November Is the Awesomest Month

I’ve been thinking a lot lately, far more than writing.  Obviously.

I had signed up for this year’s NaNoWriMo and finally hatched what I thought was a great idea, but some (good) life circumstances threw me off track in November and I didn’t get more than about 500 words written.  I’m keeping the idea in mind, though, for a future project.  It’s called “101 Ways to Disappoint Your Mother” and it’s borne, in part, of my experience losing my mother earlier this year – and no, it’s not quite as snarky as it sounds.  It in an exploration of (mostly) female relationships: mothers and daughters, sisters, friends – and how they define women. The story starts with an engagement in post-WWII Alabama, and moves on from there.  I have a great deal to flesh out before I even share a lot more about it, so we’ll leave things at that for now.  Let’s just say that it’s in no way a man-bashing book, nor is it a pair of rose-colored glasses strapped onto a vaguely sappy  memoir.  I’m not all about that!

My birthday was on November 15^th.  Early this year, my step-mom shared with me that she was convinced it would be my best birthday ever.  After my mom passed away in February, and Ross struggled to find a better job (while I was still unemployed), that seemed hard to believe.  When Ross’s grandmother died in the summer, it seemed even harder to believe. 

But things started to change.  Actually – things really began to change once we completed the Great Race in September.  It was almost as though we’d accomplished both this huge physical and spiritual event.  Our bodies were aching but we were so incredibly proud that we’d done something that we never thought we could do.  I thought a lot about running as it’s mentioned in the Bible, too.  Paul frequently refers to the Christian life as a race.  It’s all about discipline and endurance.  (If you’re doing it right, anyway!)  Although I didn’t train properly for the Great Race, I had a wonderful first-time experience as a runner and want to continue (once my doctor gives me the okay).  Once we hit that milestone, life started looking up. 

Our Disney vacation soon followed, and I can hardly begin to explain how wonderful it was!  The experience definitely deserves its own post, which I’ll work on soon.  After that, my husband sent me to the Pat Benatar concert on my birthday with one of my best friends, Jaime.  We were pretty much the youngest people there, which I can only guess was quite soothing to Jaime’s “recently thirty” mentality.  Can I just tell you why I have so much respect for Pat Benatar?  First of all, even though her life hasn’t been ideal (she married and divorced quite young), she’s been married to the same man for nearly 30 years.  She has two adult daughters and a healthy relationship with them both.  She’s talented.  She never got into the drugs and alcohol pop star scene.   She’s more than a pair of legs and a voice.  I love that she’s always had a heavy hand in writing her own material.  Her songs are more about female empowerment than about female superiority, which I personally think is awesome.  And she still sounds incredible.  Unlike a lot of pop stars today, Pat Benatar was never really gimmicky.

She sounds great without auto-tuning. 

Ross would have gone with me, but he’d already committed to a men’s weekend (with my blessing) before starting his new job within the company.  He’s still dreaming of his ideal job, and I hardly blame him, but we’re both pleased that he’s now working in Career Services, helping graduates find jobs, rather than trying to remind former and current students that they do, in fact, owe the school money…even if they didn’t complete their schooling.  My poor hubby probably heard the phrase, “What?  I didn’t sign nothing!  I never signed anything!” a dozen times a week a t least.  That can be an incredibly frustrating job, even for a perpetually sunny guy like Ross.  So things are looking up there, too.

We’ve gotten some other pleasant news lately but we’re not ready to share those little details just yet. 

I’m thinking of getting together via the interwebs with my old roomie Megs, who is one of the funniest human being on the planet.  She has three kids, I have three cats.  We both believe in God, but practice our faith differently. Megan is a vegetarian.  I’m an everthing-I’m-not-allergic-to-a-tarian (which means I am, in fact, open-minded in regards to vegetarian cuisine.  To a degree.)  We went to college at Clarion.  We’re both pretty cheesed off at the school right now for the retrenchment debacle, which has decimated all three of our fields of study and basically made us look like fools for choosing such “useless” majors. (psychology, theatre and English).  Together, we’re kind of like generally-not-angry superhero comediennes.  Maybe we’ll start a blog: The Bec and Megs Comedy Minute.  It’ll just be flashes of our status updates.    Kids and cats are funny on their own.  Put them together and you get comedy gold.

Right?

We’ve also brought our outdoor stray into our home, too, which is what officially brought the above housecat total to three.  Freyja goes to the vet tomorrow.  We’ve kept her in her own room for the past week, to get the other cats acclimated to her and also to protect them in the event she’s got fleas or worms (we suspect neither, but you can’t be too careful.  This kitty has been a stray for at least a year, according to our neighbor, and cats, you know…just pick things up.)  She is a gorgeous girl, very gentle and sweet-natured, and she’s never once scratched or bit either of us since she started visiting us in August.  Slowly we worked up to picking her up and cuddling with her, which isn’t her favorite.  But she tolerates it without a lot of fuss.  She has a conversational and very insistent meow, and she is affectionate and likes the infrequent belly rub.  She learned how to sit on command (yes, really.  Loki does it, too.)  She takes treats directly out of my hand.  She has the most beautiful green eyes lined with white fur  and a gray pretty face; she looks kind of glamorous.  She used the litter box immediately, leading me to believe that maybe she’d once been a house cat.  Who would ever want to get rid of such a wonderful little girl?

Problem is, we think she might be preggers.

Leave it to us to have pity on the unexpectedly expectant cat in the neighborhood, right?  I guess we’ll learn tomorrow if Tubbs, the fully-equipped, ugly-faced stray male who sometimes lurks by our house, is gonna be a daddy.  If it’s not him, I’m utterly stumped, since I haven’t seen a single un-neutered male cat in our area other than him.  Not since we found little Thor shivering in the rain two springs ago.

It’s the Christmas season, but I don’t think the acknowledgement of the Virgin Birth extends to local felinity. 

One More Cup...

Having worked at Starbucks for four and a half years, and not being a coffee drinker before that time, I admit - I was utterly and completely spoiled.  I turned into a coffee snob overnight.  I admonished my trucker dad when he dumped spoonful after spoonful of powdered creamer into his coffee.  "Don't you want to taste the coffee?!" I gasped, watching the mug's contents grow more and more pale.  He simply cast a withering glance over his glasses and said, "I've been drinking this stuff for forty thirty-five years.  I know what I like."  I flounced past Crazy Mocha, Caribou, and mom-and-pop coffee shops as though they were serving dishwater in china cups.  I spent hours of my own time as well as paid time getting to learn the differences in regional coffees - the intimate details of each different blend - the perfect pairing for each type of coffee.  I worked my way up to the coveted title of "Coffee Master".

Of course, all that changed when I lost my job.

No longer could I afford my Iced Triple Tall One Raw Sugar Americanos.  Although I found another job very quickly, I balked at spending $4 on a beverage.  Suddenly I was one of them.  The other.  The customer.

Almost immediately, the high-and-mighty, cavalier coffee supremacist dissolved and was replaced with the slob who was totally cool with microwaving the last few ounces of the cold Giant Eagle cappuccino that she'd picked up on the way to work.  Suddenly, my version of "iced coffee" was brewing a whole pot and then returning two days later with some ice cubes and a spoonful of sugar.  

Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Don't get me wrong; my nose is still sharp.  I can still distinguish between a Colombian coffee and a Kenyan one.  I still have a good grasp on which coffees taste best with chocolate, and which are better paired with cinnamon, or nuts.  Even if they don't bear Starbucks on the label.  In fact, I've had the pleasure of meeting with some former and current Starbucks partners (employees) as a newer barista is working her way through the Coffee Master program.  It's great fun, both trying all the coffees again and meeting with old friends.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to the whole point of this post.  So many of us drink coffee daily and utterly take it for granted.  It's our morning sunshine when there is no sun, our afternoon pick-me-up, our indulgent treat.  I posted on Facebook earlier today about having had a somewhat challenging day at work, and how the dry cappuccino I'd picked up at our new local coffee shop had made me feel so much better.

My former college roomie (whose children's daily antics are a source of amusement to me) asked what a "dry cappuccino" was.  My knee-jerk reaction was to don the Black Apron again and use professional terms, which, while accurate, would have been irritatingly cocky.  Instead, I explained that there is more foam than liquid in a properly made dry cappuccino, and that a very well-made one is like a dessert, even without any additional sugar.

That's when it hit me - I love coffee for coffee's sake.  Not the caffeine, not the ritual, not the comfort - simply for the pleasure and the experience of drinking it.

And it's okay that I squirm a little when I have to fork over $4 for a latte.  After all, I don't do it that often.

I can just drink what's leftover in the pot from last week.

(I'm grateful that Carnegie's new coffee shop has opened.  You can read my review here.)