Breakfast with "Chad" - Lazy Daisy Cafe

Though the cell phone was buzzing, I didn’t move. My eyes were still closed, my perfectly shaped brow furrowed, and I was drawing upon every ounce of force and energy in my half-asleep brain.

Twist the other way. Turn the other way.

Through the semi-transparency of eyelids, I could tell that the blinds over my bed hadn’t responded to my telepathic commands. They were still facing in exact solar-planetary-vertical alignment to blind me with sparklingly happy, hyper-caffeinated Starbucks sunshine if I opened my eyes. Ugh. All I wanted to do was stay curled up under my Binkie with Pookie and Pooh and remain in a healing unconsciousness for another, oh, two, three, maybe four more hours. It had been a rough night. Maybe I could just pray for a very large stormcloud.

Eventually, I dragged myself out of bed, pulled my hair into a swallow’s nest on top of my head, and stepped into some flip-flops. Then I thought better of it and actually decided to change out of the sweatpants I had been sleeping in, into fresh...sweatpants.

Much better. Yeah, whatever. Can you tell that I get cranky, snarky and oh-so saracastically witty when I am hungover, decaffenated, and still sleepy?

We were going to have breakfast at Lazy Daisy Cafe, a place I had never tried, and to be quite honest, never thought to try because the name was way too cute. What am I, some sort of hypocrite?! I love rhyming, alliteration, cutesy phrases with double entendres. I’m a goddamned wordsmith on my blog! So, maybe Lazy Daisy was just particulalry irritating to me because they took over the spot that used to be Togo’s. (Wow, I’ve lived in this area for way too long). You’d think they’d change the sign in the parking lot that says “Parking for Togo’s and Kenny Rogers Roasters” by now, though. It’s been, what, how long now? Wahoo’s drop-kicked Kenny’s cornbread at least five years ago.

The name is cute. The place is cute. The tables and tile-topped tables are cute. The barely twenty-something waitress is cute (not hot, you sicko, cute). Even the curly cursive writing on the chalkboard over the coffee counter is cute. It was all so damned cute I needed a very very large cup of coffee to deal with it. I like cute. Just not the morning after.

When you sit down at a table on the front patio that is just a mere few feet from a very quiet, relaxing Wilshire Boulevard, you order coffee, and the waitress gives you a mug that you go inside to fill yourself from those pneumatic pump coffee dispensers that you have to pussh down from above, and that emit embarrassingly loud juicy, uh, blasts of air when there’s no more coffee left. I was once traumatized by such a coffee dispenser, but I’ve gotten over it. There’s a whole row of different coffees from which you can choose, and the beauty of it is, if you’re willing to get your lazy-ass up and walk those ten feet, you can drink as much as you want.

Lazy Daisy’s coffee mugs are colorfully mismatched, and the size of a soup bowl. They totally remind me of the café in Friends – Central Perk (oh my god, way too cute). Ross and Rachel, (un)fortunately, were not there. I’ll tell you who was there, though. I shall call him Chad, which is short for Chadwick.

Chad was sitting by himself at a corner table, back to the corner, facing outward, of course. For you see, Chad is one of those VIP corner-table, but must face out to see the action kind of guys. Never mind that it’s Saturday morning at Lazy Daisy Cafe in West LA and not the Newsroom Cafe on Robertson. I had my back to the action because I’m not paranoid like that, so I was very fortunate enough to be diagonally facing Chad. He was dressed in very expensive running shoes, which by the looks of them, he never used to actually run, USC-emblazoned sweatpants, and an Ivy league emblazoned sweatshirt that he must have bought from the student store when he went to go visit his smarter, younger brother 15 years ago. *ouch* I need more coffee.

We had ordered an omelette and a simple stack of pancakes. The omelette was big, puffy, full of vegetables and cheese, definitely worth the $5.95 or so, but the egg was a little dry and overcooked, which is also understandable when it’s only $5.95. The omelette plate came with toast and foil-wrapped butter, but what took it to the next level was that it was gold foil. Fruit was a little pallid, but what does one expect in the dead of LA’s winter? Pancakes had powdered sugar on top, but instead of looking like a fairy dusting, they looked more like elfin tabs of...sugar. The pancakes were thinner than my preference, like crepes that needed only the intro course at Jenny Craig, but let’s face it, I am a pancake whore. A pancake is a pancake, thin and crepe-y or thick and fluffy, as long as it tastes good.

Now Chad, on the other hand, had a plate of scrambled egg whites which he was pushing around his plate, and every once in a while prodding at the fresh fruit, but not eating. I don’t think Chad has an eating disorder. I think Chad has a talking disorder. The whole time we were enjoying our Friends-coffee-mugs of coffee, omelette, and pancakes, Chad was leaning back in the curly wrought-iron backed chair, jabbering away into his cell phone that if it weren’t for that fact that his hand was up there by his ear, I could have sworn was welded to his head. Maybe Chad needs to be introduced to bluetooth. Then maybe he could use his other hand to play with his whole wheat, unbuttered toast.

Anyway, I am not a nosy person. Certainly, everyone is a little bit curious about what goes on around them, but I am not as nosy as say, my sisters. They have absolutely no problem completely turning around in their chairs, craning their necks and straight-up staring at someone for five minutes at the nudging of the other to “check that out.” So, maybe I am just as nosy but far more discreet. In any case, it doesn’t matter, because Chad was talking into his phone as if it were a megaphone at a pep rally. We were sitting at the next table over, but I know I know I know that the older man sitting at the far end of the patio reading the paper over a bowl of oatmeal and who was probably 90% deaf, could hear Chad.

Now, based on what Chad was wearing and what he looked like and what he was not eating, I couldn’t really get a sense of exactly what he does for a living (like I can do that with so many other strangers in restaurants!), but I could sort of guess at the type of person he was. But Chad definitely wanted all of us on the patio at Lazy Daisy to know that he is an agent. Or maybe a manager. Real estate? Entertainment? Wal-Mart? Not Wal-mart, because Chad referred to his “clients” a lot on the phone, and I know at Wal-Mart, we are “valued customers.” He must have been in some sort of commission-based business because if he gets that “hundred thousand dollar bonus” he is definitely going to “get the two-door coupe.” I swear, that is exactly what he said. Hundred thousand dollar bonus. Impressive!

Chad also talked about women that he met in bars last weekend, through the week, last night, though I didn’t quite catch which bars since I may have excused myself momentarily for a second, then third, cup of coffee. He also talked about how his “maid” continues to move his things and how he can’t find them, which just “irks” him “like you wouldn’t believe.” Oh, Chad, I believe it. Every one of us sitting there at Lazy Daisy Cafe, inclusing the waitress and the owner who was behind the counter inside, we all believe it!

We finished our omelette and pancakes. And perhaps Chad noticed that he’d be losing his audience, or perhaps he really was done talking, but as we got up to leave, I heard him end his cell phone conversation with “You too, Mom. Bye.”

I felt so much better after breakfast at Lazy Daisy Cafe. :)

** a year ago today, the dining room was optional at beechwood restaurant **