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I arrived to work today to find this lovely bouquet of flowers waiting for me. These flowers were sent to me by a faithful reader of my blog who goes by the name of Tiffany. Thank you so much! What a wonderful surprise to find these this morning. My eyes stung with happy tears as I read your very sweet note. This bouquet quickly found it's home on one of my wooden tables.
Again, thank you, Tiffany. I am overwhelmed by your gesture. I hope have a cup of tea with you someday soon.
My first offical day open went very, very well. I was a little late arriving to the cafe so my plan to make my gateau au chocolate fondant in the morning for the day did not work out. I had just enough time to finish taking out the boxes from our tea deliveries (note to self, take care of stuff like this the night before!) before my delivery of salé for the lunch menu arrived and I needed to put everything away. Elle arrived with the fresh fruits and veggies for the day and then quickly ran back out to the boulangerie for our daily bread run and pick up a lovely tarte aux rhubarbe we ordered the night before. We chopped, and sliced and washed and spun and laughed and worked together like a team. It was so great.
Then right at 11am my first customer arrived. It was my friend, Lisa. Very fitting that Lisa be my first customer because she was there from the very, very beginning on that day we went to Sunday brunch at the café and I saw the sign that said fond de commerce à vendre.
Lisa is a writer and as you know writers need a constant stream of coffee/tea and sweets to keep the pen moving. She's found her spot, in the window. What I call the pink table, my favorite table cloth I've made so far. Lisa wrote a lovely blog about her visit and you can read about it here. And she snapped some candid shots of me getting things prepared for the day. It was a lovely way to start the day. I have her first euros she spent on her Yogi Chai. I must figure out how to frame that. :)
I had not seen the day come to an end. Working in the café is so different than the jobs I'm used to. I was tired when I got home. It was a physical fatigue not a mental one. I remember days when I'd get home from my office job where I had spent hours in front of the computer, I felt brain dead and wanted to do nothing but shut down. But last night, I felt mentally energized. This must be what it's like to work and live your dream. My feet need some time adjusting and I need to invest in some good hand lotion. I washed lots and lots of tea pots yesterday.
Today, is my day off during the week. Thursdays are what I call Max and Mama days. We got up early (he is my alarm clock) and had breakfast and then headed to the Prefacture de Police and applied for our liquor license. I called and got Internet installed in the café. I ran across Paris and got my "lost" package of fabrics which are destine to become table cloths. I even got to take a nap with Max which was so lovely. I know that Thursdays will become a day I cherish from now
There is a huge mound of laundry that needs to be folded. Julien has graciously started in but I better go and help so that maybe we get to bed early tonight. Which means before midnight for once...
À demain from the café... via Twitter, bien sûr.
I've got them. Big time. I feel like it's the first day of school or something. You know how you lay out your outfit for the first day of school. Well, I did the exact same thing. Threadless tee. Black skirt. Haven't decided on the shoes yet but I'll probably wear my old standard Converse All Stars.
The café fridge is packed. We have two of the three shipments of tea. We have good coffee. I'm going to make a mini fondant au chocolat this morning. I think we're ready to go...
I'll be twittering today from my cell phone as we do not have Internet.... yet.
Have a good day, everyone! And if you're in Paris, stop by and say hi and stay a while. :)
