Snoballs on Piety

I know I've said in the past that Hansen's was the only snoball stand I would ever go to, but I lied, OK?  Sorry about that.  Hansen's is still the best as far as taste, no question.  Snoballs on Piety is perfectly acceptable taste-wise, but has won my heart for different reasons.  It's on Piety, (no shit, huh?) right off of Chartres.  They've been there about a month.  Go.  And when you do, make sure you say hello to this little girl:

                  


Actually, she'll probably say hello to you first.  She's not shy.  Trust me.  She's quite a remarkable little girl.  She managed to make a really shitty day completely disappear, at least for a couple of hours.

I was having a shitty day.  From the minute I opened my eyes.  Literally.  Shitty enough that on my way home from work I turned around on my bicycle to try to chase down my best friend's ex-boyfriend, after first texting and getting permission from my best friend, of course.  I was fully intending on starting a verbal altercation with him.  Oh, don't look at me like that.  He has it coming.  Trust me.

Anyway, once my shitty day was over, I decided to go for a long, angry bike ride, at the end of which I was hot and sweaty and still in a pretty shitty mood.  I figured it was a perfect time for a snoball, and Piety is only two blocks away and I'd been meaning to check it out because it was so close and blah blah blah so I stopped and meant to just get a snoball and eat it and go home, but I ended up staying for over two hours.

Because of Ava, of course.

Her parents own Snoballs on Piety, and she hangs out there with her mom all day when she's not in school.  She started talking to me before I even had a chance to order.

"Have we met before?"

"Um, I don't think so.  This is my first time here."

But she didn't give up.

"Where do you live?  Where do you work?  Have we met in the French Quarter?"

She sat down and talked to me while I ate my snoball.  We ended up looking at Youtube videos on my phone until the battery died.  Then she noticed the make-up in my bag.  She asked if she could wear some.  I said she should ask her mom.  Mom said sure.  So I painted her face up.  Then she busted out some nail polish.

"Can I paint your nails?"

"Yeah, sure.  Why not?"

I swear.  Something about letting her paint my nails completely defused whatever time bomb had been ticking inside me since I opened my eyes that morning.  Of course, my fuse ended up being relit a few hours later, but that's another story.  For a couple of hours, I was free.  She let me paint her nails, too.  We joked and laughed and took pictures of each other.  We jumped up and down on an old mattress in the back that she used as a trampoline.  She jumped on my back and made me run back and forth until my fucked up knee was begging for mercy.  I was free and I was happy and it was just me and Ava hanging out and life was good for a while.

I think I need to go to Snoballs on Piety more often.  I think you do, too.

        
P.S.  yes, Ava made the sign she's standing next to.  Not bad for an eight year old, huh?