Starbuck's Wars

 
Ok, so a few days ago, I made my very first pot of coffee in my life. I was trying to copy  Starbuck’s Mocha Frappuccino Light. I know there are probably a million recipes out there but I decided to wing it. Coffee, ice, chocolate syrup, how hard could it be? Fortunately the coffee can had directions on how to make coffee so I just doubled it to make espresso. By the end, I was having the equivalent of six cups of coffee…with ice and chocolate syrup.  My ice didn’t blend as well as Starbuck’s ( I may have needed milk) but it was still not horrible for a first try.



I slurped it down on the way to the gym and pretended that it wasn’t bitter and that the ice wasn’t chunky. Mmmm, a frozen drink on a hot summerish day. It was almost like being on vacation. I think it was the first time I have ever been  sweating while walking into the gym. Who am I kidding? It would be even be odd for me to be sweating after a “work out”. When I got there I looked in the mirror and my face was red, my ears were glowing and I was starting to glisten. Oh yeah, I was feeling the burn and I hadn’t even started.  I was pretty much soaking wet when I was done. Now I am no brain scientist but I am pretty sure that I made an important discovery today. Move over Amsterdam scientists, I have discovered the cause of global warming: humans consuming fancy coffee. Yes, it became quite evident to me after consuming my mocha crappuccino that the areas around me got warmer. Everywhere I went was hotter, noticeably hotter…because of me. Combine my internal combustion and the warm fuzzy of something yummy and I am pretty sure that my core temperature had gone from 98.6 to at least 99.6, maybe even 100. That one to two degrees of difference can make all the difference in the world. This was huge…potentially more huger.



Then it really hit me, Starbuck’s have been popping up all over the country , especially after Y2K. This is also about the time that scientists from other countries started noticing polar bears having to jump off of icebergs into the frigid, icy but not frozen water. Oh yes, I had figured it out. Drinking fancy coffee causes the air around us to heat up because we are little walking portable heaters whose temperatures have just gone up…thus, we heat up and destroy the earth. I was pretty sure I was on to something and then I saw this:

 

It was an unmarked cup but I can tell; I can tell. What a discovery I have made. I thought more about it and remembered that I had double brewed my coffee to make espresso. Coffee…doubled…Co x2 …could it be…..holy cow/sweet baby Moses floating down the river Nile/ Samson with a high and tight…I had hit it, hit it big. All I know right now is that I have got to get the word out. I am going to need some press, and maybe a haircut. Maybe I can get someone to make a movie or a video about it and put it on Youtube.



 I know is that it’s been hot everywhere I have been this afternoon. The effect seems to be pretty long lasting too. I went on the square tonight and walked around and before I knew it, it was raining off and on. Freaky, that is the only way to describe it. The climate was changing from wet to dry to wet to dry all because I had consumed some fancy coffee. This is “end of the world” kind of stuff.



Wow, so Starbuck’s is enabling us to destroy the world and we are too addicted to our frou frou caffeine and the warm fuzzy feeling it gives us to notice it or to care. I know I can’t stop, nor do I really, really want to.  I’ll be buzzing tomorrow and until they come up with a decent alternative, I’ll just have to create a little heat. Sorry polar bears but you will just have to hang out on ice bergs, swim in freezing water and eat raw fish, or even be forced to consume the unthinkable, baby seals. So polar bears, until someone can create a non-dangerous frou frou coffee or until they can get you to a zoo in Florida and give you chicken tenders and vitamin pellets you are going to have to “make do” for a while.



Starbuck’s are here to stay, I am afraid; they are everywhere and just too big to fail. We rely on them to get us to work and back home again. I don’t see any easy way out of this. I have no intention of giving up my frozen coffee but I still feel the urge to save the world. There just is no answer…unless we could somehow offset the impact of Starbuck’s by taxing it. Maybe that would slow down the consumption and we could use that money to research alternatives…but not too quickly , just in case this tax thing generates a lot of money, plus, I need my frappaccino to keep me going to and from work.



Really, I don’t mind being the face of the person that saved the world and I don’t mind telling everybody about my discovery and our possible course of actions. As a matter of fact, put me in the pyramid for the tax collection and I’ll just go ahead and say “yes” to being the spokesperson for the cause. I mean, I wouldn’t want to open this Pandora ’s Box for nothing. It would be a great cause, saving the earth and all, but if I am going to stick my neck out and go up against the big coffee companies and save the world and make fancy coffee become even more expensive, I don’t think I should do it all for free.  I am going to need a little something to offset the costs; it’s the least I could ask for.



Well, I am off to find scientists to prove my theory. I also think we should start by stopping the farming of coffee beans here in America. It’s the least we can do to show everyone that we are serious about this discovery. That would a good start. The best coffee beans come from Colombia anyway  and I have a feeling I could work out a pretty sweet contract that would give me that ocean front retirement property I’ve always wanted in South America. Wow, I need to start contacting people. Maybe I'm more smarter than I think I am. Maybe I should have been a rocket surgeon or brain scientist.  All I know is that I’m going to need to get to work; this is going to require caffeine and wifi…

Occupying Grounds

 
I didn’t know that I pride myself in not being clueless but after tonight, I realized it. I have a new client that is a talker. He can talk two hours straight without coming up for air. Tonight we decided to meet at a coffee shop to write up an offer. It was…intense. Looooooots of talking. Anyway, we had our heads buried in papers and explanations and I noticed that we suddenly had a large 20 something crowd come in and that they were pulling chairs around and over for themselves. We just stayed  focused and talked…and talked and signed and talked.

At the end of our last scribble I sat up straight for the first time in over an hour and looked around. All the tables and chairs had been pulled to the other side of the room and everyone in the room was either sitting at the tables or standing behind the tables. The odd thing is that everyone was facing me. There was a large gap between my table and the rest of the tables. It was odd and very Stephen King. I looked to my right, only about two to three feet away max, and there stood a musician, a row of microphones, three other musician/singers to his right, and large speakers sitting up on large stands.



What had just happened? The nearest musician was standing there holding his guitar and looking at me. Then we had this conversation:

Me: Is there about to be live music in here or something?

Musician: Uh…yeah. The coffee shop closed over thirty minutes ago. Me: So, am I sitting on your stage?

Musician:Uh…yes. We need this whole area. We are about to have a music thing…a private music thing. You kinda need to ...yeah

 

I looked at the crowd that was looking at me, the arrangement of the room, the band, and I suddenly felt so clueless. I was “that guy” . My client had had his back to everyone and had an excuse. He jumped up and grabbed all the paperwork and started apologizing for the both of us. All I could do was stand there and turn red.. I have no idea how long the crowd had been focusing on us and wondering what was wrong with “the old guys” but they had a look of growing restless and it all seemed to be focused on me. That's a lot of bad juju; I could feel it.



I still can’t believe I was that “out to lunch”, completely clueless. I had noticed the place had a whole new crowd that came in and I knew that people were moving chairs and I saw a few speakers come through the doors but I just didn’t pay THAT much attention to it all and didn’t put all the puzzle pieces together.  I don’t think I can go back there for a while. I am so glad the band didn’t start up before I moved. I am a bit surprised that nobody came up and told us but I guess they thought it was obvious and that I was trying to do some kind of “occupy” thing.  My client and I stood outside for another thirty minutes where he explained the difference between aluminum tow bars and ….something,  but after a while, all that water and iced herbal tea called nature who in turn sent me a text. I told my client that I was sorry but I had to go…literally. I power-walked back into the coffee shop since “time was of the essence” and decided to go into the side door from which I had made my quick but tardy exit. I was afraid the front door might have been locked or that I would once again draw too much focus. I quickly made my way  across the parking lot and burst through the side door. I looked up and I was on stage…on stage…nice. All I needed was a microphone. That’ll put the brakes on the old bladder. I can’t imagine what the crowd, or band, was thinking when they saw me re-enter the coffee shop…on stage. I heard one of the stagehand/ sound guys say, “ok…well…” but I had to stay focused, head down, pace quick. The band kept on playing; they were real professional amateurs. I on the other hand, possibly from doing too many plays in college, looked up at the crowd, smiled and waved . It was one of those “hello, please keep your seats” kind of waves. I did have a fear that someone was going to stop me or tackle me or something but they just all sort of moved out of the way.



I left out of the front door and my client was still standing outside wanting to talk some more. I couldn’t . I was so embarrassed and horrified…I was, once again, embarrified. Being clueless is not something I am comfortable with. I may always be clueless but I am not normally aware of it. What a day; what a way to end a day. Looking back, maybe it was all that herbal tea. I am not used to it. I don’t  know what those hippie baristas might have put in there. I could have been high as a kite and not even known it.

Bar Hopping and Al Roker

 
Somehow today I ended up running behind to go teach class. It hit me as I was getting ready that I had not eaten lunch and that I wasn’t going to have time to fix anything. I knew there was a Subway on route so I just decided I would make a quick stop on the way. My brother had given me a coupon for a $3 dollar sub so I thought this was the perfect moment to cash it in. I may have been running behind but everything was still falling into place just right. By the time I got to the Subway I knew that I only had five spare minutes to get a sub and be back in my car and then make my five minute drive to class.

 

When I started to get out of my car I realized that I had forgotten my lifeline…my check card. I remember leaving it right on the corner of my dresser. I started to panic as I was running late and was getting really hungry and then I remembered that I had gone to the bank and had money sitting right there in one of those white envelopes they give you at the drive through. I opened it up only to find that they had cashed a check in hundreds….seriously? Do I look like a pimp/drug dealer?  Do I look like I want to LOOK like a pimp/drug dealer? After digging through my arm rest and coming up with $1.67, I realized that I was just going to have to pimp it out and walk into Subway with my head held high and not worry about what other people might think. It was my only option, so I marched into Subway at 12:50 with a $3 coupon in one hand and a hundred dollar bill in the other.  I was starving...and pushing the clock.

 

I ordered my six inch sub and could feel my heart racing as my sandwich architect just didn’t share my sense of urgency. I could also feel my inner man/beast growling and I am pretty sure I salivated on the sneeze guard (overshare?). As I handed the cashier my coupon and my hundred dollars I noticed a sign on the cash register that read, “We do not accept bills over $20.” I prayed the girl working there hadn’t read the Subway handbook. She looked at me and said that she couldn’t take it. I told her it was all  that I had but she insisted, in her second language, “Eat’s ouwah pole a/c” . I stood there with the coupon and Benjamin back in my hands and tried to convince her that I was starving and that the bill was real and that they had already had their lunch rush and surely had plenty of change but this girl wouldn’t budge. I looked at her, then at my sandwich that I couldn’t buy, then back at her, and for a split second, I had a criminal mind. I had a flash of pushing her backwards , grabbing my sandwich and running out the door. “I can take her” ran through my head for about a half a second. But in this  “survival of the fittest” scenario I knew she would be able to catch me and the other customers would more than likely slam me to the ground or at least ID my get-away-tank.  I snapped back to reality only to hear her repeat the company policy.

 

I got back into my car sandwichless, now with only five minutes to spare. I floored it and set a new land yacht speed record. That drive from interstate exit to interstate exit was the longest four minutes of my life. I knew there was no way I could stand up in front of that class for two hours with sugar-free blood. My mind raced and I thought about the fact that there was a huge gas station right off the interstate exit that is all of 60 seconds from class. “Interstate gas stations have tons of money,” I told myself. I pulled into that gas station like a cheetah going after its prey. I did a quick scan of the aisles and bam, there were the protein bars all side by side. There were so many to choose from at this interstate gas station/rest stop. I reached for the one I recognized and then noticed there was a chocolate one on sale and another. I went from bar to bar; I bar hopped and  nabbed the one on sale. Then I went right up to the cashier, whipped out my hundred dollar bill and the cashier didn’t bat an eye. I was out the door in under 60 seconds-ish. I’ve never eaten a protein bar in three bites before, but that I only had one minute until class time and I didn’t want to be late. I know walking into the room at the exact moment I was supposed to start talking wasn’t exactly what you would call “early” but I knew I didn’t want to be “late”.

I looked at the wrapper from my protein bar, right before I got out of the car because to be honest, from what I briefly tasted of it, it was delicious.  Across one corner of the wrapper were three little words, “Now with fiber!” “Hmmmm, my lower GI tract was still holding a grudge since last week’s “Fiberoo 2013” when I grazed on a handful of Fiber One bars throughout the day. I couldn’t decide if I should be concerned or not but since I was already walking into the building and into a classroom full of people and the clock was hitting 1:00 on the dot, I had no time to think things through.

 

I could tell I was on high alert throughout the first hour but all went well. For some reason, after I gave everyone a five minute break and class started back up, I felt a twinge….a rumble…a dissention among the ranks. I hadn’t been talking two minutes when I felt my colon raise its hand and ask, "May I be excused?" Oh no…not again. My brain quickly split into right brain/ left brain. The right side kept me talking and the story going. The left side of my brain started strategic maneuvers to align a complete system lock down, secure the boarder and sent out strict orders for all systems to “cease and desist”.  I’ve never concentrated so hard in my entire life. I was sweating.  

 

By the end of class people were crying all over the place. I must have been a bit intense, what with all the concentrating. I think it is the first time I have spoken while not smiling. I am going to say that they could probably see the pain in my face and I probably looked really serious. Looking back, I feel sorry for the people sitting in class but there wasn’t a part of my brain left to handle reminding me to relax my face and smile. Sorry, but I wasn’t about to stand up there and “Al Roker” myself right in front of the class. Apparently my recent  “lower GI training” had paid off and the crises had gone from high alert to low alert. 

 

On the way back home I thought about what had been averted. I went through the whole “worst case scenario” (Al Rokering) and I think that if that had played out, I would have just walked straight out the door, faked my own death and moved to a third world country under the name of Marcos Antonio. I might have sent a card home to let everyone know that I was ok…but I am not sure about that. A fake death feels more appropriate.

 

I got off at the next exit and pulled into that same Subway. I walked in with my $3 coupon in one hand and a ten dollar bill in the other. The girl didn’t even recognize me. I was dying to know who ate my sandwich from earlier but I didn’t ask. I got to the cashier and she didn’t recognize me from my pimp/drug dealer days either. I wanted to make a point or let them know that they had almost been responsible for a fake death and my permanent disappearance but I had another appointment and time was still of the essence. It was so hard for me to say “thank you” and not let them know what they had almost put me through…Al Roker…I mean, that is serious. The grilled chicken was cold …after all that, the grilled chicken was cold. One thing is for sure, when you eat their grilled chicken cold, you learn something…that’s not grilled chicken.

 

No more bar hopping for me, ever. It’s Powerbar or nothing.  I don’t trust anything else.  I will also never leave home without my check card and I also need to have a talk with my bank teller. It’s actually rare that I ever go to the bank and cash a check. It took a lot of random acts of nature for my Saturday to turn out so exciting. Obviously, if I am writing about this, I have no life. Isn’t this more of a nursing home story? I can’t imagine what I will be talking about when I am in my 90’s. It might be a good thing for me to go ahead and assign a power of attorney to make sure that I don’t have a Facebook page when I get that age. I can’t imagine what I would write about if my “self-edit” button was worn out. It’s bad enough as it is. Sorry mom, I know you raised me more better.

We Are Soldiers (a serious note) continued...part two

Once a year we all come out of the trenches for a moment and we join together; we march, we walk. In over 600 towns across this country, we gather in groups and walk to show our support for all the work that is being done to fight this horrible disease. We march in memory of loved ones, in honor of those who are being cared for and in celebration of the efforts put together to raise awareness and funds to help us with this battle. It’s a day of reminding ourselves that we are not alone and that we are making a difference. If you would like to help and join forces in time, support or even with finances, you can go to www.alz.org and look for the Walk To End Alzheimer’s in your area. There are many teams from healthcare organizations, caregivers and families. For my mom, Ann Perry, we are www.thememoryjoggers.com .

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t have the funds to help out financially.  There are other organizations that require nothing more than a click . One great organization that is working hard to get the government to increase the funding for Alzheimer’s research is http://www.usagainstalzheimers.org  .This is a powerful group that is really starting to make things happen by making our government understand the epidemic situation we are facing and the economic impact it will have on our future. Another that I love is the grassroots campaign to get a postage stamp (much like the one for breast cancer) for Alzheimer’s. These type stamps have raised millions in the past. That site is https://www.facebook.com/HelpStampOutAlzheimers  .Whatever you can do, do it. Do it for those you love and do it for future generations so that years from now, the Walk to End Alzheimer’s will be nothing more than a distant memory.

We Are Soldiers (a serious note)

For those of you who have had an experience with someone with Alzheimer’s, you are fully aware of the toll it can take on you. I recently saw pictures of soldiers that had been in Afghanistan; they were before and after pictures. It was obvious that the constant worry and stress of their situations as well as the loneliness of missing their loved ones back home, had taken its toll on them. It reminded me a bit of what I see in the mirror every day. I know I haven’t had to go through the horrors of what our soldiers have gone through and I haven’t had the stress of literally fearing for my own life on a daily basis, but in the mirror, I can see what a long drawn out battle has done to me and the toll it has taken.

I can see it in the faces of people who are taking care of their parents and their spouses.  We are at war; we are in a battle. We are fighting something bigger than ourselves that we cannot defeat. Our days are long and drawn out and we are forced to do things we never thought we could do mentally or physically. We are fighting a disease that knows no enemies and has never been defeated. We fight to keep our loved ones safe from harming themselves, wandering off, or simply from falling down. We fight to keep them involved while fighting to protect their dignity. We fight our frustrations in them not knowing who we are. We fight the urge to argue when they want to go home even though they are already in their own home. We fight to convince them to do the basics of daily life like changing their clothes when they have been wearing the same clothes day after day. We fight to keep it together when they tell us the same thing every five minutes. We fight to not break down each time they go into the hospital to battle some other illness that could end their lives. We fight to not give up when we are at our wits end and the day has just begun.

We struggle daily with the guilt of our bad decisions and letting someone else help to take care of our loved ones. We worry when we leave them alone with caretakers that they will be watched after and cared for and that no one will show them their own anger and frustration. At night we lie awake and worry about the day we just had and how we will handle the next one. We worry that we are not doing the right thing, or doing enough, or that we might just snap under the pressure. But each day, we gear up and face the battle. We do it to protect our loved ones. We do it because we have to and we want to and we are scared to death not to. The toll it takes on us is great. We can see it in the mirror. We can feel it on the inside. We know we are isolated from many of the people we love as our lives are immersed and focused on making the best of fighting a losing battle. As hard as we try, our minds never really wander away from our task at hand.

 

Just like a soldier that comes back from war, when our loved ones have passed away, we need time. We need time to re-adjust when it is all over. We need time to heal, time to learn how to let go of our experience and time to enter back into the normal thoughts of a day. We are soldiers who have fought the good fight, to defend what we love and believe in. We are battered, shell-shocked and tired, but in time, we will pick up the pieces and find the good to remember and take pride in knowing that we made a difference; we did our best, and even though probably never expressed, it was appreciated. No one can really understand unless they have been through it. We can’t expect them too. What we must do is continue to pursue a happy life that we know our loved ones would so desperately want us to have. We  continue to fight this disease so that future generations do not have to fight this same war for us all over again. We are soldiers, and we have our battle scars both inside and out.

Don't You Hate it When: Smartphone

Don’t you hate it when you interject  yourself into someone else’s conversation only to find that you are in way over your head and that you have no idea what anyone is talking about but you try to keep up anyway and while you are rambling out of control like a train wreck  you start having flashbacks from your childhood when you went down a hill on your bike that went from a steep slope to a ninety degree angle and you were no longer riding your bike but hanging on for dear life which then reminds you of the time that you hopped on the wrong ski slope and you were going so fast that you had no idea how you were ever going to stop and that the most you could hope for was to  fall and not break anything or get run over by the experts but you didn’t want to go ahead and fall and cut your losses because you were  too scared to do it because you knew it was going to be ugly and as you remember all these things you realize that your mouth is still running and that the left side of your  brain has no idea what the ride side of your  brain is talking about and suddenly you hear someone say “Let me see your phone and I can probably figure it out” and as you hand it to them you snap an instant replay tape into your head and recall that everyone was talking about the glitches in their smartphones and that you were also trying to complain but couldn’t answer what you thought the problem was because you didn’t understand any of the lingo so you tried to “wing it” and before you knew it you were heading down that steep hill/ski slope/runaway train and your brain was spinning out of control until everything came to a quick, sudden stop because the person who was holding your cheap phone announced “This isn’t a smartphone” and everyone is silent and you can hear the clock  ticking on the wall and it hits you that you actually have no idea what makes a smartphone a smartpone and that yours isn’t actually smart at all and may only be average at best,  and that phrase you have heard a million times about “It is better to remain silent and have everyone think  you are an idiot than to open your mouth and confirm it” ,or something like that, starts running through your head and it bothers you that you can never remember  exactly how that phrase goes  which probably is a reflection on how badly you should not ever try to use that phrase as you are only acting out the words as you speak them offering up yourself as a  personal example for the phrase and all you want to do is find a computer so that you can Google “what makes a smartphone a smartphone”  and you try to end the conversation by shaking your phone to make it work better and all you can think about is that it would be a perfect time for somebody to break out into a flash mob to “All You Single Ladies” but it is not happening so you just shake your phone harder while the people you were talking to watch  and that tingling part of your brain is thinking all by itself wondering how you could make everyone within earshot forget the last five minutes or why there isn’t something like “rapture on demand” or how cool it would be if Harry Potter’s cloaking device was real and the next thing you know you realize that your mouth is still running while your brain is having its own internal audit…? Yeah, I hate it when that happens.

 

Cutting Back

Cutting back

 

 

I had to go to the doctor yesterday just for a routine check up and he informed me that it was that magic time of my life when I needed to get a physical. Yeah, I don’t see that happening any time soon.  Anyway, at the end of the appointment he said those six little words that I have never heard from a doctor before, “You need to lose 20 lbs”……………how could he tell? I had on my “hide-a-fat” clothes the whole time and he never grabbed my love handles….oh yeah, the scales…those darn scales! He went on to add, “Do you remember where you were 10-15 years ago?  You were 35lbs lighter. Let’s start with 20lbs.”  I felt  horrified and insulted...I was horrisulted.

 

I couldn’t believe it. It seems that pretending I am in shape while overeating isn’t doing the trick. So last night, while watching TV,  I was thinking about all this and what I was going to have to do . I heard the timer go off in the kitchen so I sat down my bowl of chocolate peanut butter ice cream (with an extra spoonful of peanut butter for flavor) and went into the kitchen to check on my blackberry/blueberry/raspberry cobbler (it needed ten more minutes) and gave my crockzilla full of cabbage/bean/Italian sausage soup a stir and then went back into the den, sat back down and picked up my bowl of ice cream. I thought about it all and realized that it was time, time to make a change. I consider myself to be health conscious and it was time to make a difficult yet important decision about cutting unnecessary things out of my life. It was time to find a new doctor…Bon appétit !