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.)