Kundera's dial......

If you scroll back on this blog to last year around this time, like I’ve done recently, you’ll find that period in time when I didn’t know yet whether or not I would buy a coffee shop. Right around the time I was making that decision I traveled down to the Outer Banks for our annual beach trip. Friends, waves, wine….

I knew then that I wanted to go ahead and try and buy the shop but I didn’t know then if I’d make it back the following year… owning a business and all.

I did make it back.

And unlike years prior, this year being on the heels of the busiest, most productive 365 days of my life, the week did not fly by. I was starting to think that someone was slipping Quaaludes into my wine… I was just that relaxed. Instead of getting swallowed into the hustle and bustle of conversation in every room at every moment, I was sure to take my book out onto a deck chair in the morning, read, fall back to sleep, lube up on SPF 15, drink a Malibu and Club with lots of lime on the beach, savor every moment I was there. And by savoring that every moment, I found that the week didn’t disappear in a flash like it usually does. I nursed my tan like it was fine art, looked for shells along the shore on my morning walk, remembered, and made sure my connections with good friends were solid and genuine. I danced, at least once a day, with my little Faye.

Coming home is a little like de-toxing. It takes some time. Some undoing.

I came in yesterday and spent nearly three hours sitting in the bay window seat with my shit spread like a hurricane around me…. Invoices, lists, held mail, cash out sheets, deposit slips, a densely packed Americano at hand.

I countered that long catch up session with another three hours in the back gardens. All of the gorgeous, sexy garden beds that Kalinas so carefully carved around the fence line were gradually but quickly getting smothered in weeds and I know that if he comes back in October to a completely overgrown mess out there I’m going to feel like schlep #1.………so I rolled up the cuffs of my jeans and tied up my hair and made a big grapefruit juice with our new commercial citrus juicer and went to work.

I forgot how therapeutic weeding can be….what a metaphor it is to pull up and get rid of all the shit that gets in the way of the landscaping of our best intentions….our best efforts, ideas, inspirations…the long sightedness and patience it requires to dig into a whole bed of Lily of the Valley and having to, with both hands, pull one by one, a thousand blades of tall grass from those lilies. Or figuring out how to thin rhubarb without sacrificing too much of it. Or looking at a bunch of green things and figuring out which one won’t serve the garden in the long run…. Which one needs to be plucked and thrown into the big pile of discarded once growing things that gets bigger and bigger under the spruce trees behind the parking space behind the shop. Oh…. and the final satisfaction of looking at those sexy, carefully mulched beds…..all cleared of clutter…..the knees of my jeans all wet and muddy and my hands all caked in dirt. My neck a little redder than it was when I started. MmmmmMmmmmmm.

So…………..I’m back to the real world…. But I’m still operating with my vacation brain. Or trying to. Summer is creeping in and with it comes all kinds of old thoughts and reflections and even wondering how the hell I got to where I am now and how in the world it all went by so fucking fast. But a friend came in this week to eat with a colleague who had never been in and they got to asking me how it was going and how it came to be and if I was happy and satisfied and making a successful go of it. So often it seems that people are tentatively asking me how it’s going. This place has changed hands so often that I think the general public just assumes that one of these days soon I’m going to buckle and break down and put the place up for sale. People always seem a little taken off guard when I get all glowy and respond positively that I’m psyched to be here and that’s it’s going great….. Maybe they expect a long, heavy , heaving sigh. Like I should be wiping the sweat from my brow and resting my weight on my elbows on the counter and bearing my burdens to the random customer. But, so sorry. I’m just not there.

It’s not cake ride. I still have a “shit ton” to do and there are never enough hours in the day to do it and folks are still pestering me about when the hell that promised breakfast menu is gonna happen and my kitchen still aint done………but I got garden beds and a purdy sign and picnic tables out back and new perennials (thank you) and fresh squeezed lemonade and orange and grapefruit juice. A blender for new smoothies and fancy blended coffee drinks. So…. short or long as the day may seem, I take stock.