The Chocolate or Marionberry toss-up
Summer Saturday afternoon, and it’s a toss-up at Sweet Life Patisserie.
"Do you know what you want?" the woman behind the counter asks me.
"I’m caught between the chocolate cake with espresso whipped cream… or the marionberry pie.
"Those are very different choices."
"Yeah…"
My head works like a cat at a tennis match. "Marionberry pie."
With a coffee consolation prize
With a 16 oz. coffee and my $3.75 slab of Oregonian berry
deliciousness, I’m about a fiver lighter and my hands are laden as I
head to the outside tables. The berry filling is thick, a shade of
purple that the spectrum could realign itself for. Oats dot the top
crust.
I sink the fork. The sun shines through a soft breeze. I taste. Two
women next to me, one a realtor, go over the paperwork of a home
purchase.
Sweet, just-mildly-tart purple berry is suddenly everything. Forkful after forkful.
The berries of an Oregon summer
Summer in Oregon is quite possibly the most perfect on Earth. One slice
of pie takes me back 7 years, to my first visit to Oregon.
Marionberries were about half the reason I wanted to move here (the
weather being another 25%). All these years later, they still make me
happy to have found my adopted home.
For a few bites I try reading, but I put the book away. There’ll be
plenty of time for reading Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion. For now,
it is all, and only, about a perfect July summer day, a cuppa fine dark
coffee, and a perfect slice of pie, full of Oregon berries.
um, you do know that 1/2 + 25% = 75% or 3/4, right?
in other news, mmm sweet life.
finally, this is what I do when faced with a tough choice: either do or imagine flipping a coin. you’ll call your real choice while it’s in the air b/c you’ll root for one side or the other. simple solution
I never said those were the *only* reasons, just what percentage of the total reasons they were. The other 25% is as simple as this: when I came to Oregon, my blood sang that I was home.
Your coin choice works unless you’re in a strong magical field in a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel. In the presence of a strong thaumaturgical field, a flipped coin will always land on its side
:-p snot. only you would argue that some decisions are just truly impossible. me, I have preferences sometimes . . . buried, yes, but they’re down there, and the coin flip always gets ‘em up.