I don’t know if it’s the fact that my parents are here, the introduction of a pastry favourite, or spending a night with women I now properly consider friends, but this might have been the first week, since I moved here in March 2020, that Fort Wayne truly felt like home.
Before you get carried away: everyone was still way too earnest, the weather was still way too hot and the political climate was way too… well, American. But we’re getting there.
(Didn’t we all have that soundtrack though?! I feel like we did.)
Monday
The plan this morning was to take Atlas to the library before meeting Mum, Dad and Bea for lunch, but two things change that: firstly, he doesn’t wake up until 10.45am. It makes no sense; he wasn’t up late last night or anything!
Ordinarily, though, I’d wake him up between 7.30am and 8.30am but today I just decided to leave him, and here we are.
Anyway, the second thing is that I see that GK’s downtown cafe has launched CRUFFINS! So when he finally does wake up I decide we’ll speed downtown and grab a cruffin and head for a quick one-hour library visit before lunch. It’s actually the perfect amount of time; any longer than that doing pretty much anything (bar watching Ms Rachel) and he starts to get a bit crabby.
I park in a one-hour-max parking spot ($1) and vow to go back and feed the meter but then decide… fuck it. The tickets in Fort Wayne are $10 and my new Birks are giving my feet blisters so I decide I’d pay $7 to avoid further foot damage and take the hit.
I get a cruffin, a plain croissant (for Atlas, cos all that cruffin sugar would be bad for him, also LOL they only had one) and a salted caramel iced latte at GK ($18.14) and when I tell you that cruffin made my WEEK! It’s like Bread41 has come to this small town (sheriff) and I am so, so happy!
We do our little library visit, during which I read my book and pretend to supervise my child, then we meet the others – who, let me tell you, are very judgmental about the fact that we’ve already been to a cafe – for lunch. I take Mum and Dad home with me and when we get home, I put Atlas down for his nap.
Then we sit out in the back garden for a bit and have some coffee, before I head up to the office to do a few hours’ work.
Bea comes and picks the parents up a bit later, and when Brandin and the boys get home I run to Kroger ($22.28) to get a few little things we need. (Have zero recollection of what these little things were so you’ll just have to take my word for it.)
Daily total: $41.42
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