Sometimes the universe gives you just what you need

It was a melancholy sort of day after a melancholy sort of night that gave me, perhaps, about an hour's rest. I just wanted to curl up into a ball and sleep--deeply--for a few days, but comps were just three days away and I didn't have the luxury of delicious sleep. And so I took a shower, threw on some clothes, brushed a bit of lipstick on my lips and dragged a comb through my still-wet hair before heading out the door.

I went to a coffee shop across the street from my old high school (even though I've been back in this town for four years it still feels creepy and weird to go anywhere near that building) and I read and wrote and prepped, trying to make sure I'd sound smart when I answered a question about ASD pedagogy during my exams. I worked until I got too fidgety to stay there any longer--grad school on-set ADHD--and I went over to the Starbucks in Barnes and Noble for round two.

Only six tables have access to an outlet, and I took a table that would allow me to watch all six--I needed to pounce as soon as a spot became available because someone else was sure to try to steal it. I read and wrote and prepped, trying to make sure I'd sound smart when I answered a question about rhetorical listening as a means of bringing Osteen's "empathetic scholarship" to the composition classroom. The battery indicator fell lower and lower, and just as the yellow caution sign popped up I was wrestling with Lott's claim that bringing disability into the classroom is imperative to reflecting democratic ideals, and realizing that to make Lott work for my argument that I was going to have to bring in Isocrates or some similar dead rhetorician, and wondering if there was something, anything, in the classical rhetoric notes Amanda gave me that would help me with my dead rhetorician weakness . . .

Yeah, my battery decided it was done.

I wandered around a bit, trying to see if there was somewhere else in the store where I could plug in my laptop. I found nothing. I went outside--yes, there's seating out there; there certainly would be an outlet.

No.

I felt a little lost for a moment--where was I going to work? Ugh. I turned around and started walking toward my car.

"Hey beautiful lady," a kindly older man said, "Looking good today." The inflection of the words made them kind rather than creepy.

I turned around, smiled, and said thank you. And, I don't know, something about a stranger being kind made the melancholiness better.