I've had two cans sitting on the windowsill of the foyer now for four days. One is a can of Seasoned Southern Style Mustard and Turnip Greens and the other is a bright yellow can with a picture of two Holstiens in front of a bright rainbow.... it's called Sunshine Evaporated Milk. Both look like they're about forty years old and could have been used in this house long before it was ever a coffee shop........
Maybe I'll raffle them off at the prom.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Quote of the Day
Our friend Kate comes in every Monday and camps at the bar doing work on her cute little Mac. After telling us about her "chronic sinus infection" that she's had "since 10th grade" I sold her on my most recent discovery. A neti pot. It's really pretty gross and I won't even get into the details here except to say that it's a pot that holds salt water that you use to clean out the sinus passages. I'll leave the rest to the reader's darkest imagination.
I had to run across the street to the health food store to pick up an order of Goddess dressing, Tofu and Dr. Bronners lavender hand soap. I suggested Kate come with me to get herself a neti pot and she came along for the ride.
Getting into the car to come back, neti pot in hand, Kate, all excited and enthralled with her new purchase, cries out....
"This may just be the healthiest thing I've ever put up my nose!!!"
I had to run across the street to the health food store to pick up an order of Goddess dressing, Tofu and Dr. Bronners lavender hand soap. I suggested Kate come with me to get herself a neti pot and she came along for the ride.
Getting into the car to come back, neti pot in hand, Kate, all excited and enthralled with her new purchase, cries out....
"This may just be the healthiest thing I've ever put up my nose!!!"
Sunday, March 30, 2008
The Patrons
Most of my shifts are closing shifts. I jump behind the counter at 10:30, work through lunch with Holly until she leaves at 2pm and then I’m on my own till 5pm when we close…..usually locking up and heading home, after it’s all said and done, by six or six thirty. The closing shift is a long shift. The closing shift essentially sets up the morning person for a real smooth ride. We stock everything, get the beans all prepped, clean and break down the Astra espresso machine, re-wrap and stock the deli cooler, inventory the baked goods and stock the display case for the next day…… the list goes on. My awareness of this is currently heightened because I've hired a new girl, Jess McCoy, the real McCoy and she'll be taking over one of my closing shifts...so I've just created the official Closing Shift Duties list.
The morning person bakes the croissants, cooks eggs, and makes the chicken curry if need be. Sometimes iced tea needs brewing. Sometimes chai needs made. Holly, being the rock star she is, usually wraps her head around the soup of the day and has a recipe and ingredient list on hand by the time I arrive. Sometimes, she even has the soup made. Have I mentioned here before how much I love having Holly around?
Holly worked only closing shifts five days a week for one long year before I came on the scene. Having never been in the routine of opening, she had no idea how much easier the opening shift was until, right before I bought the place, she transitioned to all but one closing shift. Now that she’s got those easier shifts, she doesn’t want to give them up and I don’t blame her one bit. And because I feel like she’s put in her time, I’m in no rush to take them away from her. When I took the shop on, I was well aware that there would be long days, long hours and tired feet. I’m currently doing my time.
I only open the shop twice a week. Wednesday and Saturday. Saturday mornings are slow and drawn out. The crowd slumbers in later on Saturdays…. baggy eyed and drinking water before coffee. Wednesdays, though, make for a typical morning shift. I’ve got teachers on their way to class, farmers coming in for coffee before they tap trees or boil sap. All the regulars regularly join me at the counter, vying for the word scramble in the Living section and procrastinating on getting to their jobs. Some mornings are tamer than others but occasionally we have the boys on the floor wrestling, obscenities flying and/or things like proms being spontaneously designed.
This morning Jen sidled up to the bar first. She’s got two older kids, one of whom woke her today on her day off because he missed the bus. She figured since she was up, she may as well actually wake up. After dropping him off at high school and two refills at the bar, she actually started to come out of her slumber.
Wednesdays are my morning to visit with Mel and her son Miles. Mel and her husband moved in with me in 2001 after the birth of their daughter. They lived with me for almost a year and saw me through a temporary state of single parenting while they got adjusted to being a new family. We shared a big wooden house at the end of a long dirt road and had chickens and goats and cats and dogs and mice in the cupboards. We struggled with a long snowy driveway, chicken pox and ice dams on the roof. I was their doula for both of their children’s births and they are like family to me. Wednesdays I look forward to catching up with Mel and spoiling Miles with bottomless maple steamers. He’s been potty-trained at my shop. Now we’re working on breaking the thumb sucking.They were the next to arrive, always around 7:55am, having just dropped seven year old Adelle off at school. Today dad was along for the ride, too. The starter on their truck was fried, so they were stopping in to get beverages and visit before Peter set to fixing it. He and his twin brother, Steve, are like Click and Clack from Car Talk on NPR. They can fix anything.
Next to arrive was Brando. Brando and his brother Dusty have a couple of rooms in the upstairs of this old Victorian building where they run their web design business. They live next door to Mel and Pete at the end of a class four dirt road in the back woods of Johnson. Brando and Dusty teach karate to all of our kids and we are so blessed to have them in our lives. They arrive with hugs in the morning, wisecracks, and they always come down the stairs when I cry for technical assistance with the shop computers. They keep a tab at the shop and pretty soon that tab is going to be traded for the killer website we’re currently creating.
At this point, we’re out of seats at the bar so when Old Bob comes walking slowly but surely into the shop, Mel gets up and offers her seat. Bob is seventy two and moved to Vermont to be closer to his grandsons. He’s been sober for twenty four years and attends meetings every single day. He never learned how to read and write but he started his own landscaping business at sixteen years old, grew it gradually and successfully, sometimes faking that he could read the documents the bankers gave him. He had four greenhouses, thirteen employees, machines galore and rental properties all over Gloucester, Mass. When his ex-wife went over the edge and he ended up with custody of his four young kids he realized he needed to raise them up so he sold everything he had. He’s been “retired” ever since. He battles depression every day and some days, when the medication cocktails aren’t quite mixed correctly, he comes in quiet and sad and some days he’s real feisty. We take him any way he comes and love him just the same. For his birthday we got an ice cream cake and made sure we were all there when he arrived in the morning. We wore party hats and had noisemakers. We gave him his own mug. For Christmas, Holly knitted him a beautiful blue scarf. I began my New Years Eve walking into the new local pub with Old Bob on my arm. He drank ginger ale, stayed till the wee hours of the morning and watched us all get stupid and rowdy and dance our booties off. Hannah, beautiful Hannah, who works two days a week at the shop, is taking him to the prom. He’s a fixture. He and little Miles have developed a special connection and I think that, for Bob, seeing that little boy at the bar in the morning is one of the few highlights of his day. Miles sidles up next to him, shares his toast, looks at books with him and rests his head on his shoulder. There’s nothing more healing than a cute little kid. Especially a cute little kid that loves you to pieces.
Word Bob, the 'other Bob', came in next. He’s Word Bob because he and Holly have serious word scramble competition most mornings. Holly usually kicks his ass but he’ll never admit it. When Bob goes away on vacation, he sends us a postcard. The postcard is a long word scramble message usually looking like this:
Bob never had a daughter but he would have been an incredible father to a daughter. He’s a mindful, sensitive, insightful man who blushes at the drop of a hat but always has the quick and clever (and often times rather suggestive) come-back. Bob calls Holly the daughter he never had. Bob paints for a living(was my consultant of sorts, when picking out colors for this place), does occasional wedding photography and sometimes comes in talking about the beautiful glow he found hovering over his head the previous night at yoga class. Gotta love Bob.
That’s how the days go here. That’s the typical morning crowd. Then things switch up as the day progresses. Nick comes in in the afternoon and gets either a chicken curry sandwich with red peppers, no greens or an everything bagel with goddess dressing, turkey, swiss and red peppers, no greens. A hibiscus herbal iced tea. A turnover. Nick is who came up with the prom idea with me. We are unofficially the prom planning committee. He’s got a band named Ghosts of Pasha. They’re pretty good.
David and Reed come in at 12:45 every day to get a single shot of espresso before they walk back around the corner to the studio center where David works in the admissions department and Reed is a computer guru.
Mark comes in to get a maple steamer. His comfort food. We joke that we should offer him a pacifier with it. Mark is the one who has the killer barn sale every summer.
There are so many more and I’ll make sure their stories trickle in when the stories are good. I’ll make sure I get proper permission.
The morning person bakes the croissants, cooks eggs, and makes the chicken curry if need be. Sometimes iced tea needs brewing. Sometimes chai needs made. Holly, being the rock star she is, usually wraps her head around the soup of the day and has a recipe and ingredient list on hand by the time I arrive. Sometimes, she even has the soup made. Have I mentioned here before how much I love having Holly around?
Holly worked only closing shifts five days a week for one long year before I came on the scene. Having never been in the routine of opening, she had no idea how much easier the opening shift was until, right before I bought the place, she transitioned to all but one closing shift. Now that she’s got those easier shifts, she doesn’t want to give them up and I don’t blame her one bit. And because I feel like she’s put in her time, I’m in no rush to take them away from her. When I took the shop on, I was well aware that there would be long days, long hours and tired feet. I’m currently doing my time.
I only open the shop twice a week. Wednesday and Saturday. Saturday mornings are slow and drawn out. The crowd slumbers in later on Saturdays…. baggy eyed and drinking water before coffee. Wednesdays, though, make for a typical morning shift. I’ve got teachers on their way to class, farmers coming in for coffee before they tap trees or boil sap. All the regulars regularly join me at the counter, vying for the word scramble in the Living section and procrastinating on getting to their jobs. Some mornings are tamer than others but occasionally we have the boys on the floor wrestling, obscenities flying and/or things like proms being spontaneously designed.
This morning Jen sidled up to the bar first. She’s got two older kids, one of whom woke her today on her day off because he missed the bus. She figured since she was up, she may as well actually wake up. After dropping him off at high school and two refills at the bar, she actually started to come out of her slumber.
Wednesdays are my morning to visit with Mel and her son Miles. Mel and her husband moved in with me in 2001 after the birth of their daughter. They lived with me for almost a year and saw me through a temporary state of single parenting while they got adjusted to being a new family. We shared a big wooden house at the end of a long dirt road and had chickens and goats and cats and dogs and mice in the cupboards. We struggled with a long snowy driveway, chicken pox and ice dams on the roof. I was their doula for both of their children’s births and they are like family to me. Wednesdays I look forward to catching up with Mel and spoiling Miles with bottomless maple steamers. He’s been potty-trained at my shop. Now we’re working on breaking the thumb sucking.They were the next to arrive, always around 7:55am, having just dropped seven year old Adelle off at school. Today dad was along for the ride, too. The starter on their truck was fried, so they were stopping in to get beverages and visit before Peter set to fixing it. He and his twin brother, Steve, are like Click and Clack from Car Talk on NPR. They can fix anything.
Next to arrive was Brando. Brando and his brother Dusty have a couple of rooms in the upstairs of this old Victorian building where they run their web design business. They live next door to Mel and Pete at the end of a class four dirt road in the back woods of Johnson. Brando and Dusty teach karate to all of our kids and we are so blessed to have them in our lives. They arrive with hugs in the morning, wisecracks, and they always come down the stairs when I cry for technical assistance with the shop computers. They keep a tab at the shop and pretty soon that tab is going to be traded for the killer website we’re currently creating.
At this point, we’re out of seats at the bar so when Old Bob comes walking slowly but surely into the shop, Mel gets up and offers her seat. Bob is seventy two and moved to Vermont to be closer to his grandsons. He’s been sober for twenty four years and attends meetings every single day. He never learned how to read and write but he started his own landscaping business at sixteen years old, grew it gradually and successfully, sometimes faking that he could read the documents the bankers gave him. He had four greenhouses, thirteen employees, machines galore and rental properties all over Gloucester, Mass. When his ex-wife went over the edge and he ended up with custody of his four young kids he realized he needed to raise them up so he sold everything he had. He’s been “retired” ever since. He battles depression every day and some days, when the medication cocktails aren’t quite mixed correctly, he comes in quiet and sad and some days he’s real feisty. We take him any way he comes and love him just the same. For his birthday we got an ice cream cake and made sure we were all there when he arrived in the morning. We wore party hats and had noisemakers. We gave him his own mug. For Christmas, Holly knitted him a beautiful blue scarf. I began my New Years Eve walking into the new local pub with Old Bob on my arm. He drank ginger ale, stayed till the wee hours of the morning and watched us all get stupid and rowdy and dance our booties off. Hannah, beautiful Hannah, who works two days a week at the shop, is taking him to the prom. He’s a fixture. He and little Miles have developed a special connection and I think that, for Bob, seeing that little boy at the bar in the morning is one of the few highlights of his day. Miles sidles up next to him, shares his toast, looks at books with him and rests his head on his shoulder. There’s nothing more healing than a cute little kid. Especially a cute little kid that loves you to pieces.
Word Bob, the 'other Bob', came in next. He’s Word Bob because he and Holly have serious word scramble competition most mornings. Holly usually kicks his ass but he’ll never admit it. When Bob goes away on vacation, he sends us a postcard. The postcard is a long word scramble message usually looking like this:
Elolh acef lkosf!
Htisgn ereh era zinamag!
Lli letl ouy lla btoau ti hnew I tge akbc.
Elov,
obb
Htisgn ereh era zinamag!
Lli letl ouy lla btoau ti hnew I tge akbc.
Elov,
obb
Bob never had a daughter but he would have been an incredible father to a daughter. He’s a mindful, sensitive, insightful man who blushes at the drop of a hat but always has the quick and clever (and often times rather suggestive) come-back. Bob calls Holly the daughter he never had. Bob paints for a living(was my consultant of sorts, when picking out colors for this place), does occasional wedding photography and sometimes comes in talking about the beautiful glow he found hovering over his head the previous night at yoga class. Gotta love Bob.
That’s how the days go here. That’s the typical morning crowd. Then things switch up as the day progresses. Nick comes in in the afternoon and gets either a chicken curry sandwich with red peppers, no greens or an everything bagel with goddess dressing, turkey, swiss and red peppers, no greens. A hibiscus herbal iced tea. A turnover. Nick is who came up with the prom idea with me. We are unofficially the prom planning committee. He’s got a band named Ghosts of Pasha. They’re pretty good.
David and Reed come in at 12:45 every day to get a single shot of espresso before they walk back around the corner to the studio center where David works in the admissions department and Reed is a computer guru.
Mark comes in to get a maple steamer. His comfort food. We joke that we should offer him a pacifier with it. Mark is the one who has the killer barn sale every summer.
There are so many more and I’ll make sure their stories trickle in when the stories are good. I’ll make sure I get proper permission.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Prom 08'
We decided last week to have a prom.
A Johnson prom.
It's taking place in the Waterville town hall but it's a Johnson prom.
Kind of like a redemption prom. A second-chance-to-have-a-good-time-at-your-prom-prom.
I mean, did you really have a good time at your prom? Was there some kind of adolescent drama that just made it suck? Did you really even like your date?
All that hype, all that prep, all that dressing up, having to go through the whole picture in front of the fireplace, pinning the flower thing....and then there's not even a bar once we get there?
So the whole thing kind of snowballed talking with Nick one morning. By lunch time the gala was clear as day and we had lists going, a suggestion box in the making and an array of theme ideas. We're renting a disco ball, selling tickets to pay for the band (uh, 80's of course), building one of those ridiculous backdrops for pictures, electing a king and queen for kicks, renting a bus to drive folks back to Johnson from Waterville at the end of the night.....
By the end of the day, we decided to start having people bring in their old prom pictures and Nick, who is way more tech savvy than I, will create a slide show we can show that night during the 80's band's set break.... after we've all had a few drinks and can have a sense of humor about big hair and mullets and taffita dresses.
All this being said, I now welcome whatever prom theme ideas you might have.
A Johnson prom.
It's taking place in the Waterville town hall but it's a Johnson prom.
Kind of like a redemption prom. A second-chance-to-have-a-good-time-at-your-prom-prom.
I mean, did you really have a good time at your prom? Was there some kind of adolescent drama that just made it suck? Did you really even like your date?
All that hype, all that prep, all that dressing up, having to go through the whole picture in front of the fireplace, pinning the flower thing....and then there's not even a bar once we get there?
So the whole thing kind of snowballed talking with Nick one morning. By lunch time the gala was clear as day and we had lists going, a suggestion box in the making and an array of theme ideas. We're renting a disco ball, selling tickets to pay for the band (uh, 80's of course), building one of those ridiculous backdrops for pictures, electing a king and queen for kicks, renting a bus to drive folks back to Johnson from Waterville at the end of the night.....
By the end of the day, we decided to start having people bring in their old prom pictures and Nick, who is way more tech savvy than I, will create a slide show we can show that night during the 80's band's set break.... after we've all had a few drinks and can have a sense of humor about big hair and mullets and taffita dresses.
All this being said, I now welcome whatever prom theme ideas you might have.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Free Shipping
I usually drop Ella off at school before 8am and if I don't have errands to run, I come to the shop and make myself busy before I jump behind the counter at 10:30 and stay there till closing. This morning, I'm sitting here at the bar, drinking tea to soothe the headcold and searching online for a sink for the still unfinished kitchen space in the back. Bill has built a new, insulated door but the room, despite all of our efforts, is still a huge walk in refridgerator. The mopheads freeze over night and we store our soups back there when there is no room in any of the fridges.
Anyway. I'm online looking for sinks and find my way to ebay...looking for the ideal deal. Four pages in, I find a beautiful "butler sink".... it's not stainless steel, but it's beautiful and the deal is just ridiculous. It's a three dollar sink and the shipping is FREE.............free AND it's being shipped from the United Kingdom. I just don't understand and I start showing everyone this beautiful porcelain sink and I'm seeing it in my big, freezing kitchen (soon to be a sauna once summer comes).....
Upon further investigation.....................
it's a doll house sink.
Maybe I should get a dollhouse?
Anyway. I'm online looking for sinks and find my way to ebay...looking for the ideal deal. Four pages in, I find a beautiful "butler sink".... it's not stainless steel, but it's beautiful and the deal is just ridiculous. It's a three dollar sink and the shipping is FREE.............free AND it's being shipped from the United Kingdom. I just don't understand and I start showing everyone this beautiful porcelain sink and I'm seeing it in my big, freezing kitchen (soon to be a sauna once summer comes).....
Upon further investigation.....................
it's a doll house sink.
Maybe I should get a dollhouse?
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Three Dead Bodies
The compressor on my chest freezer died last week. Initially I was all kinds of pissed off and bitter about it. It was full to the brim with sourdough rolls, baked goods, tortillas, and croissants. I spent two days making calls and looking online and realizing that new chest freezers cost a whole lotta money. I'm still in the process of making that back room an actual kitchen and so convinced myself to look at this as an opportunity to make the room more efficient and let the room take some shape. I found a gargantuan chest freezer from Sears (25 cubic ft) that even came with all kinds of gadgety dividers and hanging baskets and it's large enough to accomodate all the goodies from both freezers in that room....which means that I'll discard the broken one and get rid of the upright that might be, like, thirty years old, makes funny noises and was bound to die any day now anyway. I'm actually giving it to the previous owner who now has her pizza/bar across the street. It can die for her now. Make us even.
The freezer was delivered before anything fully thawed and several times a day, like a kid on Christmas, I point my friends/patrons to the back room and say "Hey, go take a look at my new freezer!!"
Everyone responds the same way. Maybe it's that we live in the cloudiest, sometimes gloomiest county in the state, maybe it's the public water system or maybe it's just the Johnson crowd in general but what I've heard again and again is, "Wow man, you can fit, like, three dead bodies in that thing."
The freezer was delivered before anything fully thawed and several times a day, like a kid on Christmas, I point my friends/patrons to the back room and say "Hey, go take a look at my new freezer!!"
Everyone responds the same way. Maybe it's that we live in the cloudiest, sometimes gloomiest county in the state, maybe it's the public water system or maybe it's just the Johnson crowd in general but what I've heard again and again is, "Wow man, you can fit, like, three dead bodies in that thing."
Thursday, March 6, 2008
SuperStar-dom
The Burlington Free Press, the only real newspaper up here, has a Weekend section that comes with the Thursday paper. It highlights up and coming events and has nice little features about local businesses and practitioners. Last week, there was a small article calling for folks to write in about their favorite Burlington coffee shops. We're about an hour from Burlington but I photocopied the blip anyway and taped it to the two computers in the shop, highlighting the deadline and the email address to send to. I then pressured my patrons to sit down and sing my praises. I emailed the info to friends and pleaded that they do the same.
That was last Thursday. This morning, I glided on the ice to the front porch and found the paper, all rolled up in it's little plastic bag and got suddenly excited that it was Thursday and, if everyone played their cards right, I might just be finding The Lovin Cup featured in the paper!
I came in, unrolled the paper, pulled the Weekend section out and among the two dozen or so Burlington shops was our little oasis in the desert! All the way up here, away from the city. It read:
That was last Thursday. This morning, I glided on the ice to the front porch and found the paper, all rolled up in it's little plastic bag and got suddenly excited that it was Thursday and, if everyone played their cards right, I might just be finding The Lovin Cup featured in the paper!
I came in, unrolled the paper, pulled the Weekend section out and among the two dozen or so Burlington shops was our little oasis in the desert! All the way up here, away from the city. It read:
Lovin Cup Cafe
38 Lower Main West
Johnson, Vt. 05656
A dozen Johnson residents didn't want us
to miss the Lovin Cup Cafe. "As soon as you walk
into that place you get this feeling of warmth
and friendship," Dana Decker says.
"The owner is adorable and she makes the best
machiatos and chai chargers I have ever had.
The maple scones are to die for. I love that place.
I love hanging out there. I love the staff. I love the owner and I love
the customers!"
38 Lower Main West
Johnson, Vt. 05656
A dozen Johnson residents didn't want us
to miss the Lovin Cup Cafe. "As soon as you walk
into that place you get this feeling of warmth
and friendship," Dana Decker says.
"The owner is adorable and she makes the best
machiatos and chai chargers I have ever had.
The maple scones are to die for. I love that place.
I love hanging out there. I love the staff. I love the owner and I love
the customers!"
Yay for exposure!! Yah for Dana's overflow of love love love.
Even if the above mentioned Dana Decker is one of my best hometown friends who I bribed to write about us and even if she's not totally objective about my adorable-ness and ability to make a good chai. I love the irony that of all the locals who wrote in, the one person they pick to quote lives three hours south and is posing as a regular. But whatever. Now we're famous.
Even if the above mentioned Dana Decker is one of my best hometown friends who I bribed to write about us and even if she's not totally objective about my adorable-ness and ability to make a good chai. I love the irony that of all the locals who wrote in, the one person they pick to quote lives three hours south and is posing as a regular. But whatever. Now we're famous.
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