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Looking for Santa Barbara locals for this one...

I really need suggestions for a good animal rescue or shelter as I'm in the market for a cute and fuzzy to keep me company while I work. Every good shop keeper should have a guard cat or a watch bird, don't you think?

I tried Craig's List but that place is a nightmare. Entertaining when you only want a quick laugh but man when you actually need to find something...

posted to muse_dialogue

Ten things you do everyday

1. Wake up

2. Shower

3. Boil water for tea

4. Open the store

5. Close the store

6. Cook at least two meals

7. Yoga

8. Consider shaving my head

9. Put lotion on my hands

10. Read

Ten guilty pleasures

1. That friend with benefits

2. Lazy Sundays

3. Chocolate fondue

4. Jamba Juice

5. Annual trip to Disneyland to ride It's a Small World

6. Snooze buttons

7. Bodice Rippers

8. Putting Harry Potter on the same shelf as Shakespeare

9. Over the Rhine

10. My weakness for certain dairy...yeah, yeah...some vegetarian I am. Swiss cheese is too good to not eat.

(no subject)

A bookstore, not a coffee shop.

posted to sws

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A gift, a talent, a blessing. A nice little parlor trick that makes you fun at parties. It makes you interesting, that’s what my mother tells me. I guess it does, maybe for about fifteen minutes and if you don’t think about it too much or look at it too deeply.

Be a fortune teller, a clairvoyant, predict the future…sounds good, right? Cool, awesome, impressive. It’s not. It’s tiring. Depressing. Painful, even. It’s a burden and a terror. Sure, it’s a lot of fun to playfully run fingers over someone’s palm and be able to smile, tell them they are going to have a good week or fall in love with ‘the one’. Nice to look at a pair of hands and know they belong to someone who will live a long, productive life.

That doesn’t happen as often as you might think. No, there always seems to be more bad news or negative…stuff swirling around the human race than good. How do I tell someone the unpleasant? Should I, even? They are never receptive or appreciative of that. Believe me, learned that lesson fast.

So how do you go about knowing these things about people and not tell them? Is it wrong to protect them? Is it protecting them, this ignorance I let them keep? Maybe it’s protecting myself.

So don’t read palms if it bothers me, seems like the viable and brilliant solution to my problem doesn’t it? If only. I’m a people person. I’m a tactile person. You don’t realize how often you place your hands on other people, take their hands in yours, until you consciously force yourself not to.

That’s right; it’s more than looking at someone’s ‘love line’ that I’m talking about. It’s feeling the temperature of their flesh, the texture of their skin, pressing our hands palm to palm to make that connection. Sometimes, all it takes is a brief touch, a bumping of shoulders even, to pick up on someone’s energy or vibes, aura if you want to call it that. I’m not big on mystical terminology or magical phenomena—I just do what I do.

I don’t want to cut myself off from human contact; I don’t want to deprive myself of comfort and joy. I also don’t want to inadvertently pry where I shouldn’t and there are things I really do not want to know about people.

Some days, I wish it had an off switch, that’s all.


Chantal Weller
Original
407

Character Details

Things to know about Chantal:

She’s 35, 5’6” and moderately athletic

Yes, that hair is naturally curly and it irritates her to no end some days

The inventory of her bookstore is ever-changing, as are her interests and obsessions.

Palm reading is only part of what she does, a bit of a cover for just how strong some of her intuition and flashes of insight can be.

She cannot see into her own future, she refers to this as a Cosmic Insurance Policy though she doesn’t know how or why it works this way.

She doesn’t discuss this ‘gift’ very often. Most days she doesn’t even want it.

She considers herself a vegetarian even thought she’ll binge on certain dairy products at times. Basically, she refuses to eat flesh (fowl, seafood and any other animal included)

Loves Santa Barbara, hates L.A. traffic and therefore tends to stay close to home.

Except for her annual trip to Disneyland. And she may be the only person over the age of three to look forward to and enjoy It’s A Small World.

She is a neat freak, a place for everything and everything in its place.

To date, she owns no less that 47 pairs of flip flops. They are the footwear of choice because it’s as close as she can get to going into places of business barefoot. The ‘flops range from dollar store tacky to what she considers upscale and formal.