Full-Fledged Sunshine

There's no playing peekaboo with clouds today, the sun is shining loud and proud, bouncing its rays off the clean snow and generally looking cheerful. Hoo. Ray. I don't even mind going to work today. Well, not much. Okay, a little. But I feel more awake and cheerful myself. Yesterday was great. I had 7 customers. Seven! Plus a box of stock came so I had to unpack it, price it, and put it out. I had work to do at work! Amazing, eh? Made me feel a little less like I'm stealing my paycheck than usual. I understand that she needs someone there in case there's a customer, but when I spend 7 or 8 hours there knitting and watching Netflix I feel a bit awkward. I am ready to spring into action at the slightest jangle of the door chime, but it just seems wrong somehow. Not that I want it to change all that much. I'm not looking for a different job. It's just that sometimes I feel a little guilty getting paid to do what I'd be doing at home at work. See what I mean?

February 28--Charles Percier, Coin Cabinet. Louise loved the wooden box with the silver wings on it. When she was very small her Grandpa would hold her on his lap and let her pull the drawers open and play with the coins. She remembered the cold metal and the tinkling sound it made as her baby fingers stirred them in his hand. He told her stories about the men and women whose faces were on them, about their exploits in battles and their adventures in places far and wide. She liked to trace her name in the purple velvet that lined the drawers. She would draw her finger across the nap making it lie down and turn a gray color. "Some day," he said to her on her twelfth birthday, "the coins ill be yours." But sometimes when she had convinced him to let her look at the coins some of her favorites would be missing, and for one horrible year the whole cabinet wasn't there. They sat silent in his study, the space where the mahogany box had been looking larger and lonelier than ever before. It took Louise years to understand that Grandpa was a gambler, a risk taker, and that towering wooden box with its silver Egyptian Revival inlay and shining contents was what he risked.

Can you believe that it's March already? Sometimes I feel like it should be June but mostly I'm amazed that it's 2011. Two thousand eleven! Did you ever think you'd live to see this year?
--Barbara