1.25.2020 – Saturday Morning

Saturday Morning
someone set alarm last night
Need big bounce today

My Saturday started at the weekday time of 5:15AM because SOMEONE set the alarm on my bedside clock last night.

Half awake, less than half asleep I grappled with consciousness to get close enough to the surface to understand what was going on and I swatted at the clock and the alarm stopped.

I whispered a sorry to my wife.

Then tried to swim back under the surface of sleep.

The alarm went off again five minutes later.

I had hit the snooze button.

I hit the snooze button so hard I knocked the clock off of the beside table to the floor behind the bed.

Now the alarm was really going.

Growing louder and more shrill.

Out of bed and on the floor, searching for the clock, saying words my Mother never taught me, I finally got the alarm off.

But boy, was I awake.

I apologized again to my wife and got back in bed.

Bemoaning the awful truth that my Saturday lie in was over.

My thoughts turned to coffee.

Coffee and breakfast.

We had Korean Chicken take out last night.

Unexpectedly I really enjoyed the pickled radishes.

There were leftovers in the fridge.

Sometimes a cold piece of chicken with my coffee is just what I want for breakfast.

At this moment, I could smell the coffee and taste the spicy chicken.

I slid out bed and went downstairs.

There was my Son.

There was my Son surrounded by the plastic containers that I had used to pack up the leftover chicken the night before.

The empty containers.

Bit my lip and made coffee.

Soon I was sitting down with a big mug of blessedness with my iPad, I set out to enjoy what I could of my morning.

My son called out, “I have to be at dance early this morning. I told Mom.”

No one told me.

We would be leaving in about 10 minutes.

So much for a quiet coffee time.

What was left of my Saturday Morning was now a black cloud over my head.

I looked like that emoji of the face with the head exploding.

I needed a bounce this morning.

I would need a BIG bounce.

Dressed and in the car, I was negotiating with Saturday Morning traffic on I85.

I connected my phone to the car radio and Siri told me that music playing, all songs, shuffled.

First up this morning was Someone to Love by Queen.

I grew up with Queen.

Not that I really noticed.

I wouldn’t call Queen the soundtrack of my life.

But they were always there playing in the background.

Recently watched the movie Bohemian Rhapsody and I was struck but how many of their songs I knew.

And knew well enough to sing along with.

And if you know Queen, it is music you sing along with at the top of your longs.

It was good music.

It was music that made you feel good.

At this moment of my life, it was possibly the best song I could have heard, of ALL songs, to get a bounce to my day.

A BIG bounce.

I laughed a lot as I listened.

It is a good song.

It is a song that makes you feel good.

The trip to the dance studio went by quickly.

I pulled into the driveway as the song came to an end.

I came to a stop and my son got out.

He paused with the door open and looked at me.

“Did you have to play that SO LOUD?”

1.19.2020 – Quiet of Morning

Quiet of Morning
A Sunday Morning Quiet
hear taste of coffee

At some point in my Sunday Morning my thoughts turn to coffee.

Lazing in bed.

Get up or not get up.

Coffee thoughts enter my thinking.

I can’t turn those thoughts off.

I wish I had set up the coffee maker the night before.

I want a cup of coffee.

A mug of coffee.

A big mug of coffee.

On weekends, when I don’t need that caffeine fix right off the bat I fill my mug half full of milk and microwave it for a minute to make a cafe au lait.

But to do that I need the coffee.

It is quiet when I get up.

More quiet or quieter on a Sunday.

Just plain still.

Coffee maker set up, I press the on button and it beeps at me with an electronic squeak that is far too harsh for the morning.

Same thing for the three beeps of the microwave when the milk is ready.

I sit and I wait.

Waiting though the clunk and hiss and drip of the coffee maker.

Waiting for that final scowwwwwwwwwwwwwww when the coffee maker blows of the last bit of water as steam.

Waiting for that beep beep beep that signals the coffee its ready.

The sounds of morning coffee.

I can hear the taste.

1.16.2020 – working life tunnel

working life tunnel
enter on Monday, no daylight
until next Friday

If I think my week of working is something to complain about I know I should contemplate a life without work.

That being said, I will complain about my week of working.

Wikipedia says that, “Job satisfaction or employee satisfaction is a measure of workers’ contentedness with their job, whether or not they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision.”

If I go down that path, I start looking at all the ways my ‘job’ is lacking.

Poised on the abyss of a pity party, I hear myself say, “What dog peed on your toast today?”

Laughter, at myself as it does so often, comes to the rescue.

I GOT a job.

I get a paycheck.

I perform my job at a level of satisfaction to myself.

I do go home at night.

I just visit this tunnel of a work week.

I am not saying that Job Satisfaction is good to have.

It is out there.

It is possible.

But what is it?

I ask whose job is it to make my job happy?

Are they not doing their job?

All things considered, when I think about what my paycheck makes possible, I AM content with my job.

I can be satisfied with that.

I can enter that tunnel.

I can get through that tunnel.

I get out of that tunnel.

And if I get down in the dumps over my job, I just have to think about a dog raising its leg over my toast to make me laugh.

PS – I repurposed (stole) the Dog Peed on Your Toast line from Garrison Keillor.

1.13.2020 – After that third sip

After that third sip
Coffee, wines, local craft beers
It all tastes the same?

I had a great cup of coffee yesterday.

A latte, or caffè e latte in the original Italian.

It was in a bar slash brewery slash coffee house / reading room / restaurant.

The name of the place is the Bold Monk Brewery.

On their website, they state:

“To the mindful, to the curious
to the brilliantly flawed.
To those seeking comfort, respite,
splendor, and sustenance…
The Bold Monk welcomes you.”

I am not sure what it means either or what type of business they want to be.

But Leslie and I just wanted coffee.

The sign outside listed coffee and the hostess said of course we could get coffee and directed us to the bar.

The bartender said of course we could get coffee and handed us a menu that listed:

Today’s Roast
Cappuccino
Latte

I got a latte and my wife got a cappuccino.

It took a bit.

The coffee’s were delivered in china mugs on small wooden platters.

Mine came with a small ‘side’ cup of sugar.

But I digress.

I had three (okay, maybe five and I can’t remember the other two) but there were no options like offered at Starbucks.

None of the life changing options listed by Tom Hanks in ‘You’ve Got Mail’ when his character explained why Starbucks is a success.

Say the Hank’s Tom Fox guy, “The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino.”

Here is my point.

What I have noticed, for myself, is that with all the self selection, I can get ‘my cup of coffee’ but, after the third sip, it all tastes the same.

Not saying it doesn’t taste different from my morning coffee at home but that it taste’s the same as any other boutique coffee.

All those choices.

End up the same cup of coffee.

I got to think about the many times I have wondered what wine to get or to order with a meal.

Red with meat.

White with fish or chicken.

Chianti with Italian.

Those basics are good to know and seem to work but go beyond that.

Just visiting Kroger’s Wine Aisle and I am bewildered.

To me.

For myself.

Can any of these reds really taste that different.

Why do so many restaurant reviews often sing the glories of the locally produced vin ordinaire that was served with the meal in some out of the place in Chicago or Quebec or Bouches-du-Rhône.

I can get a bottle of wine at my local grocery store from almost anywhere in the world.

And after the third sip, it all tastes the same.

All those choices.

End up with the same glass of wine.

Sitting at the bar last night, sipping my coffee, I noticed that (beyond the brewery smell) the Bold Monk had a large of number of local craft beer on tap.

The clear pipes for the taps went straight up to the overhead beer vault where the beer was poured out by gravity.

I enjoy the craft brewery rage.

I like a nice local brew from time to time.

All these choices.

After the third sip, it all tastes the same.

End up with a glass of beer.

A good glass of beer, no doubt.

But.

I was glad that the Bold Monk took the options away from me.

I was served a very good cup of coffee.

I enjoyed it very much.

After the third sip, it tasted the same.

Tasted the same to the bottom of the cup.

Good to the last drop.

1.9.2020 – swinging on a star

swinging on a star
take moon beams home in a jar
moonlit morning hopes

The Google says that the Moon today is in a Waxing Gibbous phase. This phase is when the moon is more than 50% illuminated but not yet a Full Moon. The phase lasts round 7 days with the moon becoming more illuminated each day until the Full Moon.

It was cold and clear last night when my wife and I went for walk.

Cold for Georgia anyway.

Clear and lit by the Waxing Gibbous Moon.

Moonlight was strong enough that we cast shadows and the old song about catching moonbeams in a jar stuck in my brain.

Innocent and sweet thoughts to end the day.

When I left for work this morning that Waxing Gibbous Moon was still shining.

It was low enough in the trees that I could have, like the Court Jester in Thurber’s Many Moons, climbed up in a tree and grabbed the moon for the Princess to wear on a chain around her neck.

(When the Moon shows up the next night, the King worries that his daughter will notice. The Court Jester suggests asking the Princess how that happened when she has the Moon on a chain around her neck. The Princess replies “That is easy, silly,” she said. “When I lose a tooth, a new one grows in its place, doesn’t it?”)

Mr. Debussy’s prélude, La fille aux cheveux de lin (otherwise known as The Girl With The Flaxen Hair) was playing on the radio.

Where does this music come from?

A bad mood and crummy attitude that has been percolating inside me this week didn’t have a chance.

Like the Court Jester, I winked at the moon, “for it seemed to the Court Jester that the moon had winked at him.”

The moment may not last long.

I am, after all, on my way to work.

For now.

For a few minutes.

For a wink of an eye.

I am swinging on a star.