Smashing Glass

Last week I accidentally scheduled myself to cover a shift for Holly on my regular day off. The only problem was that my mother-in-law (minus-the-law) was in town and it was my day to take she and Ella into Burlington for a birthday shoppy shop fest. My new girl Kate offered to cover the shift for me but she had never opened the shop before. I told her I'd meet her at the shop at 6am, spend an hour with her getting her set for the day (making eggs, baking, getting things set for the day) and then I'd head back home.

We've been sleeping in a tent in the yard for the past several weeks so I crawled out at the crack of dawn in my "jammies" and bed head, told Ella I'd be back in an hour to cuddle more, and drove into Johnson with the sun just coming up over the river.

When I got to the shop I found Kate, sick as a dog, taking occasional trips to the bathroom where I could hear terrible wretching sounds through the door. She offered to try to ride it out but basic ethical treatment of employees and state health code require that an employer should send a puking employee straight home to bed.

So.... there I was. Behind the bar in my jammies and bed head with a stranded Granny Jean and Ella Bean back at my decrepit old farm house wondering what ever happened to me. If it weren't for a built up week of stress I may have accepted this defeat with a better grace but.... I was pissed and bummed and on edge.

Dave came in after an all-night medic shift at Fletcher Allen and sat at the bar for a while. We got to talking about how way-back-when we lived in an old condemnable house in our hometown with way too many people and a very specific element of stress, he once found a most creative way for me to blow off my steam.

The basement of that house, much like this basement in places, was made of stone and dirt. One day way back then he loaded a milk crate (or four) with piled up ganky dirty dishes and took me by the hand into that basement, opened a door that led into a dark dank room with stone walls and placed one of those dishes in my hand.

After all four milk crates of everyone's dirty dishes were left in thousands of peieces in the corner of that little room, I ascended the stairs with a much better attitude and a much lighter heart. The house was eventually condemned so we never actually felt compelled to clean up the mess.... that was half of the satisfaction.

So, I asked Tara to just mind the counter for a minute or two and, in my jammies and bed head, Dave and I descended the basement stairs with a couple of little water glasses and made loud smashing sounds for a few minutes (with those two little water glasses and a wide array of other plates and bottles we found down there). Once again, fourteen years later, I ascended the stairs feeling sooo much better about things.

A few minutes later Penny came in... Penny, who ran the Stowe Coffee House for years and years, and she graciously offered to take my place for the afternoon behind the counter. All that smashing glass resonated out there into the universe (or at least out into the backyard and to her front door) like an S.O.S and sent help directly. I made it home by 10:30 am.

Anyone who remembers the band Weave (who had their hey day back in the early nineties in a little cafe called Prufrocks in Scranton) and anyone who remembers their song Smashing Glass.... it's been stuck on repeat in my brain for one solid week now.

So the corner of the basement of this house, with all the thousands of pieces of glass, is now coined the Therapy Corner. Anyone who needs it, feel free to stop by. You bring the stress. We'll supply the glass.