Theraputic Coffee

The lady is in Minneapolis because I was supposed to play poker last night. I use the word poker loosely; We also play baseball, screw your neighbor, and have even played war for money. I also use the word money loosely. Last time I ended the night up over twenty dollars which, considering we play for nickels and dimes, means I had a stellar night. It's hard to get my six music industry guy friends on the same to organize a game, so when I had four on board I wrote the date in my calendar. Mere hours before I was to steal their money with my mad skills, I received three cancellations.

The lady sits in her room whenever I host poker night and is generally a good sport about not disrupting the guy talk with frequent visits. Needless to say it's boring for her so I always let her know as soon as we've settled on a date. This way she can make plans of her own. Hence the trip to Minny. Sometimes we all need time alone. While chilling with my lady has all the appropriate ingredients to provide a pleasant evening, the scarce "me" time is always a welcome occurrence. With no poker, I was going to get all the "me" time I needed.

For numerous reasons these last few weeks have been a mentally dizzying affair and the anxious, agitated state my brain resides reeks of nervous break down. It's brought on from too much and (strangely) too little going on. The list is long: Wedding plans, honeymoon plans, too much to do at work, no word on Seattle, family deaths, and now a financial blunder of sorts: Due to the poor responses for our wedding (Over forty percent of those invited have sent regrets) we are faced with coming in shy of our contractually defined food and beverage minimum to the tune of over two grand. While we were going to spend this money either way, this two grand is now just going to be handed over to the hotel in return for nothing. This hurts my frugal planning heart. My response to pressure varies. I'll rise to the occasion normally but this weekend I crumbled under the weight of it all. Crumbled as in sat in front of the TV, ate too much, and moped around sans lady. Needing a pick me up, I went to breakfast.

One of my greatest pleasures is this first meal of the day. The delicious food is partly the reason but it's also because breakfast is usually a mellow, un-rushed occurrence where I can regroup and unwind. For this reason even having breakfast alone is a pleasure. Parking at the counter, reading, and sipping coffee for an hour or two settles my soul. The dish washing station was directly in front of me. When my waitress would clean a few plates, the German gentleman next to me would exclaim "Herr Kaffee!" and answer any English to German translations asked of him. A chatty, coffee guzzling lady was to my left. Without my book, I would have suffered accounts of her grandchildren and perhaps worse.

I loose track of how much coffee I've consumed when the refills / top offs occur constantly. Even so, I'm positive I was working on a fifth cup when I gazed into the rising steam for what seemed like minutes. An answer to my anxious melancholy rose with the steam from the coffee and I broke this beverage stare down with a vision of the lady's smiling face.