mary louise caldwell...

well as i mentioned i met an interesting character at the paperie last week. yes her full name is mary louise caldwell but you can call her louise for short. she is from amarillo texas, and was so glad to have met another of her kind. the main thing you all need to take away from this encounter was the fact that i actually got to give my business card to someone! that is a monumental experience making the whole thing worthwhile. but anyway. this lady is in the store and me being the nice little retail worker i am simply ask "is there anything i can help you with today ma'am?" well that was the beginning of something that i never thought could happen. I don't know how exactly it came up other than that I hadn't lived here long, but within about one minute or even less i knew this woman's name and origin. and she knew i was sally from dallas. then she talked to me/ at me for a solid hour. Now in retail especially at a paperie in new york city, you rarely help one customer for more than 30 seconds. just a simple oh that way, oh its right here, oh well thats all we have, or whatever the appropriate response is to the busy new yorker. so the fact that this woman sat down on a table and took off her hat and set down her groceries on behalf of me and my TEXAS heritage, this was quite out of the ordinary.

Well the thing that she talked about that got me to thinkin, was that she had lived in the city more that 25 years and had moved here right after college with some friends. She wondered why i had moved here. But there was a deep level of desperation and depression in her eyes. I mean to the point it seemed that I was the reason she was continuing her life that day. So it just made me very thankful that i have a deeper reason to be in this city, but it is so easy to forget, so easy that i forgot until i am here writing these words. I mean not that i have totally lost purpose in life, but its just so good that i don't have to worry about looking back in 25 years thinking how did i waste my life in THIS city with THESE people. I do have a hope and a future and God has prepared a plan for me and it is prosperous. Anyway cheers to that.

so louise gave me her number as well. i called her, but didn't touch base. she hasn't called back. I wanted to call her, because i did enjoy her to the level i enjoyed Anne Ross the first time I met her. and i always will have a void in my life without anne around. (who called wanting her car keys because she is having her car shipped to Arizona. little update within an update). So i was thinking i might just see if this lady wanted to be a possible NYC replacement of my sweet anne. i will let you know....

Nikki is going home tomorrow to Kemah. Her house, that is on the water, got hit pretty hard by Ike. So you can be praying for her and her family. They need it. She doesn't have a return flight, but she plans on being back in about two weeks. A dear friend of her's payed for a plane ticket home. That has left me home alone for 6 more sleeps on my air mattress and then dana will be here with furniture, MY BED, and my lovely computer Pearl.