Magpie's Daughter

Take Off

Oscar de la Renta leather shoulder bag

Versace jacket, size 6, red

Kate Spade purse, black

Mondays are the best.

I set the packages down and head to the counter with my thermal mug for an extra-large splash of half-and-half before I remove the MacBook from my backpack and officially open for business. The wifi pops up automatically, so I open my auctions in one tab and PayPal in another. PayPal's ticked up $168 to a total of $9674.92, so I take out my trusty Sharpie and double-check mailing addresses before I have to make the post office run.

The auctions ended last night at 9:00. Sunday is a good time to wind them down. People have the weekend to browse, ask questions, and, with any luck at all, place their bids. I check my email Sunday nights for any last minute questions, and then I take a quick look at the totals once time is up. Not everything sells, but this week was good: three items posted, three items sold.

Feedback on my seller's profile is 99.975% positive. I should probably be glad I've only had that one deranged girl last summer who went into a screeching fit online, claiming she never received a belt she'd been high bidder on. So, yeah, my customers, with that one exception, have been pleased with my performance, which is good considering my profile is not exactly legal since I'm still a year and a half away from official adult status.

After I address the packages, I have twenty minutes to kill. I click back to my email and start cleaning out the old inbox, scrolling down to the end of the page. There's an email from West that I glance at and then delete. He emails regularly enough that I suspect I'm on his Tasks list, an easy item to check off every month, probably the same day the child support is automatically transferred from his account to Mom's. He's up in North Dakota, working for some company whose name I never can remember in what's known as the oil and gas extraction industry. Frackers. We chat online sometimes, always promising we'll Skype next time "like the cool kids do," as he says, but we never have.

Outside the window of the coffee shop a bearded guy and a skinny girl set up on the street corner with their violins, placing a case already seeded with a few dollars on the sidewalk at their feet. Students walk past, barely glancing their way, focused on upcoming projects or maybe their next beers. The people sitting at the cafe tables lining the sidewalk might be homeless, or they might be full professors. It's hard sometimes to tell.

Once I saw a six foot tall white rabbit standing on the corner of College and Clayton, and he received only slightly more attention than the violin duet gets today.

I could sit in Jittery Joe's all day, just watching the show outside the windows taped up with notices of upcoming concerts, reiki workshops, co-ops, rooms for rent, and missing cats. I drink it in with my dark roast. I'm part of it all, an audience of one, a contributing member of society. An entrepreneur even. And it gives me a place just to be.

I groom my inbox down to just a handful of messages and make the coffee last. By 2:00 I can't dawdle any longer. The last mail pick-up of the day is at 2:30, and I have to send the goods off to their new homes before I head back to the house seven blocks away. I gather up all my things and drop the coffee mug off on the counter, where the barista, BeeGee gives me a smile. "Thanks, Jules."

I wave and walk out into a perfect jewel of a day. Fall came early this year, and I can only hope it stays late. The trees are a patchwork of red and gold and evergreen. Even though it's warm this afternoon, mornings and late evenings have been cool enough to have a little bite to them. I'm a huge fan of fall, despite the derangement of game days that descends on us for that handful of Saturdays in Athens. I keep up with the schedule just so I know when to avoid downtown. Otherwise, I ignore it, it ignores me, and we do just fine.