creature of habit

I'm embarrassed to admit just how distraught I've been since they remodeled my local Starbucks.

It's not that Starbucks has the best coffee in town. In general I prefer to make my own coffee at home (and lots of it--two cups gets me to coherent). I typically visit Starbucks only when I'm on vacation, when I need a quiet place to write, or when my kids talk me into going there because they want a treat. (It's by far the easiest place for them to talk me into.)

Anyway, "my" Starbucks has always felt to me less like a chain and more like a neighborhood coffee shop. It's an easy walk from my house, not near a highway or major shopping center. I see the same people there all the time, and some of the cashiers even remember my name and drink.

Most importantly, it has always been my favorite writing spot. There was this table in the back corner, perfect for getting lost in my fictional world with my earbuds in and my grande soy latte beside my laptop. I knew that no matter the weather outside, I would need a sweatshirt because the air conditioning vent blows directly into that corner, and for some reason the air conditioning is always on.

I guess it must have been nearly a month since I'd visited "my" Starbucks, when my kids and I went there to celebrate the end of the school year. We walked in the door and I thought I must have been teleported to some other Starbucks.

Everything was different. The layout, the furniture, the walls, the floors. EVERYTHING.

It looked fantastic, don't get me wrong. It's just...it didn't look the SAME. It didn't look like "my" Starbucks anymore. It was so...DIFFERENT.

I have never thought of myself as a creature of habit. I love travel, change, novelty. I'm happiest if my life is in constant flux. Repetition bores me. Routine is something I half-heartedly strive for and generally fail at. So I'm not sure why I'm so distraught about the renovations made by a major coffee shop chain.

But if I had to guess...I think it's because my corner table is gone.

vocabulary challenge

A word I really like is "rigamarole" (also spelled "rigmarole," but I like the extra syllable).

I'm going to try to use that one more often. More often than never, which is how many times I've said it in my life.

To be honest I thought the word was "rigamaroo". But it turns out that is the name of a song by Sleepy Sun. I did find rigamaroo in the Urban Dictionary though. It can mean "runaround", or it can be a synonym for "rubbish" or "malarky."

You know what, I think I'll start using both of these words as much as possible.

Your challenge: Use them both in the same sentence. Go!

must be nice

What if I told you that for nearly two weeks my family was crammed into small quarters, five of us sharing two beds, and at least one of us was sick the entire time. Every night, at least one kid would wake up with a hacking cough, so that I was awake each night, sometimes for an hour or more. Finally the lack of sleep and the germs took their toll and I got sick too, that annoying tickle in my throat keeping me awake. Then it moved into my chest. Since we were all confined to one room I couldn't even sleep in to give my body a chance to heal.

Do you feel the tiniest bit sorry for me?

Now, what if I told you we were vacationing in Hawaii at the time? Any pity you might have felt goes straight out the window, doesn't it?

The fact is that nobody feels sorry for you if you're in Hawaii, period. Even if I told you it rained almost every day, sometimes for most of the day. Which it did. Still, no sympathy whatsoever. I know.

Hawaii is part of my husband's sales territory. Every couple of months he goes for about a week. Since he has a lot of people to see, he packs his schedule so that every moment is filled, from the time he wakes up, usually early, to the time he goes to bed, sometimes very late at night. He rarely steps foot on the beach or visits the pool. While all the vacationers around him are relaxing and focused on recreation, he's working, working, working. It's almost worse because he's in such a beautiful place with so many things he'd rather be doing, but he works nonstop.

But does anyone feel sorry for him? Absolutely not. Whenever anyone hears that he's off to Hawaii for work, all they say (with obvious sarcasm) is, "Must be rough."

I'd imagine you could call up a friend and say, "While I was crossing the street in Hawaii I got run over by a truck. Broke most of my bones and lost a lot of blood. I was in traction for weeks. I'm lucky to be alive, but it's going to be a long road to recovery."

And your friend would probably reply, "Hawaii, huh? Must be nice."

approved for appropriate audiences

So, I'm on an airplane. Not some adults-only chartered flight to Vegas, just your regular, run-of-the-mill, all-ages flight from Honolulu to Sacramento. My children, ages 8, 6, and 4, are settled into their seats. Nobody can use their portable electronic devices yet, so when the large television screen comes on they give it their rapt attention. It's the trailer for the movie that will be shown later in the flight:

(Note: Nobody warned us, but I'll warn you--if there are kids around you might not want to watch this right now. Maybe that's why it says on the trailer that it is approved for appropriate audiences.)

In order to watch the "official" trailer on YouTube you have to sign in to prove you are 18 or older. Yet some genius at Hawaiian Airlines thought it would be a splendid idea to show it loudly, on a large screen, for everyone (surely nobody takes their young children to Hawaii, right? Clearly not a family destination.)

My husband and I, along with everyone sitting around us, started laughing so loud and cracking jokes about the absurdity of showing this trailer, that my kids probably missed the fifth through twentieth time  the word "sex" was used. We were hoping the airlines would at the very least be providing sex education counselors to answer any questions our children had about what they had just seen.

But there were no questions. Most likely, although they were all staring intently at the screen, what they probably heard was "blah blah blah blah boring grownup stuff." My 6-year-old was no doubt thinking, "Why can't they show a movie with some battles?" (Those are the only kind that interest him.) Most likely, they were probably all just wondering, "How much longer till they break out the snacks and we get to play our video games?"

But if, in a few days, one of them asks me, "Mom, what's sex?" I'm going to give Hawaiian Airlines a call.

the pursuit of...

Happiness. It's a puzzling and elusive thing.

You can have everything going for you, you're healthy, and it's sunny and 70 degrees on your day off, yet you can still be completely miserable. 

Alternatively, you can be stuck in traffic with a head cold and three kids crying in the back seat, and with the right mindset you could still feel that emotion called "happy."

Happiness is a choice, but trying to be happy all the time is virtually impossible. Happiness is dependent on many factors, the greatest of which is our attitude, although sunshine, coffee, wine, or a good night's sleep sure don't hurt. Happiness is a feeling, and like all feelings it is fleeting. One moment's happiness can quickly morph into anger, disappointment, or even despair. 

I believe happiness is basically what everyone wants, what we all strive for. Even if I decide to forego my own "happiness" by giving away all my worldly possessions, or some living my life in selfless service of others, I probably would be doing that because it would make me feel good about myself, which makes me happy.

Strangely, the more we pursue happiness--with that vacation, shopping spree, or however you happen to seek out those happy feelings--the more elusive it becomes. This is probably thanks to those darn expectations. Expectations are the reason you're likely to feel much happier walking to the mailbox on an ordinary Wednesday than you would if it rained all day on your Hawaiian vacation. Expectations for mailbox trip: very low. Expectations for tropical vacation: very high.

So, my friends? Anybody have any insightfulish thoughts to add?

don't write a novel

If you are thinking about writing a novel, I highly recommend that you don't.

I say this for several reasons, including that your life and thoughts may be consumed by a fictional world and the shenanigans of people who do not technically exist, and for a very long time, much longer than it would take you to read a great many already-written novels.

Speaking of which, once you've gone to all the trouble of constructing, writing, and rewriting and changing and rewriting and editing and rewriting your novel, you will never again be able to read someone else's book in the same way again.

First off, you won't want to read it all in one sitting like you might have done in the past, because that seems so unfair given how much work you will know went into it.

And then there's all the hairy details you might have previously just skipped over. No more passive, recreational reading for you. You'll ponder over each sentence. You'll notice every tiny discrepancy, every plot-building brick and all the extraneous tidbits.

"Why did she include that?" you'll wonder. "I wonder why that never came up again?" "Did that have some meaning behind it, or does she just have a friend named Reynaldo and she promised to use his name somewhere in the book?" Your brain becomes a full-time literature class that overanalyzes the life right out of the story that poor writer wanted to tell you.

So, don't write a novel! Unless, of course, you really want to. Because it is sorta fun.