Coffee in the Morning

I wake up to the best coffee in town. We buy green (unroasted) beans, and my husband roasts them. Today’s are fresh-roasted, having been roasted the previous afternoon. We have a fancy coffee machine that we bought used (because we’re cheap) and so our coffee is better than any cup we could get in town.

This is not to mean all of our coffee is excellent. Sometimes a bad bean gets through, and the coffee for the morning tastes like potatoes or wet swamp. (This happens so very seldom, only once or twice in my recollection, and we’ve been doing this for over 10 years). Sometimes we don’t roast dark enough, and the coffee tastes green (again, this happens very seldom). More often, we find that a coffee, although good, not quite to our tastes. For this, we have invented our coffee rating system:

Grandma has rejected this coffee.
Grandma drinks this kind of coffee.
Grandma should be drinking this coffee.
Grandma called, and she wants you to bring a dime bag so she can groove over this coffee.

In other words, 3 is a high recommendation and four is a really high recommendation, if you know what I mean.

We like big flavorful coffees over here. Not the kind you get at the grocery store, and seldom the kind you get at a coffeehouse (coffeehouses’ coffee often tastes sour because of overextracting or being held too long). Today’s coffee has a lingering sweet aftertaste, like rice syrup and molasses. No complaints here.

So I’m done with my coffee and rather caffeinated for the day. Which I really need, because it’s a Monday.

Random Thoughts

I asked Chloe the cat whether she was going to help me find a topic for today’s blog. She said “Meow” and jumped off the couch, which I took to mean “No.” So I’m on my own for today’s topic.

I’m listening to the “Always Sunday” chill mix on iTunes. It has 35 hours of music on it, which means more hours than Sunday has. I’m impressed with someone’s attention span, that’s for sure. It makes my thirteen hundred words a day look much less impressive.

Even though I have grading to do, I will not start it till Monday. I am jealously guarding my weekend, and as I already gave up part of it for a school function yesterday, I feel justified. I might regret it somewhere toward Tuesday, but I need this weekend for myself.

This is my 84th day straight of posting on this blog. I thought it was more, but apparently the timer had a glitch in it and finally righted itself. Or it’s wrong now and I have more posts than that.

Coffee and chill makes for a perfect Sunday.

Torturing a Metaphor

Blank notepad on a wooden surface. Top view

I wanted to write about the blank page I face every morning, but I was afraid it would devolve into some inspiration glurge about how every day is a blank page that we write on, and we have the choice of what to write on it every day. A little cliche for me to start the morning with.

Every day is not a blank page. It’s another page in a never-ending story, complete with themes, plots, and foreshadowing. The theme for this week has been “People at work do nice things”, which has been almost magical. One of the plots has been “Lauren is starting to write again, but slowly.” We often do not see the shape of the story except in retrospect, which makes the metaphor very limited.

I don’t like the page as a metaphor for life, unless it’s one of those “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, where your life branches when you commit to a certain activity. With unlimited choices, there are infinite branches. Sometimes the plot doesn’t make sense, even in retrospect.

I’ve tortured this metaphor enough. Time to write the story of my day.

Slow Progress

I’ve been writing, but slowly. I’ve gotten an average of 1400 words a day for the last three days, which is much less than my previous goal of 2000. But I’m writing, which is better than I had been doing for a while.

I’m not sure why the flow isn’t there. I’d like to blame the book and the fact that it’s coming out too compact, but I think it might be me. I still worry about whether I am still a writer or another phase of my life is coming in. I have been writing for over 10 years. What would I do with myself if I were not writing? Probably nap a lot. I feel like I would nap really well. Can I be a professional napper?

I know I’ve talked this way before and come out of it. I also know I’ve been much more prolific with my quick-reading books than I have had any right to be. Should I panic? Probably not.

Basic Personal Finance

Daily writing prompt

What’s something you believe everyone should know.

View all responses

I believe everyone should take a basic personal finance course.

What topics should the personal finance class cover? Budgeting, decision-making, banking choices, the earning of interest, credit use, and consumer insurance. Investing can wait, although a basic class in that might also be welcome.

The sellers of financial services don’t have our best interests in mind. Banks can offer accounts with quickly compounding penalties for overdrawn accounts, and other hidden fees. Lenders can be predatory, with high interest rates and other fine print. Insurance agents sometimes offer life insurance policies that are more suited to make money for the company than serving the consumer.

Every consumer should be an informed consumer. It’s the only way to navigate the financial services market and win.

Yesterday’s Writing Session

I wrote 1450 words yesterday, which is good for not having written for a little while. It’s going slow. I hope I have time to write some today, because I need to get back into it and this story is at least somewhat motivating.

I’m a little scared that maybe I’m done with writing and just don’t know it yet. It’s been a couple months since I’ve done any serious writing, and for some reason I don’t seem to have the time for it. i write the blog every day, sure, but have I run out of novels? Lost the temptation to write something new?

I need a solid session of writing today after classes. That should give me a couple hours of writing time. Wish me luck.

A NaNo Alternative?

I am looking forward to starting the new book. There is hope for me and writing.

I’m trying to find a substitute for NaNo, as I will not be doing it this year because of their stance on AI. So far, the only thing I have found is in French, which will not happen, as my French is negligible. I need to find a word count motivator that doesn’t cost me any money.

I did a search on the Internet and found a few. The one I decided to use was MyWriteClub, which is a simple word count tracker. It doesn’t have the bells and whistles and community of NaNo, but it is a word count tracker. The one problem with it is that, when I made my account and goal, it made me start it today instead of November 1. So I guess I’m writing today.

What I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up

Daily writing prompt

What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?

View all responses

When I was a child, I wanted to be a poet. I remember announcing this to my mother, who said, “Do you like to eat? You’ll starve as a poet.” She didn’t know about academia, where someone could get a Ph.D. and teach in composition and creative writing while getting paid for writing poetry. It’s just as well I didn’t take that path, though; I might have taken well to that unit in poetry as a third-grader, but I’m not enthused with my poetry now.

Then, in Junior High, I wanted to be a doctor. Then I had some medical issues, and I realized I didn’t like doctors. They were abrupt and rude. They didn’t explain things to me and I was the patient. I wouldn’t have made a bad doctor, because in college I loved my physiology and microbiology classes. Chemistry, not so much. I still love medical stuff and try to diagnose people on reruns of Emergency! (American TV show, circa 1972) all the time.

The common wisdom is that the average college student changes majors seven times before they graduate. I think this is a gross exaggeration, but I did change my major three times from dietetics to food and nutrition to foods in business. Still, that wasn’t my final destination.

I didn’t want to become a college professor until college, because I hadn’t been exposed to the job. I had a friend in college whose father was a college professor, and I liked the way he had been brought up. It was only a matter of figuring out what I would be a professor of. My senior year, I discovered family economics and my career path was clear.

I joke sometimes that I still don’t know what I want to do once I grow up, but I have been a college professor for over 30 years, so I guess that’s what I am now.

Sunday Lazy Sunday

I have nothing planned for today. It’s Sunday, and I want to soak up all the leisure I can before the work week starts tomorrow. I just woke up, and a nap feels like a good idea already. I’d do better drinking a cup of coffee and listening to chill music, which is what I’m doing right now.

The coffee is strong and the music mellow. A good combination, but I’m still sleepy. It’s only 7 AM, so I have a whole day of nothing ahead of me. I will probably do something, though — I have some internet searches for the upcoming novel.

Here’s a picture of Chloe doing what I feel like doing today:

Lyrics to an Old Song I Wrote

Chicken wire and crepe paper
wrapped around a hayrack,
towed behind a pickup
in the homecoming parade
in a town as small as this one,
maybe smaller, but that was
too long ago, my distant past,
my childhood a charade

CHORUS:
I had a dream last night
you turned around and asked me why
I wasn't coming home again --
I couldn't tell you (2x)

Traps set in the corners
of the hallways of my high school,
memories like tigers
crouched and ready there to spring;
tried to do my best 
to be invisible, but that was impossible,
a waste of time,
a waste of everything.

CHORUS

Tried to tell the people
with their eyes glued to the tv set
to look at something else
besides the color of their hate
I was just a child then
but I wasn't, but that was 'cause
I couldn't be, 
it wasn't fair,
you can't go back to change my fate

CHORUS