Settling in.

[hannah]

It's become my habit to stop in a local coffee shop after going to the NYBG on Wednesdays. Rather than take the express another stop downtown to tranfer to an uptown line that'd take me a block and a half from my apartment, I transfer to a local downtown line to get to a stop about eight blocks away instead, because that drops me off maybe a block away from the coffee shop itself. For the past three months or so, pretty much every Wednesday, sometime between three-thirty and four-thirty I'll get to the coffee shop and buy a cortado. Almost every Wednesday. At about the same time. Almost always the same order - sometimes with a scone or cookie, but always with the coffee.

We don't talk a lot. And we've still gotten to know each other. Schedules and routines will do that.

This week, I didn't need to say what I wanted. They didn't even need to ask my name. One cortado, for here, for me.

I have a usual. And that's quite unusual, and far more delightful than I thought it would be.

Comments

[swankyfunk]

That's awesome.

I miss having a place where I had a "usual," or at least someone who saw me regularly enough to know that I was...well, a regular. There used to be a pizza place where I'd come in for pasta once or twice a week. The old guy behind the counter would sometimes give me an extra meatball or extra scoop of ziti or tomato sauce, and once when I was short a dollar, he let me pay him back on my next visit. I was sad when the restaurant closed! (And now I've made myself hungry.)