I am so happy right now, so very very happy.
I am at Starbucks in Streetsville, which is a village within a city and it is very chi-chi. Don't tell anyone but I have a humongous cappuccino at my elbow, fully loaded with raw sugar and cinnamon and it's in a happy Let's Merry Christmas paper cup which, as I found on Twitter, John Wiswell hates (Wiswell John Wiswell "Let's Merry"? As though I needed a reason to loathe you, Starbucks.) but frankly it makes me ridiculously happy. I like following John on Twitter, by the way. He's funny.
After two days in a truck stop where I felt like I was gonna get killed any minute, I am relaxed and mellow and listening to Joni Mitchell sing abstract jazz. There are five or six other people working around me, noses buried in their laptops. One girl has pages of music in front of her. She is slender and ethnic, a student of music, with her regal long nose and her long legs and her black coffee. There's a chubby young man in a pink shirt across from me. He is earnestly wearing a Remembrance Day poppy and his MacBook Pro is exactly like mine. There is an older woman from the suburbs, sitting at a stool at the coffee bar. Her hair is like Weezie's, the main character of my novel. She is sitting on her white down-filled ski jacket. I heart her ski jacket but if I had it it would be filthy within the first hour of use. Maybe the first half hour.
There is no Starbucks where I live. No happy Christmas cups. No earnest young men in poppies or regal-nosed music students. I want to buy a mug to take home with me, to remember how creative I felt sitting with the other laptoppers, listening to Joni, eating the cinnamon-sugar foam off my cappuccino with the slim wooden stir stick, the shiv of the Starbucks set.
You are part of another world for a little while...enjoy it...remember it and use it in a novel. Can you take pictures with your phone with no one noticing you?
ReplyDeleteI think you just outlined what could turn into a novel. What if a person not there intersected with the ones around you? Gosh, but this could be fun.
ReplyDeleteHappy you enjoyed your coffee!!
So glad you got your groove on at Starbucks.
ReplyDeleteI write a lot in cafes, including the Starbucks 'round the corner from my day job. There's some good stuff brewing there these days, but I am particularly fond of the skinny caramel latte machiatto. Yum, and clocks in at 100 calories (double shot grande).
Hope you got yourself lots of words down. I just broke the 15k barrier -- woot! peace...
Can you believe it, Delores, I don't even OWN a cell phone. I am such a luddite.
ReplyDeleteGood idea, Kittie and thanks, the coffee was DELISH.
I can just imagine you at Starbucks writing away Linda. It would be cool to walk in one day and, voila, there you are sipping that skinny caramel latte machiatto. (Must try one of those btw). And 15,000 words! AWESOME! I didn't do as much writing as I would have liked but, no matter, I had a terrific mini-break and took advantage of everything. It was wonderful. (Ate WAY too much - probably gained 3 pounds back.) And I did do some writing - I have 17,981 words as of tonight. The best writing jag I had today wasn't in Starbucks, though, it was in the car in the parking lot at Chrysler, where Dave was taking his course. No internet. No distractions, just sunshine coming through the windshield and lots of battery on the laptop.
May all the Hoos in Hooville enjoy their cups. For now.
ReplyDeleteHugs to you, John Wiswell! What in the world would we do without you!
ReplyDeleteAnd you didn't take a picture of you and the cup and the Hoos in Hooville to post for John??
ReplyDeleteAhhh, Cathy. I feel so comfy hearing about your Starbucks experience. Wish I was sitting there with you, although I more of a Second Cup sort of girl (go Canada!)
ReplyDeleteAnd I secretly love those Christmassy cups too. :)