Tag Archives: nonfiction

Coffee Shop Chronicles: It’s all phone and games

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Espresso Royale

Ann Arbor, MI

November 2016

There’s a PokéStop right outside the Espresso Royale–next door at Noodles & Company, actually–but I can spin as I sip my coffee.

It’s Autumn Spice coffee today.  That’s new; I’ve never seen it here before.  Different, a hint of cinnamon and sweetness that’s smooth and full.

I stare out the window, down the street where I used to work.  Financially, it was a great job.  Mentally, physically and even spiritually, I’m glad I left.  If I judged my overall experience as I do customer service, well, I wouldn’t leave a tip.  At all.  There’s a PokéStop outside my old building, and I bet if I still worked there, I couldn’t spin it from my desk, adding to my misery.

That was a lifetime ago, and I’m here in a coffee shop, finally sitting down.  The barista didn’t want to bus this table.  It’s the first rude, experience I’ve had here.  I asked him if he would clean the table, he said, “If you want to move the dishes to another table, I’ll get them.”

I didn’t want to touch the dishes.  They weren’t mine.  That was the point.

There were three saucers on the table, one coffee cup and a glass of water.  Ew.  Would I move dishes in a restaurant?  Am I expecting too much here?  It’s not like they were super bustling busy.  He took the dishes but didn’t wipe the table.  I have my own glass of water and I have napkins, so I’ll do this.  Besides, servers never dry the tables, leaving them wet and sticky.

My phone is open beside me on the dry, smooth, nonsticky table.  This way I can see when the PokéStop sets, and I can spin for more Pokémon items.  Everyone here has a phone out, necks cricked down as fingers type.  Several students have headphones.  One girl wears earbuds, and another girl has the full-on heavy metal jacket-type earphone helmet.  I bet they’re noise canceling ones.

Why don’t people talk anymore?

I’m as much to blame since I watch for PokéStops and critters these days.  I rarely look up at the sky.  I’m surprised I’m looking around now.  Well, the PokéStop is purple, waiting to reset.

This is not a setting for talk, especially with everyone’s insulation of isolation.  These are solitary college students who never knew of a time when coffee shops didn’t exist.  They don’t know the intricacies of speech or the delight of hearing a friend’s voice on a phone call.  A phone call.  Yes.  At the beginning, phones were made for dialing, not texting.

I like texting.  I got into that at my last evil ex-job–not the one down the street here–when every incoming call was monitored and logged.  My husband used to call me just to hear my voice; then he sent me “thinking of you” texts during the midday instead.

I miss Dad at times like this.  He’d be here talking across the table, talking so much that he’d annoy me and I couldn’t focus on my work right now.  But he’s not here, and he won’t be.  He died almost 12 years ago–11 years and 10 months ago, I calculate.  I don’t feel like counting the days; this is close enough.  Right now, I’d rather be annoyed than lonely.

The baristas aren’t chatty.  It’s-all-get down to business, an atmosphere feeding off of the students.  This place is not like any of the three Starbucks I frequent near my house.  They’re friendlier there; heck, they’re friendly.

Must be a class break because the streets are busy and the sidewalks congested.  There’s a line almost out the door.  People sit around me, gather in twos and threes and there’s conversation.  It’s the lunch meeting crowd.  The people across from me talk about meetings of some sort, and two guys set up laptops behind and chatter about something mathematical or scientific, something I know nothing about.

I like the more noise part, but it’s all business.  It seems no one is talking just for fun, about life and sharing what happened today. You know the casual meeting for the joy of company.  No one’s even talking about games or PokéStops.

I miss all this daily hustle and bustle, walking to shops and restaurants and being among people.  But I don’t miss work.  If any ex-coworkers came in, I wouldn’t talk to them, and that’s just fine with me.

Writer in Residence

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I’m planted in a comfy chair. Sitting at my writer’s desk, I try not to slouch as I strategically reconstruct the finest details of Janet’s life. I attack her biography as if I had won a coveted position as a writer in residence, focused only on finishing her story.

Sunshine comes streaming in through the window and coaxes me to look away from my work. I gaze outside to admire the winter scenery: blue skies muted by white clouds; pine trees lined upon rolling foothills; grass, dried and yellowed, but interesting none the less. There’s snow at higher elevations, and just a short twenty-five feet from my vantage point, I spot several mule deer as they tiptoe their way to the stream. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of watching them.

A new housing development shares space with these mule deer. Black bear and mountain lions are at home in Colorado’s foothills too.

Despite all this natural beauty, the setting before me doesn’t quite represent the perfect place to write that I had once romanticized. The window glass doesn’t muffle sounds of waves as they crash upon the shore. In fact, there are no waves; there is no sandy beach. My longed-for sanctuary by the sea has been exchanged for this home, a mile-high fortress in the mountains. With land spreading out so far and wide, I conclude that Colorado may afford the perfect compromise between metropolis and wilderness. Even Green Acres’ Lisa Douglas could be happy here.

But this Rocky Mountain imagery is also just another daydream. I haven’t yet moved from my home state of Michigan. That very real adventure will be underway, however, by the time you read this.

Throughout twenty-eight years of marriage, I’ve promised my husband that I would go wherever he needed to go. “We’re a team. Together, we’ll do whatever we have to do.” Now, for the first time, Greg’s accepted a job that requires us to leave family and friends, our church, and well-established routines. He and I are relocating to the Wall Street of the Rockies. We need to find a place to live; discover new, favorite restaurants; make friends; try to fit into a different cultural environment; and learn the traffic patterns that allow for shortcuts in and out of an unfamiliar city.

Do you know what people say when I tell them that we’re moving to Denver?

“Oh! It’s so beautiful.”

Colorado’s official slogan is “It’s our nature.” I can’t wait to see the state show off its colors in the springtime.

Even people who have never been there promote that claim as if they have first-hand knowledge of the truth.

“Have you ever been there?” I’ve started asking.

“Well, no. But that’s what I’ve heard . . .”

Ah huh. Blue skies and sunshine, over three-hundred days a year. That’s what I’ve heard. For a born and bred Michigander who thinks “g-r-a-y” spells a nasty four-letter word, I immediately feel energized by Colorado’s reputation. The problem is that the statistic I’ve come to love and embrace isn’t true!

When I was in college, a journalism professor ingrained in me the need to cross-check facts. The rule of thumb was that if I could find the same information in three or more reputable places, I didn’t necessarily have to cite the source. For example, I could state that cigarette smoking leads to lung cancer without the need to reference a specific finding of the American Cancer Society. Many independent and credible reports support that statement, now considered common knowledge.

So, when this writer from the lower peninsula of Michigan is being displaced to one epically gorgeous and Colorful Colorado, she wants facts, not fancy, to guide her expectations.

Enter Colorado State Climatologist, Nolan Doesken—also known as Senior Research Associate; Director of Fort Collins Weather Station; and past American Association of State Climatologists President. He has the credentials this girl is relying upon. Doesken explains that Denver’s 300 days of sunshine are a bit overstated. “Only about 115 days per year fit the classic definition of ‘clear,’”[1] he says.

That’s better than the 75 days the greater-Detroit area squeaks out. One point for Denver. And yes, I’m keeping score. You can’t expect me to leave the only home I’ve ever known and not compare it to what will be my new one. Michigan may be gray from time to time, but it’s breathtakingly beautiful too.

You know, we Michiganders are surrounded by the Great Lakes. They’re as vast as Coloradans’ mountains are high. When I long to kayak Lake Superior’s Pictured Rocks, I’ll try to conquer Mount Evans instead. When Sleeping Bear Dunes is calling, I’ll make a point to visit Colorado’s Great Sand Dunes and try not to favor the National Lakeshore over the National Park. And when family and friends cross two time zones to visit me, I’ll prepare for their overnight stay by gently placing a Sanders chocolate on each of their pillows . . . alongside a little bit of legalized Kandy Kush.

Before you judge me, dear readers, let me say that of course, I’m only joking. I wouldn’t be so cruel as to leave pot on your pillow and not include an entire box of chocolates also.

Heaven help me! I’m moving to Denver.

 

 

[1] http://climate.colostate.edu/questions.php, accessed Dec. 1, 2016.

Coffee Shop Chronicles: Coffee, books and the end of an era

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img_7200Borders Bookstore

Canton, MI

April 2011

I came here because I have a coupon.

The coupon is for 33% off one item or 20% off your entire purchase.  I’m upstairs sampling the vanilla bean loaf, and there’s this weird aftertaste.  The black tea is helping only so much.  I’m glad I have a peanut butter sandwich with me.  It’s not gourmet breakfast, but I do feel like a queen as I look over the café railing down upon the bookstore.

It’s 9 o’clock on a Saturday, and it’s a bustling morning.  I stood at the door as the store opened, and now I’m in my favorite seat here, a table along the railing.

I think, dream and wonder…why do I have only one coupon?  I want to walk out with the whole bookstore.  Right now, I want one particular book.  I’ll go tease myself and see if the paperback is out yet.  The vanilla loaf taste is still hanging on my tongue anyway.

Tongue.  Teeth.  Fangs.  Vampire fangs.  Vlad the vampire.

I’m into Young Adult books, but I don’t like hardbacks.  Hardbacks are heavy to carry and you can’t fold the covers back to make it comfortable in your hands.  I got sucked into this vampire series by…oh, I don’t recall how or who introduced me to it.  The first book was in paperback, I know that, and maybe the smiley vampire face on the cover caught my eye.  I’ve read eighth grade through eleventh grade, but Vlad’s senior year is still a mystery.  It hasn’t been a year yet–the standard time between hardback release and paperbacks–but a girl can hope and think, dream and wonder.

I walk instinctively to the right side of the store and look under “B” for Brewer.  My eyes jump from bookend to bookend, shelf by shelf.  Hardback–hardback–hardback–paperback.  There it is!  Paperback!  Tucked at the edge of the shelf, hidden in the shadows of overhead lights, is The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod: Twelfth Grade Kills.

I grab it and drop it on the floor.  I’m so excited I can’t even hold it!  I dash over to my husband who wanders the CD racks, of course.

“Oh, this trip was so worth it!” I say.  I have waited so long.  I smile, I gleam, I may even be glowing.

How many more times will I feel like this?

How many more times will I be this excited about a book series–so excited!–so excited for a paperback because it’s cheaper and lighter and more flexible than a hardback?  How many more times will I be able to walk into a bookstore, pick up a book made of paper and walk out with my treasure?

A purchase.

The glisten of a glossy cover.  The ruffle of pages flipping through them.  The smudgy fingerprints in margins from cheap ink.  The triumph of finding what you want.  To leave with the treasure.

There’s joy of being able to flip through a book for a sample; through the entire book, not just some random chapter.  In fact, by doing this now, I find another YA novel to buy.  That book is here but more expensive at $9.99.  I’ll wait for another coupon.

An actual purchase.  Even the smell.  I pull it up to my nose, to make sure.  There’s that musty, raw dusty smell.  Yes.  The delicious anticipation.  Page One awaits.

With the dying brick-n-mortar stores going the way of the Dodo, I will probably not have many more moments like this.

I walk by the shelves one more time to relive the glorious moment.  It’s the only paperback there.  Or it was.  It’s mine now.

Vlad is $8.99.  I use the coupon, but I would have bought it without one.

Even the receipt is a bookmark.

 

Coffee Shop Chronicles: Playing with Toys

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Starbucks

Bear, DE

April 2006

I expected one thing from this morning’s workshop hosted by the University of DE, entitled, “Reconnect with Your Creativity”, but took away something completely different.

I want toys, now!

That’s what the first workshop session was: toys. Slinky, Lego, twisty ties, magnetic 3D designs, balls, stretchy toys, flip frogs…all that stuff that we played with as kids. We were each given a secret task. It turned out that everyone had the same secret task: draw a flower. I thought of my college Roomie and her flowers and drew as she always did: one stem, two leaves, five petals and a cloud in the background.

There were only pink and green highlighters on the table. No other colors? I wondered. Well, these will do.

The instructor watched us a bit. “Why didn’t you ask for other colors?” she commented. “Why did everyone draw the stem green?”

“How often do we not ask for help at work? How often do we do things because ‘that’s the way they’ve always been done’?”

Woah. Deep thoughts. Why didn’t I ask? I thought about it, almost did. But didn’t. I was already being chatty. I want to be that energetic “Wow” person. What held me back?

That’s a rhetorical question. I think.

Ashley made me a thick, yummy Mocha Light Frappuccino just now. She gave me the leftovers in a separate cup. That’s on my left and a half-eaten slice of reduced-fat coffee cake is in front of me. I’m at the corner table with the sun full on my back. I’m so warm, so comfy.

I wonder as I look around how many people would benefit from this type of this. The playing, I mean, not the food. Or maybe both, the indulgence of it all.

“Why didn’t you play with the toys?” she asked us. “What held you back? Why are you or why are you not creative?”

How am I creative? I write. I journal. They’re the same things and yet they’re separate. I draw or sketch on my journal pages. I scrapbook, a little bit.

How can you coax creativity out of others? That’s a really good question. I write letters, so maybe my friends will write me letters back. There’s something personal and imaginative putting pen to paper, even if you just write about the weather like Dad always did. Playing board games, perhaps? I don’t have many local friends, but I do have my coworkers.

Everything relates back to my job. Do those same reasons hold you back at work? Why don’t you ask questions?

We explored office atmosphere. Imagine the office you want. How do you get there? Provide toys at staff meetings. Create “our” traditions or ways of doing things, not “mine” or “yours.”

I shared this with my boss. I was so hyped up over this!  He seemed to get it, some of what he has been saying all along. Think new aspects for what he has said in the past.

When is a good time to reinvent myself? Do I need to? I will be that bubbly person I see myself as, the same one my friend, Tina, sees in me. The chatty person Dad taught me to be. In my mind’s eye, I see me chatting at new scrapbook stores. I see mentioning at a crop, “Who wants to do lunch with me?”  I can invite other Penn State alums over the house for company. I see me being the fun person in the room. Maybe I’m not ‘The One’ everyone flocks to at a party, but still.

Do these people here see that? The baristas do. Natalie and I have a chat. “Give us your email,” she says, “so we can stay in touch.”  Yes!  They do emails with previous employees when they leave.

Liz beside him says, “Well, you’re like an employee.”

So…I imagine what I want to be and be it.

Could it be that simple?

Close Encounters of the Creepiest Kind

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What scares you? Think beyond concrete things like losing a job, facing the death of a loved one, and worrying over an upcoming surgery. I want to know if you’re afraid of anything truly creepy. Have you ever seen a ghost? Are you haunted by something you can’t explain? Do you wake terrified from nightmares?

For some people, there’s a tendency to disregard strange phenomena as figments of the imagination. Other individuals seek greater understanding by examining evidence and drawing logical conclusions, if any can be made. And there are the many skeptics who conveniently point to dreams as the scapegoat that makes most sense of weird and mysterious events.

Before offering an alternative explanation for the bizarre things that happen in our world, I have a few peculiar stories to share. In the end, I’ll provide a solution for overcoming the dark forces that work their way into our lives.

An adolescent boy told me of a premonition that he had experienced while sleeping. He dreamt a family friend had died. When he woke, he was upset and immediately went to find his mother. He found her downstairs, sitting at the kitchen table, and crying. She had just finished a phone call in which she had been told that the woman in the boy’s dream actually had died in a tragic car accident.

I know a woman, too, who was plagued by disturbing events that began after she had fallen asleep. She would be very glad to blame the strange incidents on awful and vivid nightmares. But what she went through felt as real to her as the premonition was for the boy in the above story.

As a young, married mother, the woman heard a noise—outside her bedroom window—that caused her to wake from sleep. She called out to her husband, who was lying beside her, but he wouldn’t stir. The woman was paralyzed and helpless during the events that unfolded. Her experience was typical to that of other people who claim to have been kidnapped, taken aboard an alien spacecraft, and subjected to invasive experimentation. After being returned to her bedroom, the terrified woman was then able to wake her husband. He tried to console her and reasoned that she must have been dreaming. In the days that followed, however, his wife’s arms erupted in strange rashes that doctors couldn’t diagnose and adequately treat.

alien

What do you believe in?

The assault was the second time the woman had felt like she had lived through a close encounter. The first occurred when she was a child. She remembered waking to alien creatures peering at her. Frantic and scared, the girl ran to her parents for help, but they dismissed the sighting by saying “it was probably nothing more than a dream.”

Nothing more than a dream . . . reassuring words perhaps, and yet we don’t fully understand our dreams. They’re the focus of great speculation. What are their purpose? What do they mean?

If you’re like me and have woken to your own scream during an all-too-intense and seemingly real nightmare, you may agree that dreaming of an evil, unearthly presence leaves you feeling more powerless than if you had been confronted by a human villain. At least we have some ability to fight a delusional person, like a lunatic wielding an axe.  But how can we avoid ghosts that haunt us, combat aliens that control our bodies, and escape malevolent forces that take advantage of our minds when we’re supposed to be resting peacefully?

The first step is to examine what our beliefs are about nonhuman, intelligent, supernatural entities.

When people of faith talk about God and His angels, it’s easily accepted that these highly regarded spiritual entities exist and influence our lives for the better. The conversation doesn’t spur sideways glances and raised eyebrows from friends and relatives. They don’t flinch and wonder whether or not we’re losing our rationality. Instead, we collectively hold to endearing thoughts and feelings about our all-powerful God and His heavenly host. But by believing in these good and protective entities, we would be hard-pressed not to also believe in the sinister angels—Satan and his demonic brethren—who defy God.

According to the Bible, God created the angels to have freewill—the liberty to choose right from wrong, to love and obey God or not. One of God’s angels became selfish and rebellious. He convinced a third of the other angels to fight with him in an effort to dethrone God, but that devil and his evil bunch lost. They were cast out of heaven and roam throughout the earth.

Since the Bible doesn’t mention how to deal with extraterrestrial beings, and I’ve never seen one myself, I’m not sure that I believe they are what many people think they are: life forms from another planet or galaxy. I’m more inclined to think that they’re a trick of the devil. Sensational spectacles that Satan orchestrates in order to divert our attention away from God. While we’re reading the latest conspiracy theory and arguing amongst ourselves about whether aliens exist or not, the one thing we’re not doing is worshipping and glorifying our Lord and Savior.

The devil will get what’s coming to him. Don’t let him drag you down along his way.

Fortunately, ghosts have steered clear of me too. A sighting would absolutely freak me out, because I believe ghosts are manifestations of evil. Ephesians 6:11 (NIV) tells us “Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

The spirit world is real, and it’s divided between good and evil. You may as well paint a bullseye on your chest and get ready to fight for your everlasting life. You are targeted by the devil. His arsenal is full of ways to tempt and deceive you. Sometimes he’s brazen enough to make a personal appearance. Often, he’s more subtle and fills your mind with negative thoughts. His goal is to steal you from God.

In this battle, let’s remember that God loves us most. We can defend ourselves against the tricks that the devil employs when he’s “looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). Evil spirits, aliens, internalized whispers of self-doubt and hopelessness lose their power over us when we open the Bible and study the Word of God–when we learn for ourselves how to recognize truth and how to dispel lies.

Sweet dreams, my dear readers.