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.

Music Box Morning

Wednesday morning. My first shift opening since I got back from vacation.
Itunes party shuffle.
First song comes up.
First track....Theme from the Last Waltz.
Is there a better way to start a rainy morning?

Before, After, Bicycles and Blossoms

My uncle Bobby took this pic last summer when he came to visit. I had just purchased the place and this is what it looked like before I had time and energy to do anything except take down the Groovin Beans sign and hang my own coffee flag.

This is what it looks like as of yesterday, after new posts were put in, garden beds cut and mulched and the beautiful azaleas that Kalinas gave me for my birthday (that he planted, too!) AND
the sign was hung!!!

SO................here's the post I wrote last night..........

I now have Thursdays off. The real McCoy has taken over my closing shift and I decided before she even took it over that I’d spend the first month or two coming in anyway and just get stuff done around the place that I never can get to doing when I’m behind the counter drawing shots, etc.

I went in this morning bright and early because my sign friends who have been diligently creating this freaking masterpiece for months promised and swore that Thursday, yes we promise Thursday, they would be bringing the sign to hang.

I woke up like a kid on Christmas. Well, actually, that’s a lie. I actually took Ella to school twenty minutes late because neither of us could get out of bed this morning. We went in to Burlington last night, the two of us and did a weeeee bit of shopping and sushi eating and had a later night than usual. So yeah, twenty minutes late to school but then I was there, by 8:30, yerba mate in hand and waiting anxiously for the call to tell me when I could expect them.

I cracked open the laptop while I waited, entered and paid some bills, replied to some emails and helped Holly when the line got long at the counter.

They called at 9:30 to tell me they’d be there within the hour so I rode my bike down the street to give fair warning to Bill and his boys, whose muscles we’d need for the monstrosity beauty of a sign that was on it’s way.

Matt showed up with the sign in his truck, I texted the boys and they arrived in the pickup with a couple of ladders .

After the thing was lifted and secured I realized that thirteen people had already congregated in front of the shop….. It was like a ground breaking ceremony. The traffic through town was periodically backed up due to the construction on the bridge at the end of town so all the cars were getting ample exposure to this new sign. Perfecto.

It was interesting to see who came in and gushed over the sign and who came in without having noticed it all.

After an hour or two of just walking back and forth from the bar, drinking too much iced coffee and then returning to the front porch so that I could just stare at it some more…. Oh, and getting my insurance agent down to the place to take pics of it so that I could put it IMMEDIATELY on the policy……I finally decided that I was being really idle, which is really so foreign these days, and so I put on my new, funny looking padded spandex pants underneath the cargo shorts, donned the new helmet and Camelback and set out for a bike. I had an hour and a half to ride and had no idea where I was headed, other than west on Route 15. Two minutes into the ride, I remembered Kalinas complaining of the serious headwinds the other day… realized that I was bike riding through a funnel……….and after three or four miles turned off Route 15 onto the Long Trail. I knew that this little extension of the trail led to the new suspension bridge that was recently built over the northern branch of the Lamoille River off of Hogback Road and that it could loop me right back toward Johnson………..with the wind at my back.

It’s been years since I actually mountain biked on a mountain and I spent the whole time teetering between dreamily noticing the plant life and wondering how the hell people really enjoy this stuff. I saw my first bluets and violets. My first trout lilies and trillium. I saw fiddle heads and fiddle heads halfway through their unfolding… that sweet embryonic beginning of a fern.

My thighs ached riding uphill and I remembered that my tires had recently been changed over to cater more to road biking. I had to walk up the serious hills for lack of any real traction. I rode downhill, aiming that front tire like a samurai in between rocks and over small fallen saplings. I kept my fingers around the brakes.

I went up a small mountain and came back down. Calling it a mountain is even a bit of an overstatement. Had I been walking or driving, I might not have even noticed the lips and hips of the landscape. But I came to a cliff and looked around, wondering what the hell had happened and where the suspension bridge might be. I saw it over yonder and realized that at my feet was an extension ladder supported by a serious metal cord tied around the base of a tree. I guess the creators and maintainers of the Long Trail expected hikers to slip the ladder over the edge of the cliff and crawl down, cross the stream and hike up to the bridge for crossing…and had I been on foot that’d be fine but I didn’t trust myself to crawl down that ladder with a bike slung over my shoulder so I wandered around the cliff till I found a semi safe place to crawl down.

Every spring I try to beat my record for the first swim of the season. The last date I could remember is June first and I haven’t been able to beat it the past few years because we’ve consistently been away on vacation that week preceeding. When I finally crossed that stream today, I ended up with both sneakers submerged in the water and thought, hhhhmmmm, that’s quite pleasant, especially considering all the scratches and bangs my shins had earned on the trail. It felt so good, in fact, that I decided to one up my record and do the first swim on this eighth day of May. It was a quick naked plunge and I thought my lungs might collapse and now I have no freaking idea how I could possibly beat this new record…..but it’s done and the ride with the wind at my back was all the more pleasant for it. And I now do know why people enjoy this stuff. I can see how it gets addictive.

I got back to the shop, drove to pick up Bean and while she enhanced her math skills with her tutor, I hogged out the last knarly spot of the shop to prep it for painting and then organized some old forgotten corners.

And I stopped occasionally to look at my new sign.

Purdy, aint it?

Camelback meets Hogback

I got one of those groovy Camelback hydration packs for my birthday. It came on the heels of getting a tune up and new tires put on my bike for road riding. I traded two pounds of coffee with my shop neighbor for the work.

I've been keeping the bike in the kitchen of the shop and taking it to the bank, grocery store and post office when need be. The goal has been to take it out for longer jaunts in the morning before I go behind the counter for the day. I haven't had time for that yet, but.....

Last night I filled up the water bag in the pack and put ID in the front pocket (because I promised my mom I would) and I rode the bike home.

I never noticed:

• The little groundhog burrow by the marsh just outside of Johnson. It's occupant was awfully cute.
• All the garbage off the banks by the river.
• That Hogback Road looks so beautiful when the sun is on the horizon. Well, maybe I have noticed that before but.....
  
• How badly one's bottom aches from distance riding.
• That the run down slum looking apartment building just after the village of Waterville has the most spectacular, green backyard... all lined with stonework and an incredible, well laid out horseshoe set up.... where an old man resident was diligently at work mastering the sport.
  
• How many pick up trucks honk and whistle at bike riders.... girl bike riders, I guess.
  
• How much the wind makes my ears ache when riding downhill.
  
• How incredibly steep that last stretch is on Lapland Road. Like, shoot me now steep.

So, we woke up this morning and I geared back up, got Ella on the schoolbus at the end of the driveway and followed it down the hill on my bike for the trek back down Hogback to Route 15 and into Johnson. Yay me.

Notes from the morning ride:

• Wear gloves for morning riding. My hands ached for an hour following the journey.... no matter how hot the mug of tea I was holding. I didn't realize this until I got the bottom of Lapland Road and there was no way I was going back up it to find my gloves.
  
• Wear fleece when it's chilly out. A velour hoodie doesn't cut it.
• Wearing a hat helps my ears to not hurt in the wind.
  
• Don't let the pack sit overnight precariously else the water drips out slowly, leaves the pack wet and your back is freezing in the morning wind. No fun.
• There's way more wildlife in the morning. Turkeys, ducks, geese....
  
• There are more friends that pass and honk in the morning than there are pick up truck drivers.
  
• Like most things, the ride is always quicker and smoother the very first time it's done.
  

Edit

86 the whole chairs-being-stolen-thing.
They were borrowed for a backyard birthday bbq.
Faith has been restored.

New Ink

Years of waitressing has provided me with the habit of sticking pens in my hair. I usually wear two little pigtail buns on each side of my head. Sometimes I find two or three on each side when the day is done. Sometimes I'll take out a single bun at the end of the night and five pens will fall to the floor.

Last night, before closing, I reached up to scratch an itch at the nape of my neck and felt a thick stickiness. Am I bleeding? It ran down my neck and into my hair. I pulled my hand down and my fingers were that unmistakable indigo blue of the ball point pen. I reached up and drew out the busted pen from behind my barrette.

The entire back of my neck and left side of my head were matted with ink.
I was able to use a rag and clean off my neck but it explained why some customers had been eying me strangely that afternoon. Last night I took a shower before sleep and watched the water run blue down the drain. My fingers are still stained and I woke with my shoulders stained blue, too.

Maybe it's a new look?

Five Down

I think I mentioned last week that I drove into Williston and purchased all new deck furniture for the front porch. Five big tables. Thirteen chairs. I've been diligently wiping them down through the day and stacking the chairs and bringing them inside at night. Last night, I sat in the living room with my folks for a half hour or so before I left for the night.... a luxury I haven't taken since I repainted it. Being distracted from the normal routine, I left here having spaced bringing in the deck chairs.... and pulled in this morning to find five of them gone. Sitting in the parking space directly in front of the shop was, maybe as a twisted kind of replacement, one decrepit bar stool, the top half of a really old kitchen chair and an empty twelve pack box of Long Trail Ale.
Fuckers.