After a Long Day

We should have been closing the deal the day after tomorrow but I'm still waiting to hear back as to whether or not the business plan is enough of a go to actually take to the bank. Hopefully that word'll come tomorrow. I've got calls out to the bank, to restaurant equipment joints, reps from food companies.... always calls out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We had a new faucet installed a couple of days ago... one of those things that needed to happen before we transitioned ownership. A local guy who does odd jobs for the current owner is the one who ordered and installed the faucet. The day after it was put in, I came in to a note on the counter that we needed to keep the sink somewhat dry for a day or two while the caulk dried... and then to trim off the excess after that point.

So, today I drove to the local farm and garden to make copies of the key for our new employee and to buy myself a straight edge blade.

I've never caulked a sink, nor have I ever had to trim excess caulk after the job was done but after forty five minutes of scraping this shit from around the edge of a three bay sink I was able to confidently determine that this guy went absolutely ape-shit with that stuff. It wasn't a terrible job. Minus having to break to pour lemonade or iced coffee, it was rather meditative... almost a bit of a metaphor in itself... like taking a certain kind of stock in the value of scraping away all that goopy, unnecessary shit from around the edge of things. Oh, so many places to take that metaphor! Forty five minutes was about half the time that it took to finish the job.....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Ella had her friend Acadia at the shop today. They spent way too much money on penny candy and I was glad to shuffle them off to the riverside for the rest of the day. They came back in one- hour intervals to check in with me, dripping wet and hungry. They're both home now with Bill, building a fort over the expanse of Ella's room with all of the sheets from my linen closet and there they'll stay for the evening, finishing up their penny candy and watching movies. Life's tough when you're ten years old....

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After driving the girls to the house and making them dinner, I got back in the car to come into Johnson again. As I was veering onto the north end of Hogback Road I got a call from Acadia's mom, who was veering onto the south end of Hogback Road. We met in the middle, sat on our cars in the setting sun and caught up for a bit. She's an amazing lady who practices reiki and has a small essential oil business on the side. After reciting my list of things to do and my unmet deadlines and my determination to come in here and clean and tie up some loose ends, she dives into her car and comes back out with what looks like a big CD book... except it's filled with about fifty different essential oil blends. Before our visit was over I was dowsed in a dozen oils, all for specific purpose, and I smelled like a queen. The lemon oil, dropped onto the center of my palm and rubbed in a counter-clockwise position three times, might just have been the most effective of them all. I don't know what medicinal purpose it has, exactly, or why the direction or number of times I rubbed it in will help me, but it smells sooo good.

So here I am, at the shop, writing a blog post instead of working, having just finished the first of my two ales... a new favorite called Wychwood... listening to the second cd mix i've ever made (see below for list of tunes it includes~thank you Shannon for your itunes playlist)

The window is open, no breeze, just the sound of random passing cars and trucks coming in through it's screen. Sun's gone down an hour ago and dusk is heavy like the humidity. My bags are sitting on the table beside me, waiting like my old farm dogs with needy eyes, wanting to be scratched and given some attention. Here goes......

Currently Playing
I ordered my very own, brand new laptop last week. A dell.... and it should
be delivered via FedEx sometime early this week... at which point
(after I come up for air after learning Quickbooks)
I can get set up with Itunes and download all the scratchy, near death cds I have.
In the meantime,
I've had the great experience of making mixes from other people's music collections.
This is the second in what I hope will be a long history of making mixes, compliments
of Dave and Shannon's Itunes collection.

Bittersweet ~ Big Head Todd.... totally cheesy, I know, but such a good song!
How many roads ~ a duet by Dylan and Joan Baez.... in their early years, before the tension.
Dirty Old Town ~ The Pogues.... gotta love Shane McGowen
Arkansas Traveler~ Garcia and Grisman
Some of my Favorite Things ~ by an artist I don't know... some killer female vocalist
"cashing in on the glory of my biggest mistakes...
to kiss until my lips are red....
these are some of my favorite things...."
Some random tune from the Bostones... thanks to David! I felt like I was at the Staircase
in Pittson all over again... seeing the Bostones for the third time
G-Love ~ Special Sauce... for my Ella
Some random tune by the Go-Go's.... for Dana, who never reads this blog, anyway.
In the Morning~ Nina Simone... I think it's clear by now what Meg's favorite song is?
Lay Lady Lay~ Dylan
Irene Goodnight ~Leadbelly... doing an awesome Guthrie tune
some duet by two dudes and the chorus goes something like:
"what's so funny about peace, love and understanding"
I don't remember putting it on there but it's not too bad
Unbroken Chain ~ quite possibly the best GD tune ever
Give up your light ~ Morcheeba
Video Killed the Radio Star
What I am ~ Edie Brickell

Before noon report

I was thinking when I woke up this morning that I might actually get a day behind the counter in temperatures less than ninety degrees. An hour and a half after unlocking the door, I know better.

I can count on my one hand the number of customers that have been in since 8am and they've all but one had iced drinks..... it's now getting on 9am and I've had time to flip through the newspaper, have two quality conversations with customers and now sit and write for just a moment.

I'm still waiting on word about the financial piece of the business plan that I shipped off to the business guru three or four days ago. In the meantime, I've found myself savoring every open moment by taking my fins to my favorite stretch of river, squeezing in a couple of Harry Potter chapters and sleeping in that extra twenty minutes two mornings in a row!

With this humid weather, and summer already starting to feel like it's slipping away, I've taken to keeping the bikini, fins, goggles, and an extra towel permanently stationed in the back of the Suburu.

This week I ordered myself a brand new Dell laptop, which will be loaded with QuickBooks immediately upon it's arrival. Maneuvering my way around that software will be a bit like learning Latin, or maybe Swahili, but that's all possible stuff, right? Inevitable at this point, anyway.....

Bachelors are here. Time to be a barista

Wednesday

Bought myself a comfortable pair of ugly shoes to wear behind the counter here. My feet are a little hot but it beats the heck out of a used pair of low-top Chucks. It's almost 90 degrees here today and the two oscillating fans aren't really cooling things off.

I came in this morning to a long list of things that needed done and an expected order of 12 sandwiches come lunch time.... so it was straight to work, checking off the list.... beans to fill, chicken salad to make, deli meats and cheeses to portion out and date. Iced tea to make, greens to blend and store, pastries to pull and thaw and get into the case before the lunch crowd descends.

The dishes were piling up and Ella was bored to tears until Alex and Tristan were dropped off and they went to the park. From there, they went up to our friend Chase's new restaurant where a perfect little swimming hole lies tucked behind the tree line.

It's after 2pm, my day behind the counter is over and it's time to find some water to sit in. I just emailed my draft of the cash flow chart to my small business guru and am now anxiously awaiting his response. If all goes well, I'll be calling the bank in the next day or two to present it. In the meantime, I just have to write up a resume for the appendix and an "Executive Summary" ~ a glossary/index type cover letter.

And buy more fans. And get some sleep. And take my new comfortable ugly shoes off.

The novelty of ice

I'm sitting here making a capital purchase list to present to the bank. It'll appear somewhere in the appendix of the business plan... basically telling them what smart purchases I'll make with the money they give me.

I'm about ten minutes from being done and the five discs that have been rotating all day in the in the stereo have repeated themselves almost twice just in the time it's taken me to do this work. And the one thing that has gotten me up from this work, and my Long Trail IPA, is the fierce astonishment that there is not one damn icemaker on the market for less than $1,200.- And that's a low ball figure.

I'm sorry. It's a machine that turns water to ice. Is the technology really that advanced?

I'm sick to death of running out of ice here and having to take the money we make from our "rent-a-mouse" to run across the street to the Grand Union in my greasy apron and come back with two bags of ice. But I just don't know that I'm sick enough of it to spend twelve hundred dollars on a god-damn ice machine.

Can someone please explain how one can go out and purchase a ten year old Surburu for the same price as an ice machine? I'm baffled here.

Speaking of those five CD's
I'm afraid there's a serious lack of creativity and motivation here.
It's almost the same, if not totally the same, as yesterday.
Total lack of ingenuity here, I apologize.
Bob Dylan ~ Blood on the Tracks
Jim's Just Listen to It Mix ~ the one that starts with that great Shane McGowan christmas song duet.
G Love and Special Sauce ~ The Hustle
Billy Bragg and Wilco ~ Mermaid Avenue
Leslie Feist and Neko Case mix from Jocelyn

and all of that... playing for twelve hours now.
Tomorrow is a new day.

The Deathly Hollows

I took the day off from the coffee shop yesterday to celebrate Ella's tenth birthday. I couldn't believe how unbelievably sentimental I felt all day, remembering exactly where I was a decade ago. Laboring through the night with the full moon, calling the midwife at dawn, lying under that gorgeous cherry tree, the unexpected ride in the ambulance past the coffee shop where all my knotty headed, patchworked friends were sitting drinking iced coffee and wondering when the hell we were gonna call them with the big news. Holding that incredible small bundle in the nook of my arm as that same moon came in from the window, lighting her up as it still does these years later.

As it turned out, when 8:58pm rolled around last night, ten years following the birth of that little girl, I found myself in a big room with big noise pumping from about a thousand different video games. For years Els has wanted us to take her to a place called Pizza Putt for her birthday.... an indoor mini golf course, enormous indoor jungle gym, batting cages, driving range, laser tag and really bad food. It's kind of like an amped up Chucky Cheese. I've never been able to rationalize taking her there for her birthday, in the middle of July, when the sun is shining and the days are long and the river is the perfect temperature. But yesterday's big plan included hanging out on Church Street in Burlington in anticipation of the new Harry Potter book being released... so Ella, to her great joy, was able to take two of her girlfriends to get rowdy, rifle through tokens, score tickets and trade them in for lots of cheap, plastic shit from China.

We bagged doing the release party on Church Street and opted to keep our business local but we kept our Pizza Putt commitment. Afterward, we drove home from Burlington, quick milked a cow while the girls changed into a strange concoction of fairy renaissance wizard garb, and loaded up the Suburu to drive into Johnson.

Tom was in the front seat with me, taking charge of the new Ipod to keep me from swerving all over the road and poor Bill was crammed in the backseat with the girls. I say "poor Bill" only because I had just spent the last hour serving my time in that backseat on the way home from Burlington. I was still feeling a little naseaus.

I got pulled over about two hundred yards from Main Street in Johnson. I was driving ten miles over the speed limit, which just got dropped from 35mph to 25mph so he let me go with a warning. I think he pulled me over because he saw all those heads in the backseat and was maybe hoping to nab some partying college kids coming from Johnson's one and only bar. I cannot even begin to explain the look on this young cop's face when he glanced into the backseat to find those three fairies in their velvet head wraps, sparkling wings, glittery faces and flowing dresses. And Bill.

And now we have the new book but I can pretty much figure on getting to it sometime in November... when my life frees up. Maybe.

Happy Birthday, Bean. Ten years riding this Earth around the sun.......making your mama proud.

Mocha madness

Behind the counter at the shop I have a three-bay sink. The far left sink, per health department requirement, is constantly full of hot water and one capful of bleach. After dishes are soaped and rinsed they sit in the bleach water for a few minutes until they reach the drain board to dry. We keep test strips in the drawer so that the health inspector can check the ph of the water should he grace us one day with a surprise visit.

Today was a busy day. We had a strong lunch crowd, ran out of chicken curry salad and never pulled a second hummus to thaw for the Veggie Delite. I had a chronic condition from 11am – 4pm of just completely spacing people’s bagels in the toaster, burning them, or just forgetting the order existed at all. I spilled one woman’s latte on the counter, gave full test coffee to those who asked for decaf, had to repeat every order else it move from one ear to the other without even having the luxury of entering the brain in the first place.

I learned today that I should not drink caffeine while working. And if I do, I should stick with the mellow octane like Yerba Mate or Chai latte.

The past two days I’ve had the great company of a hometown friend sitting at my counter keeping me company, meeting the locals and keeping Ella entertained. I promised him, before he came, that I’d make him one of my meanest café mochas. Tom explained yesterday that at his favorite coffee shop in Easton, Maryland they make what they call a Euro Mocha…. which mixes powered cocoa instead of chocolate syrup with the espresso shot. It makes for a mocha that’s not quite as sweet….I see the appeal.

So today we decided to have ourselves a little experimental mocha party. And Meg wasn’t very smart about her caffeine intake at the party…. Meg went a little overboard...hence all the fuck-ups (sorry Mom… I’ve been trying not to swear but the day really was full of fuck-ups).

So long about 5pm, as I’m wrapping up the baked goods, losing my mind, measuring out tomorrow morning’s beans, and finishing up the dirty dishes, I decide to drain the lukewarm bleach water and refill it with hot water. A few customers come in and I make their maple lattes and shots of espresso and answer the thousandth question for Ella (“No, you cannot have the fifty dollar teddy bear down at the book store. No, you cannot have another hot chocolate. I don’t care if your birthday is tomorrow. Right now is today. No, you cannot walk to the park all by yourself.”) …. And in the heat of all of that I totally space the bleachy, hot, health code sink that has filled up and proceeded to overflow onto the counter and flood the turntable cupboard and floor.

No more caffeine at work.
No more caffeine at work.
No more caffeine at work.

Today's Playlist

Gillian Welch ~ Hell Among the Yearlings

Music from the Tea Lands ~ Putumayo

Just Listen to It

(one of Jim's famous annual complilations... a fine addition to the shop's playlist!)

Bob Marley's last show ever ~ Pittsburg 3 River Stadium

G-Love ~ Hustle

Greg Brown ~ Dream Cafe

and for BJ ... Ray Lamontagne:)

the phenomenal Ruthie Foster

Feist

Ali Farka

Copy Gold Leader

"Wanna pretend we're in a spaceship
and all the other cars are droids?
You're my teenage sister and my name is Belle."

How's that for a merging of commercial culture? The Jetsons meets Star Wars meets Beauty and the Beast.

I drove down to the Cape to pick up Ella early this week. With no book on disc for the car ride and no portable DVD player to occupy her, she was about to implode by the time we hit the tunnel in Boston. So we slipped from one galactic belt ( 93N ) to a slower, less hostile galactic belt (89N) and carved our way home avoiding as much enemy fire as possible.

We were home for ten minutes and she was back in calico, feet filthy, picking currants and swinging on her recycled tire dragon swing. Today she was back on board here at the shop, hair pulled back, apron strung around her tiny little waist, clearing tables, drinking hot chocolate and drawing a birthday card for her Granny Jean.

My helper is back.