Morning Coffee

I always wake up a touch grumpy. I don't want to have to go to work, because sometimes work is just plain boring and I have a million other, better, things to do. I suppose I should be career-oriented, but since I've never been, how the heck am I supposed to start NOW?

And then about five or ten minutes after I'm up, as I start getting ready for the day and doing all those morning things you have to do to make the body presentable and sociable and non-grumpy, I always (always) get this wave of positive energy flowing. Even before the coffee. Usually when I'm shaving or washing my face or putting on a shirt. It's a feeling where - hey, you know, I feel pretty good here. Life could be a whole lot worse, and even the daily stuff that has always made and still makes me cranky is really nothing when you put it all in perspective.

For one thing I still have a job, and there's a lot of people in a lot more desperate positions than I'm in. That's for sure.

I follow the same route to work and can probably drive it blindfolded. And three times out of five I stop at the same place for coffee. I don't know how it happens that all these people seem to know each other's names. Nobody knows my name, though I'm here all the time. I'm not exactly sure how that happens. But here's where I listen to the way people talk and how language is used by real people, and I am always subconsciously taking those kind of notes to put into the writing.

I get back in the car with my coffee and have to hold it in one hand until I get over the bump and drive around the construction barricades, so I'm like a rodeo rider in my MINI - one hand on the wheel, the other holding my cup like my arm is a shock absorber so I don't spill coffee all over the magic carpet. And off I go. Sometimes I have NPR on and sometimes the progressive music station from Northwestern or the jazz station nobody seems to know about but me. Sometimes the oldies. Depends on how I feel.

There needs to be a Motown station. You have no idea how cool it was to be a freshman and be one of maybe twelve people in an all white high school back in 1968 who was into Motown. You listen to those songs now and they're pretty dated. Still have a move to bust in there, but you know - they ARE more than 40 years old.

And yet... I think having it in there somewhere is why I feel good every morning five minutes after waking up grumpy. With the reunion coming up for the graduating class, and it being such a time span now, you think about stuff like that.

Ha. Thinking about the handful of us who weren't into the Monkees or the Archies (oh my ever loving GAWD) like the rest - we were pretty cool. Hard for you to pick up on, maybe. But it's part of the thing...

Link to it.