conclusion jumping….my favorite.

i love to people-watch. Starbucks is one of my most favorite people-watching haunts.

i like to watch men try to pick up women. i like to watch dads with their kids. i like to watch couples and decide in my head if they are dating, married, or dating and married (just not to each other!). i like to watch what people are ordering. i like to see what they are wearing. i like to form my own little stories of who they are are what they are doing there (i’m sure i’m wrong 95% of the time, but it’s fun to make up these little scenarios in my head!)

yesterday, i spent my second sunday in a row sitting at Starbucks, drinking my grande nonfat one splenda latte, while my daughter rehearsed her tap routine to "Candy Man" at her dance school. (the Willy Wonka version, not the Christina Aguilera version, much to Emily’s dismay. she loves her some Christina).

there were the usuals.

the two moms with their toddlers in strollers, drinking coffee while trying to have a conversation. the dad taking his two kids for hot chocolate, allowing their mom to sleep in. the student – laptop in tow – furiously typing. the intellectual, dressed head-to-toe in black, with her book, drinking espresso and eating chocolate cake. the four moms, obviously having some sort of early-morning breakfast meeting. the young couple, PDA’ing all over the place. the single man, trying to pick up the single woman…

"wow! a venti! how do you stay so slim?" Slim? who says slim?

"well, i have a philosophy." who says they have a philosophy?? "you need to burn more than you are putting in, so i make it a point to always do that." who says things like this??!!!

"it’s obviously working for you." boom chicka wow wow.

the mom dressed to the nines, at 9:45 in the morning, complete with full face up make-up and $500 (easily) purse, and screaming toddler on her arm. i wonder where she’s going…where she’s coming from. i wonder how she’s going to carry her drink, her kid and her purse all at once without messing up her perfectly pressed blouse.

the secret lovers. he with a wedding ring. she without one. playing footsie under the table. she nervously looking over her shoulder for people she might know. he whispering in her ear and laughing. i wonder if they are actually married, and just have a ricidulous amount of chemistry. did you see that scene in When A Man Loves a Woman? It’s one of my favorite scenes in a movie ever. Meg Ryan is at a cafe and a man is desperately trying to flirt with her. then in walks Andy Garcia…he talks about making her carrot cake with cream cheese icing and invites her back to his place and just like that, Meg mounts him, right on the stool, and then says, "did you call the cable guy?" no one knew they were married. maybe there are people who do this…pretend they aren’t married to add a little spice in their lives (maybe i should try this!)

i wonder what people are thinking when they look at me. do they think i’m a mom of three? do they think i’m married? do they know that my husband has taken the two younger kids to wonderland? are they wondering what i’m reading? what i’m drinking? are they looking at me in my lululemons and my pumas and my ponytail and no make-up and have any clue that i’m 29? i wonder what kind of conclusions people just to about me. i wonder how many of them are actually right!