Wedding and Back Again

The wedding was incredible. It took place on a beautiful, four-masted ship called the Moshulu. I threatened for months to come dressed as Captain Jack Sparrow and I was surprised that none of my brother's friends didn't actually do so. The bridesmaid dress was pretty but dancing to the electric slide (which I didn't actually do but my mother, however, stole the show) would have been much more entertaining had I been sporting black, beaded dreads and a dagger. Next time....

We stayed at the Hyatt on Saturday and Sunday night, which you could almost spit on from the ship, and other than the half dozen wedding parties staying at the Hyatt, the hotel was hosting American Idol auditions that weekend. There were a few Paula Abdul sightings and that Simon guy was floating around as well. Beautiful, robust Philadelphia women could be found along the waterside, just outside the hotel, belting beautiful blues, looking nervous and waiting their turn. Occasionally one could be seen running down the roped off escalator, a pink piece of paper waving in their hand, screaming that they were "goin' to Hollywood!" I've never actually seen American Idol so it was all kind of lost on me.... the one channel we get up here in the hills, via the bent clothes hanger that serves as a rabbit ears antennae, must not get the station that broadcasts the show.

Poor Bill spent the next day, his 35th birthday, taking turns driving and napping on our eight hour drive back from Phillie to Vermont. I'm sure he was dreaming the entire time of the waves he might have caught somewhere else.... anywhere else. Tomorrow I'm going to drop into his work site across the street with a birthday cake and a case of Heiferweizen for he and his boys. If they're lucky, maybe I'll follow carpenter suit and tell them all the dirty jokes Dana shared with me tonight on the phone.

And back to the coffee shop.....

It's almost been a month in business and so far I haven't gone bankrupt. The numbers are higher than breaking even, which is a good sign, and the nightly cash-outs are higher than they were before I took the place over.... which means that more business is, indeed, coming through the door and into the register.

I haven't had the time to start turning the kitchen space into a kitchen space and I'm starting to realize that it'll probably require more of those 6pm to 2am chai latte work sessions to actually make it happen. But as it stands right now, I'm paying a baker an awful lot of money and spending way too much time at home making the par-baked croissants and brewing chai tea. Once that space is finished all that stuff can be done here, while I'm working, and life will become exponentially less tiresome.

Bill has taken over the bookkeeping for now... till I get my head wrapped around everything behind the counter. He's been creating systems for filing and getting an understanding of how things should be put into and organized in Quickbooks so that, when I'm ready, he can convey it all to me and pass the baton. I come home at night, sometimes not until 8 or 9pm, after a 14 hour day, and he's sitting on the couch with my laptop and nightly cash out sheets. And he's doing this after spending an hour or two organizing his own business... when I know he'd much rather be spacing out on the arrival of his new Netflix surf video. I get flooded with gratitude when I see him sitting there because even though it's already been a fourteen hour day, I still have to pull baked goods to proof and brew chai and read to and hang out with Ella before bedtime and then go over that day's invoices and receipts before my own bedtime. Thanks Billy boy. I promise we'll celebrate your birthday better than we did on Monday. If anyone out there wants to send him a plane ticket to Costa Rica, I'm sure he'd appreciate it very much.

Leaving the Baby

It’s hard to believe that just two weeks after buying a business , I have to leave town for a long weekend. Not really the best timing and the next time my brother plans a weddin I’ll have to remind him to keep that in mind.

The whole family has been buzzing about the first big wedding among our generation. Considering the intense commitment issues all us cousins have, this event is mighty impressive.

On Wednesday, my uncle Bobby arrived in Vermont, straight from El Paso, Texas, to visit me for the first time ever. He spent a couple of afternoons at my coffee bar, meeting the locals, eating pastries, drinking Moroccan Mint tea and mingling with the other many Bobs that frequent my shop.

There’s “Old Bob” … a retired recovering alcoholic of twenty four years, who moved up from Gloucter, Massachusetts two years ago to be closer to his grandkids. He arrives every morning, sometimes sitting on the porch with the newspaper on his lap when I go out to hang the open flag. His doctor told him to cut his caffeine in half so he gets a “half and half”… half a mug of coffee topped with half hot water. Occasionally he gets two in a row. Like, why not just consolidate Bob? Along with his half and half, he gets his daily “prison toast”… a sourdough baguette, toasted “crispy but not burned” with butter. He has white hair, a white beard and wore red in his driver’s license picture so he looks just Santa Claus. When kids come in to the bar, he pulls out his wallet and asks if they know that guy.

There’s Word Bob… a sweet, gentle spirited, middle-aged guy who paints for a living and has given me a slew of good advice about color tones and themes for the shop. He drinks Earl Gray tea, in a stapled tea bag instead of a tea pot, served in a big cappuccino mug and then takes the tea bag, stuffs it into a to go cup when he heads out for his day of meditative painting. He competes with Holly, my twenty one year old, incredibly hard working barista, to see who can decode the newspaper’s daily word scramble first. She usually wins. Bob practices yoga, has been getting regular tuning fork energy work and has an incredible, clean energy about him. He lives in the village of my town and his wife’s horses freckle the roadside pasture beautifully.

I got some pics of Old Bob and uncle Bob making history at my bar.

So yesterday was a day of traveling… eight hours from Vermont to Center City Philadelphia….and it was straight from the car into the lion’s den of a bachelor/bachelorette extravaganza. By the time the girls and boys merged paths at a bar called the Garage (and it really was a renovated garage) my brother was in a condition I’ve never before seen him in. When I sidled up next to him later in the night, giving him my shoulder to keep him from slumping forward, I raised his pint glass of lemon water to his mouth trying to hydrate him. He pulled some water through the straw, pulled the straw from the glass of water, turned to me and sprayed the water all over my face and shirt.

Drunk and defenseless he might have been but I returned the offense. I felt like I was twelve years old all over again, except my folks weren’t around to bitch.

Seventeen rowdy people slept like puppies in this half a house while Bill and I enjoyed the great outdoors of a Roxborough backyard. I think we might have been the only two in our posse that showed some self restraint. Instead of shot after shot of random colored and flavored booze, topped with mixed drinks and micro-brews, I sipped on two beverages through the night, accompanied with a ton of water and woke up feeling ready for back yard yoga and a jog.

My brother, on the hand, has just become vertical. It’s past noon and the poor fellow is a dull shade of jaundice yellow. It’s a good thing the wedding isn’t till tomorrow. He has one more day to get some recovering in.

Coffee shop? What coffee shop?