Month: May 2015

          

    I spent all of yesterday at Book Con 2015 in Manhattan.    It was wall to wall writers, readers, publishers, fans, and celebrities. I’m not sure which presentation was the most interesting, which was the most inspiring, or which was the most meaningful, and I could write forever about it.   But since none of us have that kind of time I thought I would summarize some of the highlights of what I brought home yesterday from  BookCon.

1.  New Yorkers are the most colorful, interesting, interested and friendliest people in the world.  Even when it’s hot and crowded and you’re hungry and tried.  I love every one of them.

2. Celebrities turned authors are really smart people.

3. Every woman in a long line for the ladies room is thinking “We should just take over that men’s room too, ” and it only takes one of us to say it out loud before the army forms into guards, monitors, and infiltrators.

4. Macaroni and Cheese is a popular focus for a surprising number of  cookbooks.

5. There’s a crazy number of ways to get from where you are to where you want to be.    It all depends on how badly you want to be there and how willing you are to navigate the the obstacles that get in your way.

I have to mention too that I brought home a lot of swag and a couple of new books.   Next year I will do a little advanced planning, like bringing lunch.  I did trade a guy my John Green ticket for a bag of trail mix.   I had to leave early and my daughter was hungry.

 

 

Starbucks makes me crazy.  When you make a pot  of supermarket coffee and drink it from your finest “You’re #1” mug, two things happen: you spend about a dime, and there’s not a lot of landfill.  But it isn’t really just the money or the garbage that I resent about Starbucks, it’s also how their most frequent customers take a transcendent thing like a cup of premium coffee completely for granted.

I grew up when the electric percolator was modern technology. Ours sat on the table or the kitchen counter (really just a wood plank balanced between the stove and the sink), and every day my mother filled it with water, added some measurement of coffee and set it to work. Through the glass dome on the lid I watched the liquid repeatedly appear and reappear a darker color each time, and with with every hue came an increased aroma of brewing coffee.  Every day it seemed magical to me that my mom knew the exact moment when it was ready  to pour.

One day my mother moved the percolator from the makeshift counter top and put a brand new mixer there. She announced with glee that we were going to make a cake. My job (which I did with intense purpose) was to crack eggs and check measurements and then press “start.” I counted seconds aloud to pass the time since two minutes is an eternity when you’re six, but somewhere around second 45 there began a loud and regular thumping and then a pulsing vibration. The wood plank slipped from its perch and everything on it, including the churning mixer went crashing to the floor. My mother held her arm in front of my body to protect me from flying cake batter and I watched as the power cord sprang from the outlet and whipped through the air like an angry snake, until finally the plug on the end of it hit the floor and everything went silent. I waited for her to speak, to say anything about what I should do but she just stood there.

I studied her face as she surveyed the stripes of cake batter that covered the entire kitchen, ceiling to floor, every wall, the chairs, the table, and the appliances. Her lips were slightly parted when she turned completely around to take in the entirety of the cake batter carnage. Finally she put her hands on my shoulders, looked down at me and said,  “Helen, I think we should go out and get a cup of coffee.” She nodded approvingly of her own decision, grabbed her purse and my hand and we walked to the nearby luncheonette.

Soon we were seated at a table for two, on chairs with worn gray vinyl cushions and a laminate tabletop that had speckles of red and silver.   A pleasant waitress greeted us and took the order – one cup of coffee for mom and one cup of milk for me, both in white handled cups with saucers please. The waitress smiled as she turned away. Things were improving. Quickly she brought two cups exactly as ordered and placed them in front of us. “Can I get you anything else?” She asked. Mom smiled broadly and said, “No, this is all we need right now thanks.”

I pushed my cup and saucer closer to my mothers so she could transfer some of her coffee into my milk until it turned light beige. Then we raised our cups, took our first sips and finally exhaled. Mom kept one hand around her coffee cup and the other hand moved through the air as she talked. I don’t really remember the exact conversation but I do know that in the next thirty minutes all of that mess in the kitchen changed from one herculean task to something small we’d take care of later, after we had a little time to get the right perspective, and maybe some cake. Occasionally the waitress stopped by and offered us a “warmer”, which my mother happily accepted, and when we left, mom paid with a dollar and I put the change on the table for a tip.

So my point is “Hey there Starbucks enthusiasts, you’re missing the point!” Coffee out should be savored, a side dish to great thinking, conversation, or dessert. It shouldn’t be regarded as overpriced fast food (or beverages). USA today has a handy calculator so we can feel empowered or horrible at the amount we spend on coffee in paper cups.  And that doesn’t figure in the cost to eliminate the 2.3 billion paper cups they hand out every single year.

Coffee Costs Click Here

 And what about the tip cup at the cash register? We are expected to leave a tip even before we’ve had any product and the only service we get is when over the din of the espresso machine, milk steamer and indie music tracks, a voice calls out the name they wrote on the paper cup so we can get up and fetch it.

But I have to admit, sometimes I do walk in to Starbucks, order a $5.65 Grande Cappuccino with an extra shot vanilla syrup, and I don’t complain about it.  It’s my mid week fuel and sometimes my lunch.   But then I also hear Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail, (1998), every time and I’m reminded that times have changed, and so has the coffee shop…

 

“The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don’t know what the hell they’re doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self …  Nora Ephron

So I ask myself is that enough value right there? Could be. But still, Starbucks makes me crazy.

 

I have a hard time with Mother’s Day, forgive me children.  Before you, I would visit my mom, we had lunch, I gave her flowers,  and that made us both really happy.

Then enter a move, a mother in law, three kids and deep sense of obligation to drag us all from our house to my mother’s and then to my in-law’s, making sure no one was disappointed. But the truth is that as much as I did want to see them happy, what I really wanted to say was, “Can you all just leave me out? Let me stay home and watch TV? I want to eat a really good plate of French Fries and read a book while you all go out and visit.   Before you go just clean the house even a little bit so I feel better being here, and then when you all come home, you make dinner, clean up, and let me be the first one to go to bed?   Please?”

 I never said that until the year after I lost my own mom. I figured she’d want me to be happy so I asked my husband to take my mother in law and the kids all to visit his family an hour away. Then fate and an inattentive driver stepped in,  crashed into our car and sent the lot of them all back to me for the rest of the day.   As my mother would say, “Just be happy nobody got hurt.”

I don’t mean to say I hate Mother’s Day, although I do think it’s unfair to celebrate a holiday with inflated prices and guilt, particularly when some of us miss our moms, or miss being one.

This year my daughter is working, my husband is traveling which leaves me with two daughters at home.   We saw grandma Chibnik yesterday, and sadly we will only have my mom in spirit, but happy ones.   I kind of want to go to the mall and forget about the pile of dirty clothes.   I want to pick out a new purse, eat crappy food, and  remember this mother’s day as one of low stress, and high self love.

This morning I got cards and presents and hugs.   My spa plans didn’t work out but that’s okay.   I can always look at the kids who call me mom and know that I don’t need a holiday to feel special. Just look at my hand painted wine glass, fancy new watch and my new coffee mug. It’s more than enough. Now I can drink coffee and check when it’s time to switch to a nice glass of Pinot. Just boycott the $5.99 Hallmark cards and throw in a T-shirt that says your love is all the gift I need.  Well, maybe love and a small token of your appreciation.

Happy Mother’s Day