An unreal respite.

I have found the most incredible place. Or rather, Riki found the most incredible place and told me about it, and I went there today. Tuscany@360 Café is a coffee shop/wine bar that shares space with a Shell station off of Capital of Texas Highway. The exterior—the part that isn’t a Shell station, that is—is reminiscent of a store you might find in Silicon Valley’s Santana Row. However, if you don’t hold this against it and press onward, your efforts will be rewarded by a beautiful back patio with stunning views of—what is this, a valley? Verdant hills, red-tiled roofs, evergreens swaying in the balmy (yes, the autumn breeze in central Texas is balmy) breeze, and always the vultures, circling, circling, confident in the eventual satiety that awaits them. The steady whoosh of highway traffic is audible, but feels worlds removed, and becomes oddly soothing in its consistency, like waves. The wind is a living thing up here, with a mouth and a voice, the creaking groan of a cavernous full-body yawn. 

Even better: as I write this, the patio is completely deserted. It really wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to imagine myself the lady of a palatial estate, taking coffee on the veranda of my palazzo. I just need a diaphanous white nightgown. I could also pretend that I’m starring in a scene from Mulholland Drive. I just need a severe case of dissociative identity disorder and a murderous past. As an added bonus, the weather is just gorgeous, and I have a hard time believing there’s a better place to be in this precise moment. I ordered a Texenza Crème Brulee (after nearly opting for the Alamocha) and it is delicious: sweet without being cloying, and retaining the pleasantly acrid properties that make coffee the delightful—and necessary—substance it is. If I choose to graduate to wine as the day moves forward, there’s plenty to choose from on that front, and I think they also have beer here, as well as wraps, sandwiches, breakfast tacos, and pastries.

I think I have a home away from home, or should I say, a home away from hell, although the guilt about leaving the mooshies alone even more of the time than I already do plagues me terribly. For all you hear about the independence of cats, these two get lonely, and I hate that. But I need to expand my radius (if “expand” is a word that can be aptly applied to a radius—if I passed geometry, it wasn’t with distinction, I can tell you that) for my sanity and sense of well-being, mooshies notwithstanding. And they are certainly the recipients of fierce mooshy love when I am home. 

Life is good, my friends. Now it’s time to keep hacking away at that novel.

Word Count: 14,209