Coup de Girafe

I wanted to wait until we found the camera to blog about my new favorite cafe but I just couldn't wait (you will have to do with a web cam photo of the card!). It's amazing. The inside is rather spacious for a European cafe (or any cafe for that matter). Presently I'm sitting at a table for 4. Next to me is a little couch with red velvet cushions and soft canary yellow pillows. Flowers of what seems like every color and every kind decorate every wooden table in the joint. I got to practice my french a little by asking the waitress, "Qui est chante?" (I wanted to know who was singing on the track) and she smiled and replied that the music was in Spanish, a woman named BeBe. The color scheme fits the place--warm colors all around. There are a few pastels but they appear to be a little watered down, if that makes any sense. There's a random vintage typewriter next to the couch by me and right next to that is the most gigantic lamp shade I've ever seen! The radio across the room is shaped like a circular bowl...it's yellow too with matching speakers. Huge burgundy curtains are draped along either side of the front door. There are candles lined on the inside of the window's rim, all encased in decorative glass (mostly roses and leaves). They put them out when the sun goes down. They have the cutest little outside area to eat and enjoy the most romantic summer breeze coming from the mountains and Lake Geneva. When you sit in this cafe with a cup of "cafe" and a good book (Catch-22 at the moment, thanks Shireen), all the troubles of this life disappear and you start making serious plans about the future--a future that looks so much brighter and possible than it did in times passed. It seems that everyone is trying to make a better future than the last. But I've realized over the years that happiness, like many things, is not a feeling or an emotion but a choice. Who is it that says (roughly), when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change? (thanks Ma) And it's true. There will always be something in life that can be interpreted as negative and in desperate need of fixing. But when is the point where you stop fixing and start enjoying what you've fixed? You spend your whole today regretting yesterday and planning tomorrow and wanting what you may never have. I thank God for the simplicity of life that Europe affords. Good music. Good coffee. A great salad & pesto, mozzarella, tomato panini and the opportunity for introspection, I realize just how good God is.