Confirmation

The first email I read on the second to last day of school was from the parent of one of my students. We had met only once, (recently) but their child had been a frequent flyer in the LMC, particularly this year. I had ”provided her child with a safe space.” The note had been a wonderful gift, particularly at the end of a school year which was even more difficult than the previous year had been.

As I read the email at my desk, my eyes filled and eventually spilled over. It was so wonderful to be so explicitly appreciated. My efforts had been seen and noted.

That’s really what we all want, isn’t it?

In the past 6 days I’ve received 5 personal notes which have each made me tear up. What can I say? I’m a sucker for the written word – and a personally written note of thanks never goes out of style. They’re treasured, in fact.

Later in the morning, I tried to design three unique thank you cards online to show my appreciation for a gift I had received from members of my Library Club. It was an absolute headache, technologically speaking, and eventually, after much dicking around and a failed chat with a representative, I succeeded only by using the app, rather than the website.

It took a lot of time and was annoying, but eventually my task was accomplished and I received a confirmation email from Shutterfly. I crossed that task off my to do list and moved on with a detail I needed to resolve with regards to upcoming travel plans.

Booking.com is a site I’ve used to reserve both accommodations and rental cars while traveling. I haven’t always been pleased with their policies, (when I cancelled my car rental on 3/14/20 because of the pandemic and an inability to reach my destination, they refused to provide me with a refund or credit) but I found an apartment on their site for 4 nights in Nafplio, Greece at a price that appealed. I made a reservation, paying in full for my stay.

Since making that reservation months ago, I’ve noticed the booking doesn’t show up on the booking.com website under “My Bookings.” I had an email, however, which provided me with the confirmation number and pin necessary to manually add the booking to my account. A few weeks ago I updated my bookings to reflect my reservation and then, thinking that I was all set, I stupidly deleted my corroborating emails.

Needless to say, that was a dumb move. Especially since I couldn’t log in to my webmail account because I forgot my password and apparently my email account is still connected to my ex-husband’s utility bill, which meant that I couldn’t change the password without looping him into the phone call that eventually took more than 40 minutes of my afternoon.

And, after all that time invested it seems that my email provider no longer saves all emails, even if they were deleted from a phone, until they are specifically trashed.

Still no confirmation or pin number located. Ugh. Zero gain.

I decided that the best way to return to the mood in which I had been after reading that lovely morning email, was to put on a pretty dress and some lipstick* and walk down to Kitchen Table for something delicious at the bar. I freshened up and headed out.

As I got closer to the restaurant, my nose twitched at the heavenly aroma emanating from Prinzo’s. Carbs and calories be damned – I wanted whatever was coming out of that oven. I went inside, wallet in hand.

There were four men working in the bakery, three in the back stretching and shaping dough into loaf pans and a single guy on the counter side of the shop. I asked him what was warm and fresh out of the oven, hoping for a small loaf of their fluffy Italian bread.

The man told me that he didn’t have any warm loaves, but would happily toss one baked earlier in the day into the oven to heat it up for me. I considered his offer for a moment, but my thoughts were interrupted when the man let out an exclamation and ran to the oven in the back of the bakery. It seemed that he had forgotten that there were torpedo rolls baking, surely what my nose had detected. Our conversation had jarred his memory.

I watched as he efficiently removed tray after tray of rolls, not completely certain if he intended to come back to help me. Inhaling deeply, I waited for him to complete his task. A couple of minutes later, he came back to the front of the shop with a tray of fresh from the oven rolls. After shaking a paper bag open with one hand, he carefully placed 4 rolls inside and then handed me the bag, refusing to accept any money for the bread.

I thanked him for the gift and he thanked me for saving the bread. We were equally appreciative, I think. It was a really good exchange and I continued down Delaware Avenue with warm rolls and a smile.

PS. The clams I had at KT were also pretty frigging amazing. Get some!