Office plants

So I'm sitting in this little Italian restaurant on Saturday afternoon having my habitual Saturday afternoon lunch out with a book-- (this time, the "book" is the grey journal and I'm reading about criminally insane mothers who murder their children)-- and I really can't stop thinking about my murder victim. I mean really. I keep running the testimony over and over in my head: how long she could have lived (suffered) with the wounds that she had and how quickly she would have been incapacitated (helpless.) I keep thinking about how there was a history of domestic violence between her and her murderer and how she probably saw it coming although not right then and there. I keep thinking about her driver's license photo and her fingerprint and how she looked like she'd led a pretty hard life-- like the kind of person who pretty much expects to get spit on and yelled at and hit. The thing that sends it over the top is how no one, no one ever wants to be seen like this-- dead and rotting and covered with purge and blood.

So now I'm crying in the middle of this nice little Italian restaurant on a sunny Saturday afternoon, trying not to move or make noise and I'm just sobbing as quietly and inconspicuously as I can, trying not to disturb the nice people who aren't going criminally insane and murdering their children because the voices in their heads told them to or stabbing their girlfriends and leaving them to rot.

I have apparently decided that the solution to all this is office plants. I keep buying little office plants. I put them in cheerful little pots and scatter them about and, to be honest, the place is starting to look so downright homey and nurturing it's almost like mother nature herself works there.