Fabulous Friday: *The Eye Has To Travel*

I had such a wacky afternoon yesterday, followed by a simply divine evening at home.

It all started because we needed to send a gift to a client in California that day, overnight via FedEx so it would get there today. We had a card to include and wanted it to be done by a calligrapher. We have someone in house (another secketerry like me) who does a nice job with this, so we asked her to do it. She did a wonky job so I emailed the calligrapher we use down the street and asked if they could do a rush job and have it done while I wait. Of course they said yes because they like me. And I pay our bills on time.

I walked there, three blocks away from the office, and took the elevator up to 12. I walked down to the hall, opened the door, and the office looked anonymous and bizarre and devoid of anything but a few desks and computers. There was some seemingly unimaginative blonde woman at a desk (what else could she be in that environment) who looked up at me and said:

HER: Yes?

ME: I’m looking for ___ ___.

HER: Who?

ME: The calligrapher?

HER: I don’t know what you’re talking about.

ME: Well I guess there’s my answer!

I shut the door and brought up the last email from them and sure enough embedded in the signature was their new address on West 39th Street. Don’t you think that would be a useful bit of information to share in one of the previous emails? “Hey Chris, before you leave, did you hear that we moved 25 blocks away…?”

I wrote them to say I had gone to the old office and the new plan was to come to their new office with the box ready to go, have them write the card, stick it in the box, and send it from a FedEx location near their office. They wrote back, apologized for the address mix-up, and said the new plan sounded great.

I went to the mail room on our floor to make the box I was using for the gift. We have a glorious packing tape machine - - you press a button that says 18 and it spits out an 18" strip of paper packing tape, pre-moistened and ready to go. Love that that. But of course the person ahead of me had gummed it up and it wasn't working. As fate would have it just that day I had just received a set of tweezers from Amazon, for just this purpose. I grabbed the tweezers, repeatedly picked the gummed-up bits of packing tape out of the works, and tried it again. No luck. I did battle with that damn machine for ten minutes. Finally I put a sign on it saying CLOGGED and emailed my friends in the mail room, asking them to fix it in the morning. I built the box out of old school plastic packing tape.

I cross through our lobby to get to the mail room and had to make that trek four or five times and wouldn't you know that there was a photographer taking pictures of employees in the corner by the door to my side of the office. So each time I went through the lobby there was a bit of waiting before I could pass through. Isn't there a better place to do that?

I tied a ribbon on the gift (I'm very good at that and would be happy to teach anyone) and started packing up the box. I asked my coworker at least three times for the name and address of the client. She finally sent that to me, I printed out the FedEx label, took the elevator down to the ground floor, ordered an Uber, and was in the Uber within five minutes.

I shut the door, buckled my seatbelt, took a deep breath of that marvelous air conditioned air, and realized I had printed the label but hadn’t picked it up from the printer! I emailed my friend at the calligrapher and of course she’d loan me her computer and let me print it there. She also had one of those plastic windows that you slap on the box and stuff the label in it. Bless her.

All went well when I got to the calligrapher. They were delightful, they were fun, they were pros. Sarah did a beautiful, elegant, meticulous job with the calligraphy. It was a fair amount of text in a rather small space and yet it didn’t seem the tiniest bit cramped. She is an artist.

I had a lovely talk with my friend Grace, my primary contact there, an adorable slightly plump redhead somewhere around 30 years old. She was wearing a sleeveless black cotton dress so of course I had to say:

ME: Grace I love your freckles.

HER: Thank you. I hated them as a kid but now I like them.

ME: Do you know who Diana Vreeland is?

HER: No I don't.

ME: She was editor of Vogue in the 60s. She loved freckles. She grew up in Europe so she had that outsider's eye, very useful to her, and to her freckles were the sign of a young, healthy, vigorous American girl. She'd say over and over to her staff, "Where are the freckles? I see no freckles."

I told her she should watch a recent documentary about her, The Eye Has To Travel. It's a delightful movie and she's such a wonderful subject.

Everything got wrapped up there, I closed up the box, and was ready to roll. Grace asked me which FedEx I was going to.

ME: The one on 43rd and 8th.

HER: There's one just down the street, on 39th and 6th.

ME: Oh but then I'd be going east and it's better for me to go west, it's closer to my train going home. And the box isn't heavy at all.

I gave her a hug and was on my way. I walked to the address on 43rd Street to discover it was...the Westin New York Times Square? A HOTEL? I went up to the desk and said I was looking for FedEx. The guard said that I was in the right place, there was a FedEx location in the lobby up the escalator.

Sure enough there was a teeny tiny FedEx office up there, the size of my bedroom. I gave the guy my box with the label and everything, ready to go. He told me that since that FedEx location was in a hotel they had to charge an extra fee, based on weight. He weighed my package and said it would be $10. Of course it's not my money but oh please.

I walked half a block to the A train and a train arrived just as I arrived on the platform. And I got a seat. Clearly all of my troubles were behind me (and they were). I decided what I was going to do when I got home, to make up for the aggravating afternoon:

1. Take a shower while listening to my *Screaming Mimi’s* CD mix (it starts with Carol Burnett singing “Johnny One Note” and continues in that vein).

2. Change into a clean T shirt and a fresh pair of undies.

3. Make dinner: a salami wrap (salami, mayonnaise, yellow mustard, sliced dill pickles, Swiss cheese, and shredded lettuce), a four “bean” salad (green beans, garbanzo beans, kidney beans, and marinated red peppers), potato chips, a tall glass of cold water, and a bottle of Stella Artois.

4. And for my viewing pleasure during dinner I was going to watch The Eye Has To Travel.

How marvelous, the whole thing is on YouTube.