Heaven on Jefferson

I thought that today’s thankfulness topic would be a good follow-up to the husband post from earlier this week.

If you know my husband, you know that when he loves something, he loves it with everything he has. One such object of his affection he discovered three years ago while roaming the streets of Italy. While in the beautiful, faraway place, he stumbled across something that would change his life forever: gelato.

While in Italy, Joel would eat several cups of gelato a day, impressing many an onlooker by double-fisting two cones of gelato at a time. He knew once he had found it that he had to have it in his life in some capacity fairly regularly moving forward.

So upon his return to America, he tried to find the best imitation he could of the real thing. He went to Paolo’s in Atlanta, but it wasn’t quite right. Pizzeria Venti was just okay. The Venetian in Las Vegas had a pretty good replica, but it’s not like we are in Vegas on any sort of regular basis.

After a while, Joel just gave up on his hope to get delicious gelato in Georgia.

But then, we started seeing advertisements for a new candy store opening up in Madison. The fliers proclaimed gelato, but Joel had been fooled one too many times. He knew this would not, could not be the real thing. Especially in Madison, Georgia of all places.

Never in his life has Joel been more pleased to be wrong.

We walked in the first week Ella’s Sweet Shoppe was open, skeptical at best. The owner of the place immediately started educating us on the benefits of gelato (1/7 the fat and 1/12 the calories of a small serving of ice cream) and explained that this was the authentic thing. He told us how he weekly ships in gelato from Italy on dry ice through New York into Atlanta and then out to Madison.

So Joel tries his first bite. And at that moment, the heavens opened up, the angels started singing, and all was right in the world. Joel had not only found his authentic gelato, and he had not only found it in Georgia. But he found it in Madison, on our very own street.

We have become regular customers of this wonderful little shop. There is so much to tell about it that I am thankful for that I’ll have to save it for separate installments. Suffice it to say, you should come out and see what all the fuss is about. You’ll be very thankful you did.

There’s Always Something to Smile About

The Atlanta Airport is an interesting place. On the one hand, I love it because it’s always transporting me to some fun place or other. But on the other, the place depresses me. Form follows function; the decorations, if you can call them that, are neutral and plain; everything is so cluttered that you feel cramped; and the seats are really uncomfortable – which isn’t good for people like me who show up to their gate an hour early as a rule.

However, as the title of this post alludes, you can still find joy in melancholy places.

Today, I was sitting at my gate, eating a fast food meal that will surely kill me, and I look over to my left. Sitting there, all alone, is a man. He is probably in his early 70s. And you know what he’s doing? He is just licking an ice cream cone. And while he isn’t exactly smiling, I can tell that he is extremely content with everything in the world.

He happens to be booked on a flight leaving through a gate that is providentially located right next to a Ben & Jerry’s. Naturally, he buys a double-scoop waffle cone in his favorite flavor. And he eats it. He may be all by himself, but this is the next best thing to company. Eating that ice cream cone, I’m sure he thinks of all those times he made home-made ice cream for his children back in the day, and how excited his grandkids get when he buys them any flavor they want at the ice cream store, just an hour before dinner. He probably chuckles to himself thinking about how many good pictures they have of ice cream all over their little faces.

It’s probably pretty weird that those are the thoughts that go through my mind when I see a man eating ice cream. But even if that’s not what he was thinking, it still made me happy to see an old man slowly eat an ice cream cone in the middle of the airport waiting on a delayed flight all by himself. Oh life.