YA Addict Anonymous

Six months of working from home and I’m more than ready to return to the workforce. No deadlines, no schedule, no structure make Buttercup a very slow girl. The work ethic is there, just not the diligence when I could be watching Adventure Time or reading books. Gobs and gobs of books.

And what have I been reading? The only legitimate book is Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. Began it in November, and have steadily made progress so that I’m in the middle of the story. Unlike the other books I’ve been reading (we’ll get to my silliness soon enough), Tolstoy cannot be read in a single day…or night, as the case is more likely to be. Like all Russian literature of that time, Anna Karenina is encumbered with too many points of view and sprawling explanations of characters’ personal philosophies and the events that change those philosophies. The character develops not by overcoming some heroic flaw, but by showing a progression of social and religious beliefs. Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment “overcame” his belief in Nietzsche's superman to Christianity’s Christ. Levin in AK has an evolving social-eco-political understanding of muzhiks and how they fit into his life as workers on his farm. As his understanding evolves and changes, so do his actions rationally align themselves to reflect those changes, and so we see the character develop as his relationship with the Russians peasantry develops.

It makes for slow reading. A few things have lodged with me, and eventually I might get around to exploring them in a blog. I have always sympathized with Russian internalization. The characters are forever analyzing themselves, their actions, and others. In that way, I feel very Russian. However, this rational alignment of actions to beliefs I do not find to be true in life. People just don’t behave in accordance to their personal philosophies most of the time. But more of that in some future Russian post. (I know, what fun!)

So Anna Karenina is my legitimate reading, but I’ve had quite a few illegitimate page turners as well. Young Adult fantasy fiction. Shiver me timbers, is it addicting! I didn’t always love YA. In fact, when I was a young adult myself, I read adult books such as Murakami, George R. R. Martin, classics (of course!), C. S. Lewis, Neil Gaiman, and loads of historical fiction about Queen Maud, Mary Queen of Scotts, and other primarily United Kingdom-centric personalities. Now that I’m in my middling twenties, I’m reading YA like a teenager. What’s that all about?

It began with Harry Potter—that seemingly innocent series of J. K. Rowling that makes the magic world seem so fantastically and ridiculously opulent and somehow plausible. It took me a year to finish the series because I just couldn’t bring myself to read of the death of beloved characters, but by then I had the YA bug. The next book club I was in was Looking for Alaska by John Green. Mister Green, I believe, has more to with my unnatural obsession than any other author (even J. K., though she got the ball rolling).

Hello. My name is Buttercup Harding, and I am a female whose favorite genre is male coming-of-age novels.

John Green is a master. Hilarious. Each character is quirky but believable and identifiable and endearing to the nth degree. After reading Looking for Alaska, An Abundance of Katherines, and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (not his best), he landed on my list of literary loves. His talent totally deserves to be on my list, but the fact that I a) identify with high school-aged male protagonists, and b) identify with the themes/messages of the books worries me about myself.

For instance, An Abundance of Katherines ends with three different epiphanies by the three main characters: 1) I’m not a doer, 2) I’m self-centered, and 3) I want to matter. All three of these I identify with, and that worries me that at twenty-whatever I am still struggling with the same issues of high school students?

What book genres do you read and why? What’s the appeal? Do you think that your late twenties is an appropriate time to be coming to terms with such issues as selfishness and wanting to matter? What literary character do you most identify with?

You've Been James Robinsoned

I’m supposed to be working on The Business Plan right now, but I’ve been working on it all day and think for my general mental health that I should take a break and write a blog about it instead. Well, it and what else is going on in my life and see if anyone can relate.

As an update from my last post, I have not talked to my brother directly about the coffee house because a) I’m yellow as a chicken, and b) I’ve taken the safer and, I’ve convinced myself, more effective route of short, direct questions. Example: What have you done today? Is the menu done? Why not? I follow this up with the list of things I have been working on/accomplished. It seems to be working. He’s done a bunch more research of his own volition and done pricing and we have a sandwich menu! And he finished the advertising and marketing plan. I'll post our entire menu once I've finished the soup/salad portion (now whose butt isn't in gear?).

Of course, he’s also understandably disgruntled (one might even guess as disgruntled as he would be if I would just man up and have the dream/momentum/feelings conversation with him) every time I use this new tactic on him. But all I care about is results. Who cares if I’m creating an unhealthy pattern of interaction for the future business partnership? Right.

Since I’m practically out of money, I’ve been concentrating all my efforts into finalizing the business plan—the one thing that doesn’t earn me any money. It’s an investment in a future job that might not ever materialize. Right. My logic is that if I can just get that pretty much done, then I can go get a job(s) and when/if we finally do find a location, it’s ready to go and I don’t have to stress about it while I’m working full time.

We go on a walkthrough of a location in the Plaza tomorrow. I’m pretty excited to see inside the building and hear what an architect/contractor has to say about the space. I’m a visual person, and seeing a location where I can visualize the coffee shop will go a long way toward curbing my anxiety and hopefully revitalizing my enthusiasm.

In other news,

>I have visited a church twice and managed to talk to only one person total (the pastor made a beeline for me upon my second visit)

>I went with an acquaintance who I hope will become a friend to an unexpectedly awesome (I expected good) show in Norman (The Wurly Birds and Deer People)

>I made some pretty cool animal broaches

>I finished Will Grayson Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan and began Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

>Grant convinced me to join D&D (I’m a fox Hengeyokai rogue [scoundrel version]) (i.e., nerd badass)

>I volunteered at the Plaza Festival, which was practically rained out but not a total bust because, boy, did I meet a character!

James Robinson is the character of which I speak, and once I have a moment to sit down and really write (as opposed to blog), y’all are going to hear all about him. He’s going to end up in my gypsy books. He has to. His long, pointed fingernails and beard balls demand it.

Until then, fill me in what weird hobbies/adventures you’ve been getting tangled up in! Normal’s for the birds.

Did the laptop jump, or was it pushed?

After quitting my full-time job, I lost a lot of my angst. I think it is in no little way correlated to the fact that I’ve spent less time in the presence of one J-Bare, who can wax philosophical and theoretical and analytical and psychological on any subject. I’ve gotten out of the habit of analyzing. This is bad because, as I’m about to show, I need to regularly analyze not only my external world (which I positively cannot stop doing) but also my internal world (which I negatively ignore 99% of the time). It isn’t that my angst is gone, necessarily, but that I’ve stopped maintenance on my internal state, assuming that now that I’m in a better place, I’m hunky-dory emotionally too.

The past few months have been wonderful in so many ways: going on a trip around the world, getting to see my little brother for the first time in a year, quitting a job with too much work and too little reward, working for myself, and having the freedom and time to explore my options for the future. And those wonderful things are what I’ve been focusing on. I don’t think many people would describe me as an optimist because I’m not smiley sunshiney positive Sandra Dee all the time…or ever. My default mode, though, is to look for possibilities and opportunities. To see what can be. That’s the definition of optimism.

This past week, “what is” crashed in on my “what can be.”* Several things happened in a seventy-two-hour period. 1) I paid my credit card bill, and without giving away too much personal information, my bank account isn’t at a level I feel comfortable with. 2) The coffee shop seems to be stalling and my brother/part owner keeps changing things on me. 3) Jasper, my big, lovable, old man dog, had a seizure. 4) I got next month’s credit card bill, and there isn’t going to be a bank account left after I pay it. 5) My computer committed suicide.

*Dear editors who are reading this: I apologize for the scare quotes, but I felt the sentence was unclear without them. I swear that it was an agonizing decision on whether to include them or not, and I did not add them in cavalierly.

The morning of the laptop crash I woke up early (for me that means before 9 a.m.) to finish a manuscript. I’d been working on it too long in small increments while also doing research on the publishing industry and query letters and working on the coffee shop (of course!). I was determined to finish by noon because my brother had promised that we were going to work on our business plan that afternoon. Since I’d recently paid my credit card bill I was keen to a) get paid for the manuscript and b) get the coffee shop up and running as quickly as possible so I would have a steady income.

Grant was supposed to be doing yard work while I was working on editing—both of us securing our temporary incomes in the morning so we could invest in our future incomes that afternoon. Just before noon, my brother walked into my apartment with his miniature dachshund and informed me that a lawn crew was about to show up, so he would be working outside after they left.

This made me angry. Why hadn’t he been outside working this entire time? We could have been working on our business plan while the lawn crew worked. But since I was crawling through what should have been a fast manuscript and wouldn’t be done for the next couple hours, I decided I couldn’t really talk. So I returned to my editing, more determined than ever to finish it and get one thing off my plate since it looked like I would be the only one working on the business plan that afternoon.

Shortly thereafter, several things happened all at once. I paused in my editing to save my manuscript, as anyone who regularly works with documents habitually does. The lawn crew showed up. All three hound dogs let loose barking and baying at the top of their lungs.

The software froze, as it had been doing occasionally.

Barking.

I told the dogs to stop barking.

Barking.

My mouse and keyboard shorted out.

Barking.

I told the dogs to stop barking.

Barking.

The computer was five years old.

Barking.

I told the dogs to stop barking.

Barking.

I lashed out at the closest body to me hard enough to elicit a yelp from Jasper, who cowered at my feet. “Shut. Up.” Ceasar Milan doesn’t have anything on me. When I have energy, my dogs feel it. And I was radiating red. Jasper curled up on the couch. Buckley hid underneath the bed. And that stinking dachshund with her annoying yip ran to the kennel (a place she usually eschews).

If this was a momentary flare of frustration or stress or anger, it should have faded just as quickly, and I should have felt immediate regret for hurting Big Boy. I didn’t. I had left rational, optimistic, analytical Buttercup. I’d stepped out of my brain and fully into the locus of emotions. In this instance, I don’t think the locus was my heart.

When I was younger and I got angry at my parents or my brothers, I would throw my shoes and Barbies at the window in my bedroom. It was a large target and covered by wooden blinds that made this beautiful, satisfying cacophony when hit. The physical action coupled with the resulting racket expressed my frustration and soothed my ruffled emotions. I suppose that influences me still today.

When, only seconds after sending my dogs into hiding, my laptop continued to flicker at me unresponsively, I pounded the keyboard with my hands. Of course, nothing happened. It wasn’t worse or better—and neither was I. The image that had been circling my head since the beginning of this episode swam dizzyingly clear in my mind’s eye. The satisfying crash. The comfort of exacting revenge on the cause of my anger and frustration. Expressing my negative energy in more than just words.

I decided, consciously decided, to take my open laptop and spike it into the ground.

It made a jittery plastic thud on the carpet. The screen swung forward and then back, revealing the spidery effect violence has on sensitive technology and the now 96% dark screen. The casing skewed slightly apart so that the laptop had a pitiful hangdog appearance. What a hick laptop would look like if Disney decided to make the computer version of cars with fancy Apples and the more varied PCs populating the movie as characters.

It was satisfying for all of thirty seconds. And then I was even angrier with myself. This is what happens when I don’t keep tabs on what’s going on internally. I break things. So now I’ve got the laptop on life support, hooked up to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse.

What have I learned from this other than emotionally I am still a five-year-old? Optimism is all well and good, but you have to check it with your present reality and adjust possibilities accordingly. And, most importantly in my present circumstances, not mentioning external concerns as they occur can build into an internal problem.

This is not usually any issue with me, but I have the hardest time broaching certain subjects with family members. Because then it is always personal, and I only really have seniority on my little brother, and he’s in India. So I’m low man on the totem pole.

I’ve got some serious conversations coming in the near futures with family members, and I need to make some decisions. Do I continue to help my brother with his dream, which I dearly want to see him achieve because I think he’d be great at it? He could seriously be the OKC Monopoly man. Or do I start building my future, volunteering with different populations to give counseling to see whether or not I want to be a clinical psychologist or an industrial/organizational psychologist?

Whatever happens, I’ll continue writing. Share with me what emotional outbursts you’ve had in the not so distant past. Did you, too, feel like you shouldn’t be acting that way now that you’re an adult? What caused the outburst or what did you learn from it? How do you keep tabs on your emotional health? (I’m asking because despite my resolve to do better, I’ve always been woefully inept at understanding my own emotions.)

P.S. Jasper is fine. After initially ignoring a proffered snack as a bribe (a first in Big Boy’s six years), he climbed into my lap and got a full-body doggy massage followed by some chicken broth. I swear I do not usually hit or yell at my dogs. They’re spoiled rotten.

Deer People, Read My Blog

Surprise! I do still write and think and ponder and expostulate. On occasion anyway. I’ve started several blog posts and then haven’t finished them due to a lack of inspiration. I read back over, think “So what?” and can’t answer the question. Soooo…I don’t bore you with them. But I’ve known for a while now that I wanted to write a post about nature. That sounds so boring though, doesn’t it?

Not so! I find, as many of my literary predecessors have, inspiration from nature. I also find fear. Many of you have heard about my scorpion sting. I will not go into detail here so as not to ever in any way relive the experience. But pain isn’t the only danger in nature. There are also deer, people.

It began…well it began a long, long time ago, I suppose, whenever a developer first decided to develop land north-east of Edmond proper, surrounded by forested plots of land, grazing cattle, and crops. The forested area chosen by the developer was cleared one acre at a time, leaving plenty of leafy coverage between houses so that privacy could be preserved. Because of this, the deer never moved out.

The past two years have been extremely hot. Grass has died, and the only green oases in Oklahoma are well-watered lawns. Enter the deer, in herds. The previous year was perfectly pastoral on our parcel of land with does and their fawns crossing the street at twilight, posing in our lawn in the morning hours, or even sometimes bedding down on the springy bed of grass outside our windows. If I was in the car and saw them close enough to the street, I would stop and roll down my window for a friendly exchange.

“Hey, deer! What a pretty fawn you have. The sweetest! Don’t mind my dogs if they bark at you. They wouldn’t know what to do with you if they caught you. No threat at all. Oh. You’re going? Oh, okay. I understand. Goodbye! Goodbye, deer!”

It was nice. But this summer, something has changed. Last month was the first episode. I was taking out the garbage, easing out my door backward so that the dogs wouldn’t slip past me. I turned and gasped. More of a suppressed scream. Not twenty paces away stood a deer. I dropped the garbage and hopped back in doors. The dogs cocked their heads to the side, silently asking me if I’d lost my bloomin’ mind. “There’s a deer outside!” I told them so that they wouldn’t think I was crazy.

I peeked back out the blinds. It was gone. I could go back outside.

Now, I ask you, why was this seemingly irrational response my gut reaction? Why did I feel as if I needed to go back inside and hide from a deer? Why did I peek outside, checking to make sure it had left and was safe for me to go outside again? Silly. And that’s what I told myself.

But that wasn’t the last encounter. The deer continued to frequent our lawn, encroaching on our house. I dismissed my nerves as an overactive imagination due to lack of stimulation. (Sitting in your house and working/crafting all day can lead to a Rear Window mentality.)

Last week I was walking my dogs late at night, as has become my custom every evening. It must have been around 11 o’clock. I usually walk them after Conan. It was Jasper’s turn, and as we drew close to the forested lot next door to our house, he stopped and perked his ears. Out walked five deer, crossing the road to a neighbor’s lawn in single file beneath one of two streetlights in our neighborhood. It was beautiful. It was what the transcendentalists wrote about in their sublime poetry.

I sat down where I was in the lawn. Jasper watched, alert. All at once he let out a mighty bay. I hushed him, and he sat docilely on my feet (not at my feet, on my feet). Too late. The deer were alerted to our presence. It was the oddest thing, though. They didn’t run. They stared. We—the deer, Jasper, and I—stared at one another what felt like minutes. And then the deer directly below the light yelled at us. There is no other word for it. It opened its deer mouth and emitted a loud noise meant to scare/chastise/in someway harm us. It did this for a while.

Jasper and I continued staring, transfixed by the horrible noise shattering our sublime moment. When we didn’t die/leave, the deer (collectively) turned and ambled out into the darkness. I was spooked. I told my family. They didn’t believe me. This confirmed my suspicion that I was now living a horror story with deer casted as my personal Freddy Krueger, or maybe they’re my birds. Yet to be determined, I suppose. One day they’ll either stand up on their back legs, shed their front hooves, and shiv me with their revealed deer hands… Or they’ll sprout wings and dive-bomb me. Which, let’s face it, is a lot more harmful and scary than Alfred’s Birds.

I continue to walk at night, comforted by my dog’s presence. Each one gets a turn about the yard, and each one has his good points. Jasper has heft and a deep bellow that’s good for scaring away critters and people. Buckley makes noises scarier than that deer, and he’s a killer. I’ve only seen him kill rabbits, but I bet he’d give a deer the ol’ college try should one attack me.

The dogs, however, have only kept the deer at bay, at the perimeters of sight, hidden in the country darkness that I used to find comforting. As I’m walking, I scan my surrounding, finding peace in the stars and beauty of the moon. Taking comfort in the importance of the armadillo’s mad digging. Smiling at the opossum waddling across the street in the moonlight, sometimes with little ones in tow. And then I’ll catch a flash, something reflecting the moonlight. I’ll move my head in increments so that I can spot it again. Two eyes, staring at me. Not close to the ground like coyotes, who are actually quite the scaredy cats. Higher. About the height of deer. And then I can make out the deer shape, and more deer around it grazing. Slowly they’ll raise their heads, eyes shining in the night as they stare at me.

Are you scared yet? Join my nightmare. In rebellion of the fear they’re trying to cage me with, I’m going to see Deer People tomorrow night at the conservatory. You should come, it’s going to be an awesome show. Their music is something everyone could (should) enjoy, and you’d be supporting a local band. Check them out: http://okc.net/2012/09/06/deerpeople-happy-fun-time/

Of Gypsies: Post II

Audra, holla at me about some dialogue. Again, all comments and edits welcome! I didn't change a bunch of stuff after first writing these scenes, so there should be fewer copy

editing mistakes. Please let me know what you think? Give your opinion of what should happen to the characters and whether or not you like the characters. 

--B.C.H.

___________

Rain battered the wooden camp. A small figure darted between wagons, a shadow bent on some mission. No one else stirred, not even the animals, who had all taken shelter with their owners, or else underneath they gypsy homes. Even the vibrant colors of the paint and fabric and signs had gone into hiding beneath the large black rainclouds.

The shadow paused before a wagon, the largest in the caravan, bigger even than their leader, Ursa’s. The rain continued to pelt the wagons, an unsteady beat playing across the camp. With one final look around the sodden clearing, and the figure climbed into the wagon.

“Elek! You are too small to be in this rain. What were they thinking? You are to serve, yes, but what use are you if you are dead? Can you answer me that?”  Pepita blew around him, her sympathies, admonishments, and plump hands a force to challenge the gale outside.

Normally he would grin at her while she fussed, enjoying the attention, but his mission preoccupied him. Bundled in a dry tapestry, he refused the tea Pepita tried to force on him.

“Okay, but don’t blame me if you die, okay? Now shewsh!” She swatted him on the bottom. “And Elek, try to be quiet, okay?”

Elek did smile at this. It was their joke. For the first couple years of his life, years he doesn’t remember, he lived with his alcoholic father, Lemke. His mother had died in a wagon accident but had managed to shield the baby in her arms. Lemke’s drinking was continuous, and the situation got so bad that when Elek was two years old, Pepita took him in. But the boy didn’t talk. For the first few years Pepita tried to coerce him with silly songs or tickle the words out of him or, eventually, just beg for a word. The rest of the troupe ignored him, Lemke’s dumb mute son. Pepita lost hope soon, too, and instead decided to accept him as he was: mute.

The troupe’s neglect wasn’t always a bad thing and had led, in fact, to his present mission. He had overhead something in Ursa’s wagon that Hazel had to know. How to get Hazel alone, though? A wagon does not provide much privacy—especially when sharing one with Pepita “the Hen.” Hazel had given her the nickname within hours of being adopted by the matriarch.

Hazel sat in the rear of the wagon, propped up on a pallet of embroidered pillows. She was practicing her cards next to the shuttered window. Hazel could never bear to be shut up for long, and as soon as the rain stopped, the shutters would be open and she, gone.  

“Are you staring at me for a reason, mite?” She spoke without lifting her head.

He nodded.

Brown eyes cut to him beneath dark lashes. Head still bend, she regarded him, taking in his anxious eyes. She patted the bench next to her. “Come, I’ll give you a reading.”

“No!” The Hen flew from her perch at the stove to where they sat on the other end of the wagon. “Girl, you promised to not use your gift on your family.”

Hazel smiled. “He isn’t family. None of you are.”

Pepita’s wings flew to her breast. “Not family? Not family!”

Before she could really get into the swing of things, Hazel patted her on the arm. “I am only joking, Pepita. Where would I be without you? Dead probably.”

Pepita let out a distressed squawk.

“I’ll give him a fake reading, like for the gadjes. Good?”

Pepita’s dark face scrunched up. A lot that she disapproved of had transpired in a short span of time. She must absorb it. It was Hazel’s favorite game. Riling her up and cutting her off before she could blow off all the collected steam. It was probably why Pepita looked so puffed.

After a moment’s deliberation, her face unfolded into an expression of mild disapproval. “You have the gift, child. You should use it. I know what Ursa says. But he don’t believe in the gift. So I don’t know how advice could make any difference one way or the other.”

Hazel groaned. “Pepita! You’re the only one who believes that! And what should I do if it is as you say? Mess with these people’s lives? Even you say that a fortune can never be taken at face value. That trying to avoid it can seal your fate—for worse. Isn’t it better to do what we’ve always done?”

Pepita’s fathomless eyes regarded her distantly. “Do what you think best, child. It is your gift.”

Hazel sighed again. She loved Pepita, but she was not her mother and the troupe was not her family. Gratitude would always weigh heavily on her shoulders for that very reason. She was not like Elek, who had been taken in by family, whose father—mean drunkard that he was—still worked for the troupe training horses, bringing in a lot of money. Elek had a right to their shelter, food, and protection. She had no right to any of it.

Elek regarded her solemnly, which wasn’t unusual for the serious boy. Hazel smiled, her momentary mood pushed aside. She held out her hand. “Give me your palm.”

His swarthy hand reached out. Taking it in her own, she flipped it over. In between two of the fingers, just barely visible, was a tiny piece of paper. It was barely visible on purpose, of course. All of the Roma were taught deft fingers from the time they were toddlers. Hazel glanced in Pepita’s direction. She was busy over the stove.

Running her slender fingers along Elek’s hand, letting them explore the topography of his palm and fingers, she slip the note into a fold of her skirt. After making a big show of examining his life lines and veins, she proclaimed that he would live to be one-hundred-ten and a world-renown bear tamer (and lover), to which Pepita snorted disapprovingly and Elek smiled and blushed.

“Hazel! He is too young for such things.”

“He is eleven, almost a man. And just because he hasn’t started yet doesn’t mean he won’t be one in the future. He’s going to live for ninety-nine more years. There’s plenty of time.”

“Hazel,” Pepita started in a warning tone.

The girl cocked her head, holding out a hand for the Hen to stop her squawking. Pepita paused, listening for whatever it was that Hazel had heard. She didn’t hear anything. Pepita turned around, searching the wagon for a noise. When she turned back around, Hazel was gone. It had stopped raining.

Hazel sat in the tree, waiting. She was going to throttle Elek. All the note had said was, “Need to talk” in his messy scrawl. She couldn’t blame him for the messiness. It was no worse than hers, and she had been his teacher. No one knew they could read and write. Their knowledge wasn’t extensive, but it was enough to pass notes to one another, which was imperative so that they could communicate without revealing the big secret.

“Hazel!”

Bark scraped the back of her thighs through her thin skirts as she jerked in surprise. “Joseph and Mary, Elek! Do you want to give us away?”

The boy grinned at her from the branch above. He must have climbed up the other side of the giant oak tree and scampered over to his current position.

She glared at him. “Your message, unless I misread it, meant nothing. And then I had to wait an hour before you came. So talk. Now.”

“Pepita made me eat. I’m sorry.”

He clearly was not. Hazel arched a dark brow, waiting.

The smile from Elek’s face. “I was in Ursa’s wagon serving the meal and caring for his animals.”

Elek was known for his way with animals. Always he had collected them and seemed to communicate with them—and they with him. Before Hazel had been found and adopted, Elek’s only companions were animals. It had been just another marked oddity about Lamek’s odd son until Ursa’s bear had escaped the year before. What could have been a disaster for the troupe had the bear attacked a gadje, had been avoided when Elek found the poor creature in the woods, suffering from a gunshot. A wounded bear is not a happy creature, and it fiercely protested anyone’s presence but Elek, who remained by its side, nursing it for weeks. Ursa had been using him as a helper ever since.

“I know all of this,” Hazel said, motioning for him to get on with it.

“Eamus was there. He was there to talk about you.” Elek swallowed.

Whatever was to come, Hazel was sure she would not like it.

“He wants to marry you, Hazel. He asked Ursa—”

“What did he say?”

The boy grimaced.

“Elek, what did Ursa say to Eamus?”

“He laughed and said that that would be one way to keep you out of trouble.”

The girl collapsed against the tree trunk, a hand over her eyes. She was so furious she couldn’t bear to look at anyone or anything. She struggled to control her anger, tamping it down, down, down. It felt like a solid stone in her stomach. But she could contain it.

Elek was still there. She could hear his breathing. It was unusual for him to stick around when he knew she was angry.

“Is there something else?”

“He said that a couple of babies might calm you down and give you something useful to do.”

Hazel flung her leg over the side of the branch and dropped the three feet to the ground, her skirts billowing out, hair flying every which way. She landed on her feet, but ended on her back in the mud, staring up into the tree. Elek’s grinning face seemed to be a mile above her, and it quickly disappeared amongst the branches. Smart boy.

She lay boiling in the mud. She contemplated throwing a fit, kicking and screaming and tearing around in the grime. Her fury had consumed almost all of her energy, however, and she settled for the small satisfaction of imagining it. Besides, the mud didn’t deserve any part of her anger. This way, the two men who did would receive all of it.

Using the trunk as a support, she pulled herself to a standing position, and step-by-step, made her way to Pepita’s wagon, crafting a plan the whole way.

The True Confessions of Buttercup Harding

Yesterday, Turner Classic Movies had an “adventure on the high seas” movie marathon—aka, pirate movies. Thank goodness the boring business of working with spreadsheets can be done while watching television! These adventures gave me a thirst to read a nautical tale. One packed with suspense and adventure. One that I could immerse myself in, become part of the story.

Enter The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. This Newberry winner, written by Avi, was required reading when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. I can’t remember which. But I can remember my overwhelming desire to hie off and join a ship’s crew. My parents should be thanking God that Oklahoma is landlocked.

Around the same time I first read that book, my family took a month-long road trip to hit all of the national parks west of the Mississippi. At the end of our journey, we visited Alcatraz, the United State’s most high security prison. Since its heyday during the Prohibition era, it has been transformed into a museum that tourists like my family can visit. My mother, being the dedicated lifelong learner that she is, insisted we all listen to the audio tour, not just wander through.

From the moment I placed those headphones over my ear holes, I was enthralled. The narrator had a History Channel-worthy voice. But even if the inflection and tone had been lacking, the ambiance noise in the background would have been enough to submerge me in that world. It changed from the clanking and cries of seagulls on the dock to the whispers of men in their cells to the shouts of violence in the mess hall.

As I walked the halls of Alcatraz, peering into the men’s cells that still had their effects on display, I imagined myself there, cutting hair in the barber shop, shanking any who dared threaten me in the cafeteria, attempting escapes with the inmates. I was thirteen years old. I wanted to be a forty-year-old mob boss. Felony is exciting!

While these youthful aspirations are—well I find them endearing. Others have told me that they’re weird. Apparently girls shouldn’t want to be Al Capone when they grow up with the sole goal of being thrown into prison. While I find them endearing, they’re more farfetched than the average ballerina or fireman dreams. The truth is that I would never be able to climb rigging without a) hanging myself, b) falling to my death, or c) vomiting myself to death from motion sickness. And as for being a felon…I’m a good girl! I just don’t have what it takes to be convicted. But oh, once I was there, in prison, I could be an awesome inmate. The best inmate. Which would basically mean I would get out on good behavior before I ever had the chance to attempt an escape.

But still the thirst for adventure chases me. Usually I’m fully content to live in Oklahoma. I love, love, love, love Oklahoma. I have seen the world. I have been to big cities and small all over our country and ten others. I have been on four of the seven continents. So anyone who considers themselves learn-ed and wants to correct my backward love of my state, they can stuff it. I don’t scorn your love of NYC or London or Tokyo (or wherever it is that you want to make your real home). So don’t scorn mine.

There are problems with Oklahoma, though. I will grant you that. For instance, adventure. What am I to do for adventure? Noodling just doesn’t do it for me. Nor does cow tipping, paintballing, or camping in the Ouachitas or the Ozarks. When I want adventure, a change in routine isn’t enough. It’s more than a need for adrenaline, too. I want danger. Not senseless danger, like sky diving. I want logical danger like mobsters or being on the wrong side of the law or sailing on the open sea.

So I have to ask myself, since my daydreams are so totally improbable, what is at the root of this thirst for big adventure? After staying up till four a.m. reading The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, I have a theory. What I yearn for isn’t just adventure. It’s that big life-changing event: mutiny on my ship, falling into crime, battling gross injustices, surviving a near-fatality. It’s experiencing something bigger than life, bigger than myself, and being changed because of it. That’s why simple adventures: travel, starting a business, going to a peach festival, noodling, etc., don’t satisfy that thirst.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle ends with thirteen-year-old Charlotte unable or unwilling to be reabsorbed into her well-bred family after her two-month adventure on the sea. She’s changed too much. The last sentence of the book reads,

Something Zachariah told me filled my mind and excited my heart: “A sailor,” he said, “chooses the wind that takes the ship from safe port…but winds have a mind of their own.”

According to my theory, I want to choose that wind, and then fly before it, whether I head toward storm or fair skies. As long as I’m pointed toward the open horizon, it doesn’t matter to me. The adventure is in the not knowing. It’s in the bigness, grandness, and uncertainty of the journey, and especially the unknown destination.

If you know me very well or have been reading this blog, you’ll understand how paradoxical that is. I sometimes throw little temper tantrums (luckily my dogs are usually the only witnesses) when writing a business plan becomes overwhelming. Or when I don’t know who to call to get a particular answer. Or when I begin feeling the pinch of my shrinking savings account. Or something as tiny as the brand of dog food I buy being moved somewhere else in the store. Clearly, I don’t like the unknown. In fact, not knowing is my least favorite thing. It makes me feel vulnerable and stupid. I deplore feeling stupid. It gives me heart palpitations when I feel out of my element. The kind of adventure I want to chase is entirely about being out of my element!

So what? Am I crazy? My opinion might lack objectivity, but no, I don’t think I’m crazy. Or at least not for this. There are several basic human aspirations at play here. 1) The desire to do something bigger than yourself. Leave a mark on others, or, if you’re the right person at the right time and place, leave a mark on history. 2) The need to escape the responsibilities of your current life. I think psychologists would back me up on this. At one time or another, every person has dreamed, what if? 3) The even more basic, deep-seeded craving to give up control.

There’s this simultaneous need in human beings to be in control and the wish to give up all control. It’s tiring, isn’t it, trying to control every aspect of your life? We’re all a bit OCD on the inside. We believe if we can just choose our friends and choose our profession and choose our partner that we will have a good life. If we could see into the future, we would pick the right path when we came to a fork in the road.

But that’s a lot of responsibility! And it also is disproved day after day. Your partner cheats on you, a parent dies, you get fired, or you end up hating what you chose to do for a living. When things like this go awry, our need for control is aggravated. We go on overdrive, attempting to control everything and every one. All we want, deep down, is to give up control. It’s too much to do to control every little thing. And we keep messing stuff up. It gets worse, and we just want Mom or Dad to come pick us up and clean up our mess. Our grip on our lives is so tight, though, that it is painful, so, so, so painful, to pry our fingers loose. That pain reinforces the belief that we not only want to be in control but we need to be in control in order to avoid pain and failure.

And then I have a day like yesterday, when all I want to do is stand up and walk out, driven by a wind of my choosing with an unknown path and destination. I want to experience big things I have no control over. I feel I can be the right person at the right time and place—if I just let go. If I stop trying to control my life, narrowing it down and boxing it in to something manageable (because really, how much can any one person control? I can’t even control myself!), then my life could be epic! And that’s what I want for myself. Epicness.

Do you ever feel this way? What is your what if daydream? 

The Cupping: Yet Another Small Business Harrowing Tale

Meeting with suppliers can be never wracking. These are people you will potentially be in business for a long, long time. You want to impress them. You also want to seem knowledgeable in your chosen industry. I assume that it isn’t just me who feels this way. But I do have to acknowledge that as a fledgling entrepreneur who has chosen an industry (coffee) that she is particularly ignorant about, this feeling of nerve-wrackingness might be more acute in my case. What’s worse, I didn’t have time to fully prepare.

Here’s how it all came about:

About a month ago, someone I barely know gave me a card with a man’s name and cell number. It was not his business card. It was his card for the shelter he volunteers at (because that’s how this practical stranger [to me] knows him). He works at a coffee roaster. One that my brother and I were keen on. So, a couple of weeks later, while staring dejectedly at his cell number, I made up my mind to call. But I was not going to call his cell. How inappropriate would that be? Instead I called the roaster and asked for him. They told me that no one by that name worked there. Awesome. Off to a good start.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me start over. I’m opening a coffee house—”

“That sounds right,” he said. There was laughter in his voice.

“Or trying to anyway, in Oklahoma City. And I’m interested in using you as a supplier. Can I set up a cupping/tour/meetings or whatever…”

I didn’t even take a breath. Just kept right on talking. And I sounded so professional. Clearly. He said sure but that he’d have to check around and see when they could get me in. He’d call me back.

They never called me back.

That was okay, though, because the very next week my brother and I met with lots of professional people and had more of a handle on where we were. Our business’s legal structure was officially formed and filed: LLC! We got an EIN. We were filling in spreadsheets with numbers. And I had even more questions to ask the suppliers when I met with them.

So at the beginning of this week, I resolved to try talking to the supplier—try 2. I was going to be professional and brave. I was going to cold call this man’s cell phone. Monday and Tuesday and most of Wednesday I was mustering up my courage and busying myself with other small tasks so as to avoid this distasteful one. I’m not afraid to talk on the phone. I didn’t hesitate to call the roaster. But this was someone’s cell phone!

Wednesday, at four o’clock, in the parking lot of Wal-Mart (don’t ask), I finally committed the deed. I dialed his number. A deep, deep voice answered.

“Hi. Is this So-and-So?” I asked

“Yes…?”

“My name is B— H—”

“Hi.”

“Yeah and Mutual Acquaintance gave me your number—”

“Okay. It’s nice to meet you.”
I really wanted him to stop interrupting me. I was trying to get it all out in one gasp of breath! And right now it sounded like Mutual had set us up for a date or something. Which I didn’t even think about until just that minute. That he might think that. Son of a gun.

“Because I’m trying to open a coffee house. With my brother—”

“Uh-huh.”

“And Mutual mentioned Topeca and we are interested in using them as a supplier. She told me you work there.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do.” Understanding had dawned on him in bright, warm, fuzzy awareness.

“I’m going to be in Tulsa this weekend. Do you think I could meet with you or someone up there sometime Thursday or Friday? If not I could set up another time. I know it’s a bit last minute.”

“No, yeah. That’s cool. Let me call and set up a time and I’ll call you back.”

I’d heard that before.

But no, he did call me back, and we set the time for ten a.m. In Tulsa. Two hours away. That meant I had to leave the house before eight so I had time to get lost. Which meant getting up at six. And I needed to get all my questions in one place. And study up on cupping. Oh God. Why had I thought I was ready for a cupping? There wasn’t enough time to do a practice! Oh jeez, oh jeez, oh jeez.

Oh jeez pretty much repeated nonstop in my head until I was finished with the meeting at noon the next day. I called my Tulsa friend, Sprinkle, and she insisted I come up that night so that I’d have more time in the morning and we could do a drive-by of the roaster. I have a tendency to get lost and then absolutely lose my mind. I start sweating and foaming at the mouth. I call people in a blind panic and yell about how lost I am. And when they try to talk in calm soothing noises, I yell over them, sometimes not even in coherent words. Just garbled dread.

I agreed to drive up in order to avoid getting lost. But that meant I didn’t have time that night to get ready, because I would be driving two hours. And I had to pack/clean before I left. And get dog food because I forgot I was out and got to Petco a mere eight minutes before it closed and then couldn’t find my dog’s brand of food which is when I began sweating and foaming at the mouth and talking to myself in the aisles as the Petco employees attempted tidy up around me and not-so-subtly suggest I make like a tree and leave. So I got to Tulsa at midnight and crashed. Except not really because I tossed and turned and worried about the cupping. In fact I woke Sprinkle up more than once asking unanswerable questions like, “What if I can’t taste the difference between the coffees? What will happen to me?”

  

We woke up at six in the a.m. Sprinkle had class. We got up, I tried on outfits while she tried to decide which one was appropriate for a supplier meeting, got dressed, got breakfast, did our drive-by, I dropped her off at school, went back to the apartment, and panicked. I turned on Youtube videos of cupping and wrote questions for the supplier out like a madwoman. After an hour, which was all I had to prepare before my ten a.m. meeting, I had three pages of notes and butterflies in my stomach. And sweaty palms.

When I got there, the door was locked. I jiggled it. I peered in. Jiggled it some more. Checked my watch. Jiggle. And then resignedly walked toward the alleyway where the back door resided (it was the instructions I was given). But a man opened the door just in time. He was tall. I was too nervous at this point to look at his face. It was hot outside and I was sweating like a pig when I walked in the door.

“Good morning! I’m at the roaster, right? I found the right address.” I looked up into his face inquiringly for the first time.

He looked confused. Awesome. “Yes, yes, this is the roaster.”

“My name is Kalyn McAlister. I’m supposed to have a ten o’clock cupping and tour?”

He just smiled kindly, as if waiting for me to finish. I had finished.

“Uhm…I’m supposed to be meeting with Bob…”

His face lit up and he held out his hand for me to shake. My palms were sweaty, but I put ‘em there anyway. “Well, that’s me. Welcome to Coffee Roaster.” He looked around again in confusion. “Tell me again who you’re with.”

“My name’s Kalyn McAlister and I’m with Trade Café.”

“Oh yes, yes. So-and-So called and told me yesterday. That’s right.”

I followed him to the back of the building. It wasn’t a cavernous warehouse. Sort of small and intimate, actually. But with lofty ceilings and bags of coffee beans everywhere. The noise of the roasters were loud. It was a comfortable industrial ambiance. And I was trying to make myself relax. I wanted to appear confident. Bob had happy eyes with long crow’s feet spidering out across and down his temples. I hoped he was the sort that laughed with and not at…because there was next to no chance I would make it out of this rite of passage without a misstep.

I had watched four Youtube videos about cupping—all by the same person, which was probably a mistake—before I showed up at the roaster. The videos concentrated on taste, and he used sensations such as sweet, salty, and sour, basing the “flavor” or characteristics of the coffee on the taste buds they aroused. He didn’t talk about smelling the coffee. This would be what I considered my downfall.

Bob set up the coffee, grinding it as I watched, and tried to carry on a conversation. He was endearingly incapable of completing a sentence while doing something with his hands. Cupping requires preciseness from the roaster. Each coffee has two cups that have to be measured to the ounce so that the flavor is as similar as possible. That’s down to the bean in weight. Two cups for each coffee in case there’s a bad bean in the mix. It’s to ensure consistency across the two cups, but also, if there happened to be a bad bean, you’d have one good cup and one…off cup.

About halfway through, someone else came over to do the measuring and grinding for Bob. He sat down and told me about varietals and whatnot. This coffee roaster is a seed-to-cup organization. The farm owners in El Salvador own and opened the roaster in Tulsa, which supplies out to cafés. They also have their own cafés. That allows them to pay themselves fair prices (the ultimate in fair trade!) but also have absolute control over the quality of their coffees. That’s why they’re so scrumptious. And so fanatical about coffee. I was intimidated.

Once the grinding was complete, Bob stood up and moved down the row of six coffees, shaking each cup and smelling it. He explained what he wanted me to do. And then he diagrammed it for me with a silly looking drawing. I was delighted. As he went back to smelling coffees, I giggled over the drawing. He had to tell me to begin smelling. As I worked my way down the line, he described what he smelled. I nodded and made assenting noises. After I’d finished he stood waiting. It was clear he was waiting because his hands were on his hips and he had a focused, expectant look on his face. Which was turned my direction. My stellar response? “…Yup. They smell good.”

…

…

His underwhelmedness was interrupted by the dinging of the water. He moved down the line, pouring an even amount of water over the coarsely ground coffee beans. I said something about it being similar to Turkish coffee. He corrected me. I got sad. He didn’t notice because he was focused on the coffee. A timer was running so he could keep tabs on the brewing. Again, we went down the line and smelled the coffee. There wasn’t much differentiation in aroma. There was a marked different in the coffee grounds. But after the hot water was added, I’d lost the scent. He told me to breath like a dog.

After thinking about this for a minute, I decided he meant pant like a dog. So I opened my mouth slightly, and attempted to breathe in and out of both my nose and mouth simultaneously. I made it through half of the coffees before he finished, looked over at me, and must have been just flabbergasted. Very kindly, considering the fact that I must have looked like a dumb mouth breather, he stopped me and showed me what he meant. His nostrils flared in and out quickly, like a dog smelling something. Which makes much more sense than a dog panting, doesn’t it?

After a few minutes, he went down the line and broke the crust for both of us. This pushes the coffee grounds to the bottom of the cup with a spoon, and then he stirs backwards once and normally twice. I take this to mean that he stirred counterclockwise once and then clockwise twice. But I didn’t watch as I should have, because I was too busy ruminating over how I looked when I was panting above the coffee. He was bent over the coffee as he stirred, smelling the heavenly brew. I followed closely behind, smelling like a dog. I could smell the difference in coffees once more.

A few more minutes go by before you taste it the first time. You wait another five to ten minutes, when the coffee is room temperature, and you taste it again. Hot coffee pretty much tastes like hot coffee, regardless of the bean/roast. But if your roaster knows how to cup properly, he pairs the coffees deliberately. Moving from a sweet to a salty or sour and back again. We started with a heavy bodied, sweet coffee. My favorite. I don’t care about the taste so much as I care about the body. I love something weighty on my tongue. This preference, I take it, is not appropriate in a coffee fanatic. As we moved down the line, I could taste the difference between the coffees, even when hot, because he chose the order very well.

We talked more about the coffees and how the business was set up as we waited for the cups to reach room temperature. We moved back through. I decided this was a good time to bust out some of the terminology I learned while watching my Youtube tutorials. I had totally bombed the smelling portion of the cupping. I was determined to get this part right. So when we reached what I considered thought must be a “salty” cup of coffee, I said, “Is this one salty? It seems soft on my palate.”

I looked at Bob expectantly, waiting for my gold star. All I got was a blank look.

“Well,” he said, moving to stand beside me and reaching for a spoon, “if you taste that it isn’t wrong. There’s no wrong way to taste.” He slurped the coffee noisily. I was jealous of his good slurping technique. He swished it around. Stared at the ceiling in thought. Visibly came to the decision that it was definitely not salty. And then said, “I taste brightness. Very simple acidity. Fruity. What do you mean soft?”

“Oh uhm…” I was blushing. “Neutral on my palate. And it seems to be hitting my salty taste buds on the side…”

He was staring at me like I was crazy. I decided the best thing I could do was move to the next cup of coffee. I made an appreciative noise and said, “Fruity. High acidity!” This turned out to be a good move. The two coffees were the same bean, just washed and roasted differently. Bob had lots to say about that. And then I asked him how he slurped so well, so he taught me. And I made some self-deprecating jokes, managed to spill coffee on myself and up my nose (talented!), and then go back through the line again asking questions instead of trying to sound like I knew anything at all.

In this way, I made it through my first cupping. I have no idea what kind of impression I made. But hopefully they thought I was pleasant, even if woefully ignorant. He made it a point to tell me, multiple times, about the free training they offer shops that serve Topeca exclusively. I assured him that if we chose them as a supplier, we would be taking full advantage of all knowledge, experience, and training they would give us.

And it was great coffee. If you get the chance, go grab a cup while you’re in Tulsa from one of the shops. Or if you’re buying beans, I would suggest the Ethiopia Sidamo (fully washed) or their Bourbon Natural. Both are big bodied coffees with high acidity. Fruity and wet and bold. Delicious.

Due Diligence - July's Refrain

I’m not so great at the whole work nonstop thing. Checklists and to-do lists keep me productive when I don’t have solid deadlines—sometimes. This is problematic, turns out, when working from home. It is also problematic when I should be working on pro-formas for the business. Pro-formas are the basic finances for the business. Costs, expenses, and revenue. Blech. Boring. I’d much rather pin stuff to my Pinterest board for the café (check it out! https://pinterest.com/kalynmc/trade-cafe-in-pictures/). See? Isn’t that cool and fun and exciting?! You can actually visualize the business! Unlike the numbers, which are the business. Or the heart of it anyway.

But I have been doing research. Real research. The kind involving numbers and talking to people who are older and smarter. My brother and I have had a two-hour meeting with a CPA, a four-hour meeting with the OKSBDC (Oklahoma Small Business Development Center), and a two-hour meeting with a host of lawyers. We’re getting their counsel for free in exchange for every intern in the building sitting in on our meeting. There were eight people in on the meeting, only one of whom will be our lawyer. It was similar, I think, to be operated on in a medical school by a doctor with a host of med students watching on in the amphitheatre classroom.

The only new information we got from the meeting was that we needed to slow down and adjust our expectations. My brother and I were thinking we’d have the café up and running by October. That’s so far away. An entire season. Well, not long enough apparently. Our legal counsel suggested we begin changing our business plan to reflect a January start date—at the absolute soonest.

That deflated my balloon. Motivation crashed. The reason why it affected me so negatively, I think, is because I’m unemployed. I really, truly thought I would be employed sooner than that. So now I have to get a part-time job on top of my other pursuits: freelance editing, crafting, gift wrapping, and baking. I’m also doing some handiwork for the ‘rents. How am I supposed to get anything done on my non-paying  (boring) business planning when I’m doing all that?

My father, God bless him, gave my brother and me what I’m sure he would consider a pep talk or paternal advice. It came out more of a browbeating on—you guessed it—diligence.

Grant and I have been hearing it a lot lately. Our CPA mentioned the bankers will check for due diligence on our financial projections. Did we take every possible expense, even the unexpected ones, into consideration? Are our numbers conservative enough? And then again, the SBDC said to look at every piece of the plan and pro-forma in 360 degrees, doing our due diligence to ensure a complete and sound business plan.

Diligence was again brought up by our lawyer. “Be diligent with your numbers.” Hearing that was super annoying because we’d made sure they knew before we came in that our numbers were nowhere near complete. We only had a preliminary business plan that focused on concept. Of course the plan needed more research and numbers. Thanks for repeating that over and over again for two hours. (But I’m not complaining because it’s free advice!) And really, what advice can they give us until the business plan is complete, even if incorrectly complete? They have to have something before they can make corrections.

So all that to say, diligence has been on the tip of everyone’s tongue. And I have gotten an earful about it. Which my father added to this afternoon. His message, in a nutshell, was to be diligent in every single thing…otherwise, why would we think that we would be diligent with the business? If I am going to Tulsa or watching movies rather than being diligent about…other undetermined things…then I’ll obviously just leave work all the time once the café is open to go see movies or go to Tulsa. Because that’s how life is. And then we’ll fail.

My parents are the most supportive people in the world while simultaneously saying everything they can to discourage us from starting up a business. It’s pretty frustrating. I can’t be angry with them, because through their connections and help, we’re getting much further along in the business plan more quickly than we ever could on our own. They do have really good advice. But mixed in is all these backhanded comments that convey to us (whether my parents believe it to convey this message or not) that we’re incompetent idiots destined to fail.

Is it any wonder that I’m feeling unmotivated? Up until now, I’ve been sending my brother action items, with a to-do list for both of us, pretty much every other day. Now he’s the one calling me and making sure I’m doing my end of things. An unhappy reversal. I’m supposed to be the annoying one in this relationship!

The number of things I need to do is overwhelming. I have a set of three edits to complete as soon as possible because I need money in a bad, desperate sort of way. Slides to edit for a relative (Powerpoint presentation). A paper to edit for a friend. Call OG&E for utility information for our pro-forma. Call two suppliers for pricing. Talk to the potential baker about equipment so we can price it—again for the pro-formas. A baby shower I’m hosting at the end of the month. Apply to coffee houses/cafes so I can learn on someone else’s dime and get some industry experience. Decide on a theme for the indie crafters thing in Tulsa in August. Get with the two friends who are renting the booth with me to do the crafts. Populate Etsy page so that it can generate money. Complete pro-formas, meet with cpa and lawyers and SBDC again, pitch to banks until get one that bites, find a private investor(s), find suppliers for more than just coffee beans (furniture, cups, to-go cups, equipment, kitchen supplies, etc.,), find a place to lease/buy, and on and on and on.

There’s a lot to be diligent about. Of that my father is correct. It’s hard to stay motivated, though, when the payoff is so far away. Patience has never been my virtue. And the payoff is uncertain. It feels as if the further away we are from starting the business, the more unlikely it is it will actually start. And that’s what is terrifying me and sapping my motivation. Suck. I’m trying to rally this weekend, and tomorrow is the beginning of a new, productive week!

P.S. If you’re super good friends with an architect or a contractor that would talk to me for free as a kind of favor or for a lark, that would be super duper awesome. Because somehow I graduated OSU without knowing one. Or if you have good friends that graduated from OSU’s HRAD program and know the ins and outs of suppliers, that would also be helpful. 

A Retelling of the Cockamouse Tale

I admit it. I’m a How I Met Your Mother fanatic. Don’t worry. This isn’t a romance story (or I’m sorry, this isn’t a romance story). This is verifiable proof that the cockamouse is real.

This weekend I’m in Tulsa. I was supposed to meet with a potential supplier—Topeca coffee—but that fell through, unfortunately. Fortunately, I was staying with my good friend—we’ll call her Sprinkle—and we managed to fill up our time. I had previously done some work for her, and in repayment, she was going to list and ship all of my used books I was trying to offload. My bookcases are so heavily burdened I have run out of places to stack books, of which I could not possibly stop buying/borrowing/burglaring. I only brought two giant tote bags of books.

It bears mentioning that the previous night she found a spider in the apartment. I have full-fledged arachnophobia. She’s not much better. I’m way worse. Sprinkle had to coerce me from all the way across the room to within five feet of her and the spider so I could be on standby with a shoe in case her broom didn’t kill it. And then instead of whacking the hell out of the spider, I simply threw the shoe at it, screamed, and ran back to the other side of the room. She ended up picking up the shoe and stomping it to death. The next morning we saw Spiderman. (It was good. You should totally go see it.)

So that afternoon, after Spiderman made us want superhero boyfriends, we ran into a situation requiring a superhero boyfriend…or at the very least a boyfriend.

I was sitting on the couch working on Pinterest—a full-time occupation in my unemployed status—while Sprinkle pulled tome after tome from the depths of a truly cavernous black tote bag. With a gasp and a bang she dropped several novels at once.

“What is it?” I asked, but considerably more strident in tone than necessary. I had not forgotten the spider of last night.

“Okay! I’m done. It’s a spider. A huge spider.” She held up her fingers to indicate a near tarantula-sized monster that now lurked in the depths of the bag.

She didn’t have to say it out loud. We both knew after my cowardly behavior last night that it was my turn up to bat. I slowly placed my laptop on the couch beside me. Stood up. Tentatively approached the bag resting on the coffee table, which I swear was radiating evil or something. And timidly peeked into the shadow opening.

Nothing. I only saw books at the very bottom. I shook the top of the bag a little bit as I muttered about Andrew Garfield knowing what to do. Something truly giant ran out from under a book and up the side of the tote bag—directly toward me. I screamed and fell over Sprinkle in my mad scramble backward.

“Not a spider!”

“What?” (She was yelling at the top of her voice too.)

“Giant cockroach. Radioactively large cockroach. Oh my Lord. The cockamouse is real.”

Except I wasn’t laughing. I was near puking at the size of the thing. And while I’m not scared of cockroaches—I’d even had a considerably larger Moroccan cockroach riding around on me at the OKC zoo when I was a junior curator—this beast didn’t belong in my tote bag in Sprinkle’s apartment in Oklahoma. It belonged in a zoo. Or halfway around the world. Or in a lab. Cockroaches are gross, and I had a full case of the willies.

But still, it wasn’t a spider. So I could handle it. I could handle it. I could handle it. I repeated my new mantra as I sidled back up to the bag, poking at the side so it would scurry back to the bottom before I peered in once more. Sprinkle joined me.

“Here, let’s each take out a book—two. Two books.”

She pulled out two, shaking them quickly above the bag and stacking them. I jerked two out as if the bag was on fire. An idea I quickly latched on to.

“You know, we could just light the books. They’re flammable. A cockroach can survive a nuclear attack, not a fire, right?”

Sprinkle just stared at me, nonplussed.

“No? No? All right. No, yeah, you’re right.”

She pulled another book, so did I, and screamed. That thing had it out for me. It was charging up the side of the bag at my hand every time. I flapped my arms in fright.

“Maybe…maybe if we got the vacuum cleaner out…”

“Yes!” I shouted. “Yes, let’s do that.” I tried to talk more quietly. We were in an apartment after all. Someone was going to call the cops. But really I was beginning to think that that would not be an overreaction. At the very least it needed other eye witnesses.

Sprinkle got the vacuum out and I had to take the attachment off the hose because there was no way that the cockamouse would fit in the small opening. That meant that the hose and my entire hand had to disappear into the bag to find the monster. It was hidden again. With the vacuum cleaner on, I shoved around books with the hose, poised to suck the sucker up. There was a flash of black. I thought I had him. I crowed in victory. And then he was there, by my hand, and I fell backwards on the vacuum cleaner, screaming like a loon once more, and took down Sprinkle and the vacuum with me. We lay in a pile regrouping.

“Okay, okay. I can do this. I’m not scared of cockroaches. It isn’t a spider. It’s not like it will bite me.”

Sprinkle gave me an even look. “Yeah, but it’s so big!”

At least she understood. She wasn’t laughing at my fright.

Shaking my hands to get the willies out, I stepped up to the bag of terror once more. Hidden again. That cockroach was wily! But I was determined he would meet his end. This time when he charged at me, I was ready, and for sure sucked him up. There would be no uncertainty though. I vacuumed all around that bag. Sprinkle’s vacuum cleaner has a clear canister, and she saw him in there. Scurrying through the dog hair (she has two pugs and a cat and I brought my two up for the weekend). We had caught him. And he’s still in her vacuum. We’re scared to dump it.

So if anyone has a good name for a cockamouse… leave a comment!

Entrepreneurial Spirit – It Takes a Charismatic

Blarg. ß This is how I feel. My brain has emitted this noise—albeit internally—ever since my brother and I began writing the business plan for a coffee house that might eventually one day be a reality. I can feel my forehead growing wrinkles. I say that because I haven’t been able, literally physically capable, of unknotting those muscles. My expression is one of perpetual perplexity. It doesn't help that I’ve misplaced my reading glasses.

Writing a business plan, starting a business, is not only scary, it’s humbling. Because you realize how dumb you are. And boy, am I dumb. I haven’t used the dictionary this much since I took geology in college. White boxing. Build out. Financial projections. Demographics. Market analysis. Triple net lease. SBA. Term sheets. It’s terrifying diving into something that is so financially threatening when you don’t know anything.

It’s as if you’re staring out across a lake and see an island you’d like to swim to. But there is no nice, easy, soft, sandy beach to ease into the water. The lake is surrounded by cliffs. Sheer drop offs. The water is full of terrors. And you don’t know how to swim.

Dotting the cliff tops are tents. The labyrinthine tent hands out free lifejackets, but you find they have heavy weights attached. The colorfully striped “professional” tents give expensive verbal and written lessons on how to swim, but no practical swimming lessons in water are to be had anywhere. And in the other tents—some grand and impressive, some less so, and some lean and drab—you find swimmers, folk who have taken the plunge and survived to tell the tale. These experienced swimmers will sometimes share tips they learned from their experiences, but some do not. Some are more helpful than others. And some speak so much jargon you can’t glean a single inkling from the conversation.

Since the dive and swim are so perilous, you feel you need as many lessons and as much equipment and as much information as these tents have to give you. But you only have so much money. The advice can only go so far. And to frustrate you even further, the counsel you receive is contradictory and vague. There isn’t an end to the tents. You’ll never feel fully prepared to dive in, and you’ll never run out of tents to visit.

To conclude, right now I feel overwhelmed, stupid, and utterly out of my depth. And repetitive. I feel rather redundant as well. There’s so much I don’t know, and there’s so much information to be had, learned, assimilated, and forgotten.

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, and for some part of it I will be revising the front page of our business plan to focus on concept so that we can move forward in our bid for a sweet location for the coffee house. A not-for-profit association bought the building we hope to lease from them. So board approval is involved. By the time we get an interview with the big britches, we’ll have talked to bankers and have a firmer idea of how we’re going to fund this song and dance. That’s when we’ll have a proposal that focuses on finances. (Oh here’s a laugh. When I asked our accountant when we should get the loan, before or after signing the lease, which order do they go in? He answered, well ideally simultaneously. I had no response except to knit my brow together.)

Of Fairies, Witches, Gypsies, My nourrice sang to me, Sua Gypsies, Fairies, Witches, I alsua synge to thee

I have been tinkering (pun intended--don't worry, you'll get it in a second) for quite a while with the idea of writing a series of books populated by gypsies. Except that every time I start, the research swallows me whole. There is both a dearth and a lack of information. Or, more accurately put, there is all the misinformation you could ever dream of and a lot of question marks for accurate information about gypsies throughout history.


I can't even find an a list of Gypsie names. They had private names in their own tongue, and then names they would adopt for the country the lived in or traveled to. Names that were normal for that time period in place. For example, if they came to America today, they would choose John or Jack or Matt or Will. Actually, I suppose that it would have been similar in the past as well. But no one outside the traveling people ever seems to be trusted with their privates names. Or, perhaps, they were just very accurate in choosing who they told. Because no one wrote it down anywhere, apparently. 


All that to say, this is the beginning and I have done research, but compared to how much research I will have to do in order to actually write the series, it's just a drop in the ocean. Future installments subject to changes in name, occupation, and a host of other things. Comments and criticism welcome. Though if you're really going to rip it to shreds, maybe just e-mail it to me. 


Enjoy!

Although he comes and cuts me down,

    I'll grow next spring, 'tis plain,

But if a virgin wreath should fade,

    'Twill never bloom again.

"What does a tinker whore know?"

She'd been nervous, scared even, from the moment he'd walked into her wagon. The incense that was supposed to lend an authentic mysterious ambiance had clawed at her flared nostrils and made her eyes water. The cool, enigmatic dark had transformed into shadows concealing antagonistic intent. But now her senses closed and what she felt was...not anger. No, that would come later. But strength. It built within her, warming her thin limbs, stilling her imperceptible tremors, clearing her eyes. 

She lifted her chin and met his gaze evenly for the first time. His head snapped back. She let the silence grow, filling it with her strength, allowing the warmth brimming in her core to spill between them. 

"Whether you believe or not is not my responsibility, gadje. I have done what you paid me to do. Now go."

His arm twitched, as if he might slap her. She let the full measure of her disdain to enter her eyes, so thick in her aura even a gadje like him must sense it. He grabbed his hat, crushing the expensive velvet between thick strangler's fingers, and left.

A heartbeat, two more, and then a giant crash as the table hit the plank floor. Tarot cards fluttered, fell, and flailed in every direction. It wasn't enough noise to satisfy the angry god inside her. She rained down expletives on the cards, on the city, on their cursed, greedy leader.

"Hazle?"

She whirled, fists clenched. "What?"

The tent flap was opened a bare inch. Sunlight came into her tent, but that was all.

"D-did that man...? W-what d-did that man--"

She sighed loudly and slumped onto a pillow. Elek's stutter had melted her anger and left in its wake a niggling impatience, as it always did. 

"It was nothing. A bad reading." For a dangerous man, she thought but kept to herself. The caravan had to leave, that was clear, but a story about a scary man wouldn't convince Ursa. Not in such a profitable city. Not when things were finally getting better. Not when it was her, an untried fortuneteller, who was doing the telling. Only Momma D believe she had "the gift"--possibly because she was the only one, including Hazel, who still believed in such things. 

A curly brown head appeared in the sunlight. "Y-you're okay?"

She smiled wanly and then returned to rubbing her forehead, badgering herself to think of a way to get Ursa to move the troupe without exposing herself to censure for giving the bad reading. She had been desperate to prove her worth, to contribute and pull her own weight. Always she had felt beholden. And now, with Eamus sniffing around her skirts, she especially didn't want to feel as if she owed anyone anything to the troupe who had taken her in as an orphan. Momma D had had to harangue Ursa for a full year before he would allow it, and only then because the troupe was so hard up for money. Her first week of telling fortunes and already she had screwed up. Why had she told him what she'd seen, and why had she seen it?

A cry made her jump, her nerves taught as violin strings.

Elek stood sucking his finger, a few cards in his other hand. Hazel sighed again. "Leave it. I'll clean up my own mess. Momma D would say it's only what I deserve after making it in the first place."