wouldn't have worn the kind of sweat pants with writing across the seat -- because I wouldn't have owned anything like that.

But otherwise... you remind me of me.

Sincerely,

Woman Who Still Wears Hair in a Ponytail

Dear Man Sitting Across from Me Reading Mein Kampf,

You can't be serious.

And could you please stop staring at me, like just because I'm blonde we share some secret superiority.

And don't you even think of passing me any literature.

Sincerely,

Girl in the Black Dress

I've been busy.

Also, I like to make understatements.

I've felt horribly guilty about neglecting my blog, which has been with me for the last few years in the best of times, the worst of times.

It's the best of times right now.

I'm just too busy to say anything about it.

(Proof: This morning at 1:30ish, I woke up, my mind refusing to quiet until I made a to-do list for the day. I wrote down more than 50 things and felt like crying.)

So, I'm getting a lot of things done, but when it comes to this blog, not so much. I've been starting drafts of posts and leaving them as drafts instead of publishing them, because they read like a schitzoid version of my life and I dislike that person quite a lot.

And, so.

I propose this.

Since all I have time for is the sound-bite version of life, and since I'm spending a great deal of time in a number of coffee shops, and since stress makes me snarky, and since I'm basically a coward, I decided I would switch up the format of this blog, and instead of writing about myself, I would write about other people.

Only temporarily.

Maybe.