Day One

As the title suggests, today was my first day on the job at Eight Cousins. Carol introduced me to Cathy, Cathy, Mary Fran and Tasha. She then gravely explained the store's mission statement, reading each line to me slowly and seriously, and detailing why each word was important to the store's success and to the overall happiness of her heart. She really is someone who chooses each word carefully, in any statement that she makes, pausing briefly and gazing into the distance with her heavy-lidded blue eyes. It's funny to see her out of the store, trying to interact with "Joe Six-Packs," as Sarah Palin calls them, and talking like a character out of Jane Austen.

But the success of the store really reflects the benefits of such deliberate, thought-out decision-making patterns. Little details are present everywhere, whether it is the wrought-iron alphabet chair she commissioned from a local artist that sits out front, to the tiny little stickers she places in each book that bear the Eight Cousins logo she designed herself. The chair is her pride and joy -- she purposely had it made over-sized so that any adult sitting in it would feel like a child with their feet dangling above the ground. To her credit, a well-dressed businessman who walked in just before closing told Cathy and I just how much he liked the chair.

Carol, at the moment, is all excited, as she is hosting a big event this Friday in the lot outside the store. AMP, or "Authors, Music, and Pizza," is a book-signing featuring three authors, a couple garage bands, and pizza-judging. Six local businesses have promised six pizzas each, and attendees will sample and then vote for their favorites.

So my main job was being Carol's right-hand woman as she whizzed about town distributing fliers and searching for soda, paper napkins, table-cloths and containers. We forgot, however, about the latter two. Luckily, the event's not till Friday.

So that was the extent of my first day back in Falmouth. I did take a little drive into Woods Hole to see if I could find any cute boys at Pie in the Sky. None so far, but I'll keep looking.