Spring

I used to really hate deli slicing. It’s a job I do in the back, in the “kitchen”, and other than the fear I have of the scary rotating blade, it’s just been an unpleasant job all winter due to the freezing condition of the room. We insulated the floor, yes, and Bill built a beautiful new insulated door, which is great, but it was still cold enough back there to freeze the wet mopheads overnight. I’d have to layer up with sweaters and scarves to do the slicing. I’d wear my black wool glove on my right hand because otherwise my bare flesh on the cold metal handle of the slicer would create a great deal of discomfort. I would take my cell phone back there with me and make calls while I sliced to distract me from the snow blowing through the cracks of the old door and from my cold feet.

I was back there today slicing and realized how incredibly meditative I felt…. Content. I tied the back door open and a fresh breeze was coming in. It’s now a more comfortable room than the shop room…where we work behind the counter all day…the room whose windows we haven’t opened yet. There are only two windows in that room that aren’t painted shut but they have to be pried open with a chisel once the warm weather comes and it’s such an incredible effort to really close them each night that half the time we just leave them open a bit. That being the case, we haven’t yet opened them this season because we aren’t entirely convinced that it’s not going to drop down into the thirties in the next few weeks and freeze and kill the geraniums on the windowsill.

But the shop has been so pleasant lately. For so long this winter, I felt like I was stuck in the monotony of the general daily tasks and was left no time to really move forward with the things I’ve been wanting to do. All my grand plans weren’t happening fast enough for me. Come March, all I could do was daydream about the time it’d be warm enough for me to come in on my mornings off and tie my hair up and dig my hands into the old, untended flower beds around the place. I daydreamed about riding my bike to the bank instead of driving my car. All of that is starting to happen. There’s a true momentum that I’m so enjoying right now.

Last Friday, Word Bob, who paints for a living and has been my painting advisor of sorts, met me at the Country Home Center, where they sell Benjamin Moore paints, and helped me narrow down the color choices for the new paint job in the living room of the shop. It was totally an eleventh hour choice….. seeing as how I’d nailed some friends down weeks before to help me paint it the following day.

So I opened the shop early on Saturday and mid afternoon I left my post at the counter and started moving things around in the big living room… getting it ready for the new colors. I pulled the big hibiscus tree out onto the front porch and pulled all the furniture in toward the center of the room. I wiped down all the woodwork and laid down the drop cloths. Once it was all ready, I pulled the heavy wooden doors closed and went for a long walk through the town of Johnson with my old friend Dave, who‘s just moved to Vermont from Pennsylvania. We walked down Railroad Street and up the hill to where the cemetery is… learning that the dead folks of Johnson have the best view in town. We took note of all the old fashioned names and all the really old head stones and I explained how and when to plant bulbs and what kinds of perennials are hardy enough for the north country. We walked by and picked up our other hometown buddy, Kalinas, who hangs in Johnson between his annual jaunts to the South Pole and then Alaska. Lucky for me, he’s been bored and so to pass the time productively, he’s been coming to the shop and standing in as gardener. And painter. He’s raked out the back yard, raked out the existing perennial beds and then proceeded to carve and cut new “sexy” curvy flower beds all around the white picket fence-line. I am such a lucky girl to have the friends I have.

So the three of us trekked back down Railroad Street, Dave and I on foot, me barefoot and Kalinas on his bike. We met Jared at the shop and started to paint around 5pm. Jared and I cut edges and Kalinas and Dave rolled. They took lots of cigarette breaks. I made lots of beverages and juggled Ella and four of her friends…. who were banished (with little argument) to the warm outdoors…for fear of them tracking paint everywhere indoors. We were done just after sundown. Ella left for a sleepover with the friends I had been juggling and the adults all headed across the street to drink wine and celebrate…. coming back hours later…. with an entirely different caravan from the bar… a bottle of wine and some beer….and started to put the room back together. We changed the layout of the room about a dozen times as the bottles got emptier and then finally settled on what is now the new layout. We got home around 2am.

The next day, after a couple of Advil in the morning, I left for the great Virtual New Jersey of Williston, Vermont, where once fertile river valley pasture land has now been laid with asphalt and the advent of the box store phenomena. I went to Home Depot and purchased new deck furniture for the wrap around front porch of the shop, loaded it into the back of Bill’s pickup and then left Williston, as fast as I could. I visited a local nursery on my way home, purchasing three beautiful, lush, hanging ivy plants for the bay window in the living room and some hanging flower baskets for the porch .

I pulled into the shop to find “everyone” hanging on the stone wall that borders the place. Without even having to ask, all the furniture was unloaded and unwrapped and assembled while I...finally.... took the time to feed myself.

Bit by bit, more folks showed up. On bicycles, in cars, with mandolins, a bottle of red wine and some cheap yellow beer. Ella scaled the trees, covered in dirt. Manka and I went across the street to the Grand Union and purchased a wuffle ball and bat. Penny and Ron, who live in the house directly behind the shop and right on the river, came home and drank beer with us. We played with my new bow and arrow. We wished we had a hula hoop. We rode our bikes around town in bare feet. I dug out the garden hose and sprayed down the front porch with Ella, both of us ending up soaked and laughing.

We got hungry.
We went back to the Grand Union for veggie burgers, chicken and BBQ sauce and mustard and more beer. Penny made a beautiful salad and roasted blue potatoes and Ron cleaned the grill. Night fell and I ripped my jeans doing cartwheels with my kid in the grass so I borrowed a new pair of jeans from Manka. Ella borrowed a warm layer from Penny and did karate in the yard with Dusty. We all kind of mingled between the shop yard and Penny’s yard and listened to a reggae/Caribbean station from Pandora.com on Penny’s living room stereo. Ella charged every adult a quarter for every swear they made. Some of them had to start a tab. She determined on our way home that, had every adult actually paid up, she’d have made seven dollars and twenty five cents. I think she made about three dollars from Neal… who actually gave her the money, and an apology, with each curse. Sucker.

It was a perfect night.

And that’s how it’s been at the shop all week. Since the warm weather anyway. Folks stop by around closing time on their bikes. They help me sweep and mop and we crack an IPA and sit on the porch watching cars pass and taking runs on Tara’s old purple Sears bike with the leopard print banana seat.

My sign is almost done. Bill and his boys have made and erected a new sign post. …6”x6” posts, heavy duty, designed to hold this monster sign I’m so eagerly awaiting. We carved Lovin Cup Café 2008 into the cement for the posts. I’m buying a citrus juicer and a blender for smoothies this week. The place is feeling like home, the drawer is fatter at night, things are happening. The snow melted and the waters are moving with the force of spring….

I had flowers delivered.

Life is so good sometimes