If I were standing on a cliff, overlooking immense chasms, I'd expect this post to come bouncing back to me in it's echo.
A vast empty space.
No listeners.
No readers.
It's been, what? Eleven months? That seems to be the track record with this thing these days. Once a year. A check in.

It's par for the course here, for the most part. A shuffling of employees, the same regulars.

Last Mother's Day, the only other breakfast/lunch joint in town closed it's doors so the summer was balls to the wall busy. Almost more than we were able to deal with. On any given day, we'd run out of plates and glasses and mugs. We'd run out of ingredients. Dishes would pile three times higher than the lip of the sink. The summer prior I had been out to the resevoir several times a week... swimming, rowing, paddling a surfboard. We'd driven down the NH coast at least once or twice a month to camp and be on and in the ocean. This past summer I was lucky to grab a day off every week. And, of course, it was the most gorgeous summer I can remember since moving to Vermont. But the drawer was full, so I won't bitch.

I still love what I do, but I'm starting to wonder what comes next. There's been talk of moving to the NH coast for Ella's 9-12 grades. It's a better school system, healthier area, in general, and of course, close to surf. It's hard to know what the right thing to do is. Ella has such strong friendships here. She always has. But the school system is definitely not what we had hoped for her. It's really a double edged sword and we may not know the right answer until we've actually made the move. A gamble.

I would have to sell the shop. That, or pick it up in a moving truck and find a space for it down there.... which.... I really wouldn't mind doing. And there's a niche. We haven't gotten that far in our decision making processes yet.

There's also the factor of my father. He's making his way into the depths of early onset Alzheimers Disease. Up until recently it's been one of those things that only family members and close friends might be able to recognize. Now, though, it's increasing in it's intensity. Gradually, but happening nonetheless. I still don't know how to set up my life to allow myself more time in his company. Will I be more available owning my own business and thus creating my own schedule or should I resign myself to a more disposable kind of work...
Again. No answers yet.
All I know is that I want to be home more. Getting that time in with him and helping my mom set up the life she has ahead of her. From the NH coast, I'm five hours (four with my driving) instead of eight hours away (seven with my driving). That has it's appeal.

And, of course, the more I discuss these situations with the people around me (my father's illness and the potential move to NH), the more people come in to ask if the shop is for sale. They all ask with this sense of fear in their eyes and I want desperately to rest a hand on their shoulder and say, "No, No! I will always keep it in my constant care, I promise." I've seen this place change hands and I know how dire the situation can get when a shit job is done on keeping this place a working, customer friendly establishment. Other than my job at parenting, this shop is my second most proud accomplishment to date. There's a serious element of responsibility when it comes to passing the baton.

And, although I know the time is approaching, I find myself withdrawing from the task. Shying away. I'm just not ready yet. Not knowing what comes next.... that's a factor, too. Not knowing if it's the route to take.

So, eleven months later, there are no answers. Just a lot of questions. Once the answers start trickling in, I'll send out a holler. Over the chasm. Even if it's just to hear my own echo validating my decision.

Ten Months, Nine Days Later

Oh, all the little quirks and quotes and new playlists I could have added throughout the past 10 months and nine days. I'm actually coming up on a year since I last posted anything to this poor, little blog. I think I eventually had that fishbowl feeling and couldn't find the words without feeling terribly exposed.

I'm over it.

It's been a long fucking year. Personally and professionally. I'm coming up, like a groundhog or a crocus, out of a semi-dormant, kind of crazy place.

On top of everything else, I took on the bookkeeping for the shop, lost my mind and every ounce of physical energy. Bill picked it back up. We got menus printed, more baking accomplished. A new concrete countertop was installed (I'll link later to the website of our wonderful concrete counter maker friend). We've had regulars move away and new regulars slip into their stools at the bar. We've had things break. We've repaired. Staff has quit, been fired, moved away. New girls have been trained up and they save my ass on many occasion. Love love love my girls.

Ella is still tackling math but with grace and focus. She's transitioned from alto sax to guitar. We've bagged the 103 acres for a small village house in Johnson. I can walk to the shop in seven minutes. We can ride our bikes to the Hub to see music at night. Friends stop in as they pass by on their way to the trails behind our house to walk their dogs. We have people over for dinner or sleepovers if they shouldn't drive home. Ella, for the very first time, can walk to a friend's house to hang out. The house is sixty years old, as opposed to one hundred and sixty, so when you clean it, it actually gets clean. Life has become exponentially easier.

The old man, Roger Jones, who built and lived in this house for those sixty years was a beekeeper and gem miner. The basement was his lapidary workshop, full of machines for polishing gems and cabinets to store and display them. There's a cold room in the basement that stored dozens and dozens of mason jars of waxy honey... a few of which we got to keep. Now that spring is here and the snow is melting, we're finding these crazy veins of random stones and gems and seashells out back and alongside the garage walls. There are birdhouses all around the house, full of black sunflower seeds. Woodpeckers and chickadees and blue jays are the only birds hardy enough to withstand the winter winds. Any day now I'm expecting to see robins and finches and martins. Old carcasses of bee boxes still sit out there along the treeline.... skeletons of bygone bee communities. All winter I've been reading up on beekeeping and plan to start my first hives when we get back from Costa Rica at the end of April. In honor of Roger. I think he'd be psyched to have us in his house. We've placed stones and crystals in all the little nooks where he'd kept his. We eat a spoonful of his honey when we get a sugar craving. It tastes like flowers.

I just went through and read a few of my early posts... all the turmoil as to whether or not I should buy the coffee shop. Now, I can hardly remember those early, sleepless nights. I CAN remember the pure physical exhaustion of that first year, the feeling like I might crack that second year and now, entering into the three year mark..... I find myself wondering where it'll all be. I love what I do. I can't fathom doing anything more enjoyable. I can't imagine a better community to share my everyday life with....people who influence my daughter in amazing, crazy and sometimes comically scary ways. I don't have a conscious feeling of burn-out but I imagine that it's there... lingering under the epidermal layer of my energetic facade. At thirty-six, or almost thirty-six, I can't imagine that I can be superhuman enough to maintain this level of constant motion. Or if I want to.

I'm just now, after seriously neglecting myself for the better part of two years, starting to be more mindful. I'm doing yoga more regularly, going to the gym again, hiking more rigorously. I've stopped licking the spatula when I make brownie batter or coffee cake. I've stopped eating sandwiches at the shop. I've started going to a chiropractor and eating more seaweed. I'm hydrating. I'm spending the month of March drinking no booze. Nada. Ella and I have challenged eachother to a sugar-free month of March, as well. We're both realizing how terribly addicted we are to the stuff. It feels good to be getting back. I have more energy, a clearer head, enjoy myself more.

People still steal my pint glasses and the landlord is still a pain in the ass. The oil to heat that old Victorian costs an arm and a leg (where the hell did that catch phrase come from, anyway?) and sometimes, in the middle of my afternoon there, I want nothing more to be on my couch with a book or in the woods with my dogs. But that would be the case with any job. Years from now, when I'm off doing something else with my life (and what the hell is that gonna be, anyway???) I know, for sure, that I'm going to look back on these years, with this coffee shop, and these people, as the absolute most favorite years of my life. Till that time comes, I'm just gonna live the dream. Keep expending energy. Keep making friends. Keep taking care of myself so I don't crack.

McGuiver Revisited

It's inevitable that at least one thing at any given time in this aging coffee shop will be out of order, mildly broken or on it's way to broken. There were no catastrophic accidents while I was on vacation and for that I'm grateful. Shortly after returning, however, my brewer decided to start it's journey on the slow road to being a piece of shit. Or so I thought. Verdict is still out....but so far so good.

The hot water spigot off the brewer hasn't worked in months. Initially it was the calcium in the town water that had built up in the line and was blocking the flow. We've been taking all the hot water in the meantime from the espresso machine. A few months ago my coffee machine guru guy came by and spent an hour or two disassembling the brewer and scraping out the funk. He suggested buying a new water filter else the heating coil on the espresso machine was bound to burn out. Which it did.

In the several months since he'd been here, I've purchased the new filter but hadn't installed it. The spigot had stopped working again, I figured it was calcified again and I was waiting for a chance to take it apart and chisel it out myself. We finally got to it a couple of weeks ago. We installed the new filter under the sink but couldn't figure out where the calcification lived inside the brewer. We did figure out that the spigot was broke just because it was broke.... not having anything to do with the calcified lines. The day after we put the brewer all back together it began leaking, slowly and steadily, all day and all night, all over the counter. There weren't enough rags being delivered bi-weekly to maintain the leaks.

So, last night we took it apart again. And..... we found and beat the hell out of the calcification. The process, all in all, took four and a half hours. About an hour into dissecting this machine I began to wonder how in the hell Bill would know how to reassemble it. Bill's just gotten an iPhone so Bill thought ahead and took a pic of the top peice to use as a guide.
But then he kept going and going. There were little pieces of plastic hoses and about a gallon of water on the floor. He kept telling me to not bother mopping it up till he was done because there was so much more that would spill out and it took all of my will to ignore the obsessive compulsive drive to clean as I go.

Little Bri stopped by as we were getting started and provided some good company for the adventure. We all took a little "safety break" up in the attic space and came down to dive further in to the project. Our fascination grew. It all got galactic.



We figured out how to open the tank that held the water and it was like something from a sci-fi movie in there. I've heard stories for a year or two now about homeowners in the village of Johnson who keep having to replace their hot water heaters and about business owners who have similar problems with their water lines. This experience validated all of those stories. I had to use a foot long metal instrument and hack away at the walls of the water tank until it began falling off in thick sheets of funky green, chalky shit.

This is the tank after I cleaned it.

I had to shop vac the funk that came off the walls. This is what it looked like.

I took a picture of the filter as evidence for everyone who has ever or will ever drink the coffee here.... so that you can rest assured that I'm taking every possible measure to ensure you don't drink this stuff.
Thank you, Bill, for your good, analytical mind and your willingness to come and fix yet another broken thing at the Lovin Cup.
Maybe someday the ship will just run.... without any glitches. But probably not. That's the character of the place, I suppose?

Again, I got hassled about neglecting the blog. Really, there isn't much to write that hasn't been written so far. I"m sure that there's a thousand little blips that I could add to this thing if time allowed.... but it doesn't. It's all I can do to make sure the bills get paid and I remember to order coffee every week. Having a kid in elementary school is sometimes more consuming than owning a business and if I weren't so chronically gobbled with work, I might consider homeschooling her again but..... for now, we read our twenty minutes every night, practice the alto sax for her winter concert (tomorrow night... solo in Row Your Boat...bound for the indie pop charts, let me tell you)
what else...

Speaking of elementary school.... I've had a tutor for Ella for nearly a year now. Different tutors... people that pop up in our lives, take a shining to my kid and happen to display an uncanny ability to convey math concepts. Until recently, teaching math to my kid has been a big problem. I look at a math textbook and my eyes cross and my brain goes flat-line. If Bill tries to teach her, the protocol goes as follows : big power struggle, blow up, time to mellow and then maybe, maybe, they get to the task at hand. She's been asking me to please please be the one to do her math homework with her and I've been at a loss for how to explain to my 11 year old that I can't even wrap my head around her fifth grade math work.

During her week-long Thanksgiving break, though, she waited until two nights before her return to school to tell me that she had brought home three failed quizzes that she had to retake that Monday. I had to give her the silent treatment for nearly 24 hours so that I wouldn't kill her and after I grounded her indefinitely for outrageous irresponsibility, I pulled out her math book and started reading at the beginning of Chapter 2 and didn't stop until the end of Chapter 3 (which, I swear, was more daunting than writing the business plan for this shop) BUT.... I somehow forced myself through that eye crossing, brain flat-lining wall and went through about forty seven sheets of paper as I wrote out examples of her math for me to work on and after an entire evening, afternoon and following evening, I was able to sit down with her and go through her math quizzes and guide her through correcting the problems that had been answered incorrectly. Somewhere in this process, I had the realization that I can't expect my kid to excel at math if, at age 34, I can't get through my own blocks enough to see it through with her.

So when I'm not at the shop or making dinner or walking my dog, I can be found with a fifth grade math textbook in my lap and a wrinkle in my brow. I'm still not at the point where I think I can homeschool again... maybe if I put myself into this math thing long enough it might be a remote possibility but for now I pack up my kid in the morning and pass her off to Mrs. Abair.

If I'm suave enough, maybe I'll post a video here of Ella's solo tomorrow night. I might not get it posted for another three months but that's how it goes here........................................

The Alcoholic Bartender

I’m beginning to understand why it is that alcoholics always seem to know, often times down to the minute, exactly how long they’ve been sober.

For several months before I bought the coffee shop, I was in the throws of doing some serious internal cleansing. I was practicing massage therapy, had access every day to a full gym, swimming pool and sauna. With my cleansing regime, I started with one element of the body and proceeded to work my way through. I had cut out all processed and hydrogenated foods, wheat, sugar and caffeine. I was working on my liver and my digestive health. I had been fasting and exercising almost every day. I was doing yoga and had discovered African dancing. Once a week I met with a specialist who helped “move the process along”. Everything was light as a feather and going great.

August 15th I bought the shop. My sleepless nights of worrying about the logistics turned into falling asleep on my feet as soon as I allowed myself to stop running. It’s pretty much gone this way since then…. With the occasional luxury of getting out of town or a Sunday that provides total respite from responsibility.

I had a surplus of extra time on my hands at my last job. I spent that time perusing library shelves, reading at the Stowe Coffee House, visiting friends who lived nearby (friends I miss dearly), working out… you name it. I drove forty five minutes to and from work and listened to audio books in my car. I think now that I may have taken all that extra me-time for granted. Now, a short walk through the meadows with my dog is a sweet luxury. I stop to watch birds and pet our neighbors horses and sometimes sit in the grass and savor where I am.

The alcoholic thing…..

I have this stupid condition called Dermagraphism. It shows up in young adults and can last anywhere from three months to an entire lifetime. My body produces too many histamines. If I scratch an itch, wipe something on my face, rub up against something, it leaves a raised, reddish welt in it’s wake for a much longer period of time than is reasonable. I’m like a walking Etch-a-Sketch. It’s nothing serious or life altering….. it’s just kind of annoying. After walking around with it for a year and a half now, I finally decided to go visit my naturopath in Burlington to see what she had to say about it. Well, that’s not true. Initially I went to visit a very pompous Eastern European allergist who gave this weird skin stuff a name but insisted that the only way to find any relief from it’s annoyances was to regularly take anti-histamines. I tried to delve deeper into the root of the problem, pointing out that the skin is the largest organ of the body and if that organ is out of whack, isn’t that symptomatic of something within the body possibly being out of whack? He got really frustrated and insisted that what I have is just a skin disease and nothing else. When I said I didn’t “buy it” he told me I didn’t have to “buy it“, that he was right and I was wrong and showed me to the door.

I’ve learned since that I have a slight metal allergy which is slowing down my immune system in general and causing my adrenals a wee bit of distress. I’ve begun taking a homeopathic histamine and Omegas 3 and 9. Once my body has acclimated to these, I’ll begin a series of acupuncture. In the meantime, I’ve had to completely eliminate caffeine and coffee altogether.

Yes, the coffee shop owner and constant barista cannot drink coffee. For the time being anyway…like, several months.

Yesterday, while I was filling the espresso bins I was counting the ways in which I interact with coffee every day. I order and inventory it, I pour it, I grind it, I tamper it. I weigh it, I brew it, I smell it, I sell it. I sometimes give it away. I draw shots of it, I steam milk for it, I mix mocha syrup into it. BUT, I no longer drink it.

It’s been 8 days, 2 hours and 42 minutes. But who’s counting?

YAHOOOOOO

Halloween Morning

It's the pre-dawn hour of Halloween day. I got to the shop today at 5:30 am so that I could get everything prepped for the day, have time to put on my costume AND.....try it out for a few minutes to make sure that i won't be breaking my neck pulling it off.

I just stripped down in the back room, pulled out the legwarmers, shivered at the sight of my little hot pant/gym shorts, zipped up the warm up jacket, considered the afro wig and laced up these forty pound roller skates. I'm about ten inches taller behind the counter now and get to do all those fun little loopty loops all day while rolling around.

Just put on Pandora funk, unlocked the door and now I wait for the first customer.... and hope that they're dressed more ridiculously than I am right now.

A Necessary Wednesday

It's a slow week here.... the college is on break so town is a little less populated. One of my girls, a student who has her first apartment and rent that's due, offered to take more shifts this week, so those of us who aren't students offered up whatever we could. I gave her my Wednesday opening shift so that I could take just one day off from waking up in the dark and maybe spend the day however I'd like. I asked a good friend to come and hike our new land with me. My house was clean... a pretty unusual thing these days.... so I didn't feel like I had to spend the day putting life back together on the homefront. I took a bit of time to place the food orders for the shop (from my couch) and check off my short list of things to do. Everybody (Bill and Ella) went away and I made myself some hot water with lemon, scratched my dog's belly and sat on the living room floor with a book until Annette arrived.

It was one of those epic fall days when the sun is warm and the leaves fall slowly from the trees like Japanese cherry blossoms. It's that time of year when all you can do is inhale the smell of the soil and composting leaves because too soon it will all be buried beneath several layers of snow. We hiked, we talked and talked and talked and grew this ever growing friendship, I got us lost for a good forty minutes.... having veered us offtrail and then not being entirely sure whether we were heading back toward civilization or off into the next county over seven or so miles of mountain terrain..... and.... we somehow ended up back at the fork in the stream where we started out in the first place.... the rush of a waterfall at our backs and a big, wide 100 acre piece of land at our feet and fingertips.

The hieffers nuzzled Annette's outstretched hands the cats curled around our ankles at our return. The sun was still high in the sky. We realized that the monarchs had a great big outburst of existence and so when Annette's car pulled away down the drive I took off my boots, ducked under the fence line and hunkered down in the overgrown milkweed and red clover of the pasture while dozens and dozens of butterflies went about their business. When Ella got off the schoolbus and came up the drive, I led her under the fenceline with me and sat her down in the feild. After fifteen seconds she started to see them... one after the other after the other....making their way from red clover blossom to another.... and it was one of those things neither of us will probably ever forget. There were sooo many!

It was one of those fall days that served as a kind of tonic preceeding the winter. Something to put a little heat in the belly and in the heart before we descend into deep freeze. A day to file the sun deep into the crevices of our skin and memory. A day to take off your shoes and make one last imprint in the front yard grasses.

Thanks, Jess, for taking my shift.

Late Night

Dave was riding me tonight about not writing more....so I am. We had a great Monday night music (which has moved from the backyard into the living room due to the onset of heavy frost and complaining neighbors) and now.... with just a fraction of free time.... I sit in the dark and even try to conjure up a way to capture what this is all about.

One thing I talked to him about was the element of candidness in this blog. A lot goes on behind this counter that I'm totally at liberty to write about...........but............there's really a good bit that I don't feel comfortable putting out there on the palette of public display....for more reasons than I should even get into here.

So..........I've taken to the occasional habit of writing a piece and filing it away in the drafts section of blogger.com..........so that it somehow gets out of my system but isn't out their for preview... possibly offending someone or revealing more than should be revealed. This whole business-on-main-street-gig is just a bit like living in a fishbowl and, as it turns out, I adore my customers enough(who are now very much my friends) that i don't want to regurgitate some of their shit onto the "pages" of blog-ville. At the same time, writing being what it is, if it's to be any good at all, needs to be honest honest honest, and so, despite my little secret society pages of the inside world here, I'll still do the best I can to put fingers to keys and keep an open dialogue of.............all this.

On my little black laptop I've written a bit of a low down of the past month.... the kitchen development, the drunk driver, etc..... and if all goes according to plan, I'll be able to post that little blip tomorrow.

In the meantime, however, let me just toot my own horn on the menu tonight for Monday Night Music.....

~a basic bowtie pesto past with sauteed summer squash.
~a chipotle chicken salad over arugula and spinach (thanks Dave for the prompting and prep)
~roasted fingerling potatoes
~coconut red curry peanut rice noodles with lime, garlic, ginger and cilantro
~tomato balsamic soup
~baked couscous with dried cranberries, walnuts, carmalized onion, butternut squash, and goat
cheese with an olive oil, orange zest, cinnamon, cumin and coriander drizzle

The shop is quiet. Broken down, instruments and sound equipment disassembled, lights off and doors locked. One town away my family sleeps and I should be heading in that direction to do the same. Tomorrow morning, the lunch box that will need packed and the child that will need ushered off to school, will come earlier than I might want it to if I sit at these keys any longer.

It's amazing how life continues to plow ahead even when you own a business. How the gardens get overgrown and the dust bunnies collect when all you're trying to do is keep the inventory stocked and the invoices filed. It's amazing how you're little girl grows up, somehow flourishing, in the backdrop of all of this. How the customers nourish her with all the little tidbits they have to offer.... a bunch of interesting grownups sharing whatever they have with this very interesting little eleven year old girl.

Time to go home, kiss her on the forehead, tuck the down comforter around her and wish her good dreams.

teaser

ok........
so i'm totally lame for not posting before this. it's been more than a month. totally negligent. i know. but just to give a taste of how it's been here..... we've had some heavy impact situations (ie; drunk driver, after stabbing someone three times and enduring a heavy police pursuit through the town of johnson, procedes to crash into the porch of my coffee shop... while i was out of town... oh the irony of it all)

exhibit A:


but.......... despite the nitty gritty funk of it all...............

we keep our chins up.


more later. i swear.

One Year Mark

Wish I had more time to write but, on the heels of my one year anniversary last Friday, I wanted to throw out the URL for my new, beautiful, 98% completed website. We still need some photos on the staff gallery page but otherwise, she's a beauty.

I spent my one year anniversary day learning how to body surf the waves in Rockport, Mass and drinking cosmos into the morning hours so I guess I can't be that bad off as a new business owner. There is more mulah in the business account now than when I started so that, too, is a good sign of success.

This past year has been the most beautiful display of community support and enthusiasm. Friends old and very new have come out of the woodwork to sit at my counter and offer their skills in sprucing up this town's most loved business. All my late night fears prior to the purchase have fallen to the wayside. I feared learning finances and bookkeeping and have (maybe not mastered but) learned it. I feared falling on my face behind the fishbowl of this main street venue but I haven't. My feet might be a little worse for the wear and I may have aged a few years in just this one.... but I'm not still breathing through the murky crazy straw of Stowe beauracracy and I'm doing my own thing happily.

So, check out the website, www.lovincupcafe.com, leave feedback, come drink coffee.

Monday Night Music~Week III

This week, our third, really brought in the bigger crowd. Chris and Fran, from the Mud City Ramblers, usually draw the masses. Chris is held dear by most of this community and he'd just recently returned from a trip to San Diego. We borrowed a big grill and invited folks to bring along their own grillables and we offered another round of summer salads and soup.


It was a beautiful backyard show until it rained and we moved everything inside into the living room. I'll let the pics speak for themselves....starting from the end of the night and working backward. Only because I can't figure out how to put the pics in the right order.

Don't we just love Penny!!

Penny brings goodies from her garden and kitchen...

Penny brings her smile

.

Ella

She insists on rising at the crack of dawn and opening the shop with me.

She unwraps the baked goods.
Puts the deck chairs out on the porch.
She cracks some eggs.
Then she disappears.

This is where we find her.

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.

Approaching Week III of ~

So, I've mentioned before that Tara is the one who's been organizing Monday Night Music in the backyard. She was originally planning on opening a skate shop across the road and it kinda fell through.... so she's used the BackAlley name to draw events together in a really incredible way. She organized Johnson's first MudFest this spring... a four day event that brought music, sculptors and artisans to the area. Most of the legwork was done here on the shop computer and we all kind of watched her pull her hair out (in a most graceful way) as she booked bands, wrote up their bios, created the program for the weekend and made her pirate flags and banners to advertise for each venue.

Monday Night Music was Tara's idea.... mostly because there was nothing else to do in town that night and she's capable of making it happen. After watching me spread myself way too thin this spring, she was quick to reassure that if I wanted to split after my long Monday shift, I was free to go and she would sail the ship.

Our first week I stuck around and we hosted Jeremy Harple.... had a good showing, made kick ass food, and called it a night by 10pm.

The menu consisted of several summer salads made with locally grown organic goodies

an incredible green salad picked and assembled by Penny.

Penny is our spicy Gemini who lives out back behind the shop in a house that sits beside the river. She lovingly tends bar at the bistro and she can usually be spotted out there in her backyard kneeling in her garden beds or at the bar here with stacks of cookbooks figuring out what on earth to make with all the produce she's producing.

So, we offered a cucumber, strawberry and mint salad.

A beet salad with beet greens, summer squash and feta. I made my incredible peanut noodles that I have to credit Molly Katzen for.

Oh, and there was a chilled yogurt cucumber soup, too.

The food prep and display was probably my most favorite aspect of all of this. I'm getting a chance to put out there the kind of food that I feel good about serving folks. Our daily menu of sandwiches is fine but the few organic ingredients I can throw into them just isn't enough for me. It's dawning on me how much my diesel impact on the planet has increased since I bought this place. It's hard to wrap my head around how much of what I purchase now-a-days comes from god knows where and uses how much oil to be shipped from California on refrigerated trucks??? Scary. So this little contribution to the local food economy brings me great joy and maybe, just maybe, it'll help lay the groundwork for more of the same in the future.

So, we're booked up for music the rest of July and the month of August. We've got some great folks from this area and some bluegrass bands from the Burlington area. Everyone seems alright with playing for tips and food and it'll be interesting to see how out of town musicians respond to this down and dirty little town of ours.

But the flowers are blooming and it looks gorgeous out there (Thank you Kalinas!!).

We have sculptures and lights and picnic tables and it feels so good to see it all occupied.

To check out Tara's new Mac skills,
get a little run down on who's playing
and hear samples of their music, go to:

www.myspace.com/lamoillecountycrew

...........i will
................be blogging.............
soon
soon
soon

Tip Jar

In order from left to right~
Jess (the real McCoy), Hannah and Holly(the plante girls), Mua and Sarah

Granted, some of us look more like chipmunks but the dollars come in anyway........