continue stirring.

Sunday mornings are usually spent with my family, at the breakfast table eating pancakes and straining to listen to one of the stories that I have already heard my grandpa tell a dozen times. Though I have likely already heard it, I strain to listen because of the look on his face when he is recounting how funny it is. It's that genuine smile, or laugh, that I don't see as often, now that his body is failing him, and his memory; Since purpose is something he strains to find, I can at least strain to listen.

It's harder, though, when my grandma is talking, and he isn't aware, as his hearing has almost completely failed him. That's when he starts talking over her, and when she huffs, and when I scramble to figure out which grandparent to give my attention.

I haven't been able to follow through with this weekly ritual the past few weeks, as the new job I have beckons me on Sunday mornings. I know my grandparents miss my presence at the table, but I have to be away, to serve the well to do, the families that go out to eat their french toast, eggs benedict, omelets, etc. After work this past Sunday, in lieu of breakfast conversation, my mom and I had phone conversation instead. The subject of work came up, and money, and she questioned my hesitancy to take a job that would suck the life out of me. She didn't say it like that, but more like, "You and your brother are so against doing something you don't want to do, but sometimes I think that it would be worth it if you didn't have to worry so much about money". I think that may be exactly what she said.

So here I sit this morning, with $7.50 left on my person, until tomorrow, when I get paid. I am switching jobs because I have this hunch that I can make more money doing almost the exact same thing that I have been, only a little less work at a nicer place. But it's still not what I want to be doing. The decision to work where I am is not ripe with integrity. It's ripe with necessity. The answer I have formulated for my mother is this: I don't ever expect to love fully anything that I do. There will always be days that I don't want to go in to work, regardless of the occupation. Teachers love being teachers but hate grading papers. Business owners love running a business but hate calculating payroll, etc. It's the idealist in me that isn't pursuing a job I LOVE, as I can find things to enjoy about whatever job I have, but rather, a job that I can believe in. I just look forward to the day that begins with me, smiling, because the work that awaits me is worthwhile, and full of more meaning that making sure someone's water glass never goes below the half-full mark.

In the meantime, I will be here serving, and scrambling to figure out what it could be.

ginger and peppermint in my nostrils.

It a merry time of year. My neighbors have their trees and homes lit up. As of yesterday, it's officially cold, wintry weather. I actually drove over a patch of ice on my way to get coffee this morning. AND, the scent of ginger has begun to fill the air, as people scramble over one another on the candy isle in search of the perfect decorations for their made-from-scratch gingerbread houses!

Not.

I was just scrambling over myself on the candy isle, and it was my apartment (that's close in size to a gingerbread house), not the world's air, that smelled of ginger baking. Each time I sit down to complete the delightful task, I go back about a little scant of twenty years to elementary school, and the feeling I had when we stopped learning stuff and started craft time. I wasn't getting high on the glue, like my classmates. I was getting high on the experience. And the past few days, I have been getting high on peppermint lane.

Some of you may not have read my blog last year, so I will repost a picture of last year's gingerbread house creation, that took place in the kitchen and dining room of my dear friend Chris. This is a messy process, even when "I clean as I go", like my mom tells me. I was without a kitchen, so she let me make a mess of hers for a few days...that's her butt to the left of the gingerbread house beginnings.

I decided to veer away from multi-colored madness for this years creation, and instead go for a classy red and white theme like the candy-canes of my childhood. I made "the cottage on the corner of peppermint lane" for my grandmother. She is a professional volunteer, and one of her causes is the Domestic Abuse Shelter in Claremore. They have something called a "Festival of Trees" every year, and various people decorate and donate gingerbread houses, which are placed staggeringly atop a white table cloth, on display. Various other people walk around this festival thing, and bid on the confectionary creations.

supernova.

Walking down the sidewalk on a cement colored day, butterflies began to cluster in my stomach. I hadn't felt their flutter in quite some time, so their arrival caught me off guard. And then I welcomed them, and told the beautiful creatures to make themselves at home, because of what they were ushering in. A change.

I grabbed handle of the door I was about to open with a smile on my face, a twinge of nervousness, and then I jumped in. "This is where that goes and over here is where that is," they told me. "When you take this out sprinkle this on top, and when you're out of that go over there to get it"...

My station was a tiny square...a beverage square. Facing the ice and assorted sodas were the multi-colored bottles of alcohol; the coffee and it's silver king faced the door. Bodies were in and out, dancing around each other in efficiency and grace; no glasses were broken.

The previous night I had arrived at the venue for a show a few minutes early. The venue was a bar, people drinking, and talking, drinking more and talking louder. I was waiting for my friends to arrive on the hearth of the fireplace, out of sight from the rest of the crowd. I managed to blend in with the brick surface beneath me, and spend those few minutes of solitude observing the crowd dispersed outside of my personal space. I marveled at the fun time they all seemed to be having, and wondered how much of it was alcohol induced. I watched the tenders behind the bar do the same efficient graceful dance I mentioned above. I heard the fire cracking behind me, and I felt its warmth separating me from the cold that was separating me from the people...All to the words of Oasis,

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cJauX_q6wI

This memorable moment solidified me as an outsider in this place, furthering the already looming desire to move, forward, elsewhere. Not because where I am is bad; but here, the want for doing the things I am doing has left me. What remains is a joyful outsider, eager to see what's outside, away from the crowd and the fireplace.

Standing in the beverage station the following day, today, were the sounds of the steam wand heating and foaming milk, the crash of metal to ice, filling up glasses, and then the words to the song that had filled my head the night before...I started to humm and then sing...

Someday you will find me
Caught beneath the landslide
In a champagne supernova in the sky

As the cork was being removed from the bubbly, and poured into a flute, joining the orange juice for a mimosa.

Cheers to change, however small it is. The small changes remind me just how much I enjoy the butterflies. Someday soon, you will find me somewhere else.

gift box.

I was thinking this morning about how easy it is to resent a season of life when I've tired of it, ignoring the fact that it's likely the specifics of my season that have helped shape me into the version of me that's so quick to be resentful. I began to reminisce, thinking back to the days of playing with dolls, and the day in particular when I decided I was probably too old to play with dolls anymore. I started to ignore the fun part...The imagination they helped cultivate or the fun they added while playing house with my cousin. I started to look at them from a different light, telling my friends I didn't play with dolls anymore, contemplating how to cut the ties. Eventually, I went all the way, putting them in a box and shoving it into the back of my closet. I threw the barbies in there with them, and I am pretty sure I just threw the card-board homemade baby-doll bed I had crafted strait into the trash can. And then, when I would go to the closet to get one of my more adult-like shirts from the closet that doubled as a doll graveyard, I would feel a twinge of guilt for tossing them so callously aside.

Dramatic, maybe. But it's the same kind of guilt I started to feel this morning when I felt that resentment toward the familiar lovely life I am living start to surface. It's the same life that was joyous not too long ago. Why am hating in it so quickly, and early, in the morning? Why am I rushing myself out of it before it's time for it to end?

So I dressed myself, with spunk, and climbed onto the bike I love to ride to the place I always go. I decided to put the resentment in the box instead, and chose Ingrid Michaelson on my miniature musical device to play a day dream kind of tune in my ears. My hands got cold, which made me a little happy; it's the kind of cold that wakes me up and makes me feel a little more alive, and ends before it gets too painful.

I opened my computer to read about black Friday, while watching the patrons in the coffee shop mill around to the sound of Ingrid, and I smiled at what I was watching...The young woman walking as if the isle is a cat walk and the little girls, not yet aware of why a woman would be walking that way, spilling hot chocolate on the table next to me. I smiled, also, at how quickly I forget to be thankful for the seasons that NEEDED to end, and have. I abhor the frenzy of Black Friday, and I think that I am also morally opposed to it. I have worked this lifeless holiday the past two years, at retail establishments, where the shoppers arrive really early in the morning to score a good deal! I read a columnist asking an economist to explain some of the appeal, and he likened it to a sporting event. It's not. Even. Near. The. Same. Category.

I will be spending this Friday with my family, resentment free, THANKFUL to not be on my feet helping people buy things.

through the smoke, wave goodbye.

It should come as no surprise to you, dear readers, that I have been somewhat disillusioned lately in my line of work.

I've been making coffee for nearly three years. Though my practice has increased in integrity since the days of automation and the three minute wait, the integrity amongst those filing in to partake remains sparse.

There is an excessive amount of care that goes into each bag of beans we pour into the grinder, whether it be for drip brew or espresso. EXCESSIVE. Their is so much knowledge out there to be absorbed about everything in life; coffee is no exception. The hope is that the more people know, the more they will appreciate. The catch: there is not enough time for the kind of knowledge whose sole motivation is appreciation. Caffeine is the drug, sugar too. So what's the request? Hazelnut syrup in my coffee, please.

There are those that truly appreciate. Adam comes in the mornings for espresso, and he sips it, savors it, from its ceramic home. He wouldn't dare ask for it to-go. A regular used to drink sugar-free hazelnut lattes. I would make them, and each time, post first sip, he would ask me to add more syrup. One day he asked for less syrup, I nearly dropped the sugar-free-sugar laden cup, and he has since made the switch to just plain lattes. He even has an occasional macchiato - a double shot of espresso "marked" by a skosh of steamed half and half.

But these customers are the exception, I explained to a friend earlier this week, leading me to believe that coffee is a thankless profession.

I received a call today from a local restaurant where I have applied to be a part-time server. Perhaps there will be more appreciation in a different service atmosphere, I thought to myself, prompting me to search for serving positions.

Who am I kidding? I have since decided that it's not coffee that is thankless, but the service industry in general. Its the product of a decision to make your living by serving people; there is no control in your sample. Uneducated, unappreciative, spoiled, lazy, rude, friendly, selfish, depressed. This is what you open yourself up to when you invite the public into your work day.

I smoked a cigarette a few weeks ago. That's right. I tried it. Not because I have any desire to become a smoker, ever. I don't understand why anyone would want to pick up the habit. I am not a fan of things that would inhibit my love for running, or squeeze every extra penny out of my already tiny stash, or increase my chances of dying a painful, lung murdering death. But I know a lot of people that smoke, on occasion, free from addiction, so the circumstances surrounding my first cigarette experience were not those highlighting the above cons. I didn't like it. The practice remains a mystery to me. It will now only be a story that I will tell, or remember to friends..."remember that time I smoked a cigarette...?"

And that's what I would like my time in the service industry to mirror. I would like it to, someday soon, be a story I will tell, or remember to friends..."remember that time that I made my living by serving people food and drink...?"

well said.

I have quoted a line of wisdom quite a few times this week. It came from someone that said it to someone else, that then said it to me.

It relates to what I have been musing lately on here about dissatisfaction and confusion, etc bla bla bla. These thoughts make for a foggy, cloudy, rainy greeting to any new day, as there's nothing, really, that can remedy the situation immediately. So I wake, think about the bleakness of my immediate reality, and then I sigh one of those loud attention attaining sighs. Catch: There's no one around when I sigh; I am sighing into the unknown, which makes me sigh once more.

So back to the quote, words that give me strength. She had returned from a life altering trip abroad, where she came in contact with the worlds unknown...Unicorns, wizzards, and gypsies, and tales of the fountain of youth. Not really, literally. That's just what her stories felt like to me, the receiver. After her travels, she went back home, to the job she had already left, and the city that knows her more thoroughly than most other places on the globe. She sat across from a friend, musing about the very things I have been musing about on here. Her friend looked at her with love and said something to the effect of this: "dear friend. There is nothing wrong with you being here now, in this place, with the people you know and love. But if you are here at this time next year, doing the same thing, I will kill you".

And that's what I have been telling myself, after she told it to me. "There's nothing wrong with you being there, Meredith, living in your little apartment, making coffee or serving food, and just enjoying your people. But if you are there, doing the same thing at this time next year, I will kill you".

cleansing.

I wish I was a bath person. Right now, when I have had a bizarrely painful day, and I am sitting on my couch all alone, a bath is seemingly just what I need. But I am more of a shower person.

I woke this morning, in the eeeeeeaaaaaarly hours, with a foreign feeling in my body: back pain. Ew.

I went back to sleep, thinking I could sleep it off.

I woke again, this time in the early hours, and the pain was still there.

Back pain has always been an old wives tale to me. I remember when I was little and people would complain of head aches or heart burn, and I was left utterly confused and equally skeptical. This is how I have continued to be with this thing - this incredible pain - all these adults around me complain about. I thought maybe a good portion of the paid resided in their minds, until this morning.

I attempted to work, to no avail, and ended up, at around eight-thirty this morning, lying on the part of my body that was producing the pain. I was there for nearly eight hours, and during that time, replaced all of my skepticism with sympathy.

While on the couch - surrounded by the dark of the day and staring at the ceiling - I thought a lot about what I wrote about in the last post - this ambitious life I sometimes think I want to lead. Then I thought about pain, took it further to chronic pain, and got stuck on the part that we have no control over. I didn't intentionally do something to my body to keep it from working. But it wasn't working. And when our bodies fail us, it becomes even more difficult to keep up with even basic things, like doing dishes or tying our shoe laces.

This makes the issue of taking care of myself about more than just myself.

Off to shower.