It’s Impossible to Be Unhappy When Drinking a Good Cup of Coffee

(Disclaimer: Today’s essay includes ebullient praise for Starbucks, Barnes and Noble Booksellers, and Coffees of Hawaii. None of these companies paid me to do this, but Coffees of Hawaii did send me a free sample. Thanks so much, Albert!)

When I was little, my parents divorced, and my mother, sister, and I moved in with my grandparents. Grandma brewed coffee every morning in an old-style percolator, filling her home with the rich, wonderful, exotic smell of coffee. She and Papa awoke at 5:30 every morning to their coffee ritual. When I was about seven or eight, I begged a taste.

Predictably, I made a face and yelled, “Bleck!” The grown-ups all laughed at me, but I thought they were a sad group if they had to drink that nasty black brew. I never wanted to grow up and live in their dark and bitter world.

Oh, the Age of Innocence! Frankly, I don’t miss it at all because, now that my taste buds are all grown up, I totally get the hedonistic bliss that comes from a great cup of coffee. In fact, without my own version of Grandma and Papa’s morning ritual, I would be a remarkably dark and bitter person. Does this make me an addict? Not really. I just enjoy a good cup of joe.

Denial is just a river in Egypt, you know.

I seek out new coffee experiences regularly at one of my favorite places…the Starbucks at my local Barnes and Noble Booksellers. Whoever first thought of combining bookshop with café deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. Books and joe together under the same roof positively breed goodwill and community. The staff at my bookseller/café greets regular customers by name, asking after their businesses, their children, their significant others. There’s even a homeless man who visits regularly on cold winter evenings for a free cup of warmth.

All are welcome at the table of peace, love, and understanding.

My bookseller café is managed by a lovely woman named Gloria. Gloria’s husband had prostate cancer, which is thankfully now in remission, and they both have Harleys and travel extensively. They’ve been to Sturgis, and I remember the energy and noise of the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally every August of the four years we lived in South Dakota. Gloria always asks about Jack if he isn’t with me, and if he is, she talks to him. When she receives a response, she’s delighted, and if she doesn’t, she isn’t bothered by it. She gets the autism thing.

I love Gloria. I love anyone who makes me a deliciously decadent, creamy mocha with caramel drizzle; or an icy cold, flavored frappaccino; or a simple black coffee.

My friend Liz once told me, “It’s impossible to be unhappy when drinking a mocha.” She’s right. People walk into the café with hang-dog expressions that magically transform as they order, and by the time the staff calls out “Venti hazelnut mocha with chocolate drizzle,” their faces wear beatific expressions most often seen in Renaissance religious art.

Just like my grandmother before me, I make coffee every morning for myself and George. He fixes a travel mug and heads off to work. I check email and blog while sipping a hot, home-made mocha.

A few weeks ago, Albert Boyce of Coffees of Hawaii sent me a free sample of his Malulani coffee to try. Albert is an Ironman like George, and so is his sister Mary, who lives in Colorado and whom I cheered on at Ironman Wisconsin a few weeks ago.

See what I mean: coffee brings people together across oceans and over mountains.

I made a pot of the Malulani and sipped it black because I like coffee two ways: either strong and black, or over-the-top embellished with milk and chocolate and whipped cream and copious drizzles of whatever sticky-sweet stuff you can think of. But strong and black is the true taste test; the coffee can’t hide behind other yummy flavors.

Coffees of Hawaii Malulani is the best cup of coffee I have ever tasted. Yes, I tend to exaggerate, but not this time. This coffee is smooth, without even a hint of bitterness, and a pure sensory delight.

After tasting it (because I didn’t want to be influenced by the marketing), I went to their website and read about Malulani. A blind assessment states,

“An impressively sweet, cocoa- and dark-chocolate toned coffee with a silky mouthfeel and gentle acidity…a hint of the chocolate note persists pleasantly in the finish.”

Read that out loud to yourself. Go ahead. I dare you. Are you salivating? Yes, I know. It’s beautiful. And that’s just how the cup of Malulani tasted.

Albert’s coffee is my new favorite—and George’s, too. If you are like me and enjoy searching out new coffee experiences, check out Coffees of Hawaii. You will not be disappointed.

Even if you don’t like coffee (and for some reason are still reading this paean to it), please check out the website. The coffee plantations are in one of the most beautiful places in the world, and Albert shares gorgeous pictures that will have you longing for an island vacation. While you’re on his site, click the “Ironmen Need Coffee Too” box at the bottom of the homepage. Albert has posted delightful pictures of dolphins swimming with Ironmen in beautiful blue Hawaiian water. Bliss.

Morning rituals. Global communities of peace, love, and understanding. Books. Coffee.

In a world with these things, how can a person not be happy?

Karma Bites

Last night, Nick and I sat on the floor in our home library playing Yahtzee. This is a fun strategy to help him master number manipulation, which is a pretty serious problem for him. As we finished up, he lay down on his back and pulled a thin book off one of my shelves.

In case you had completely forgotten that I am an unrepentant medieval literature geek, here’s the book:

Dr. William Woods, my graduate thesis advisor, put together this bibliography for his freshman composition class. He graciously gave it to me while I was working on my thesis. I’ve never really thought of a bibliography as a dangerous object, but alas, a nine-year-old boy can get into trouble with anything. Nick dropped the book, edge-first, onto his eyeball.

Allow me to pause while you wince in sympathy. Ouch.

He promptly began screaming and holding his eye and screaming and flailing and screaming some more. I got him into a hug, where he stopped flailing and started depositing snot and tears on my shirt. I kept hugging him while George and Jack joined us in the library asking identical questions: “What happened? Why is Nick crying?”

I explained what I’d seen, while trying really hard not to cry myself. As much as it hurts to scratch your eye (been there, done that, more than once), it hurts so much more to see your child in pain.

George picked the book off the floor and joined me in rubbing Nick’s back and uttering soothing nothings to calm Nick down enough to take his hand away from his eye so we could see if there was any visible damage. Jack took a more artistic approach to sympathizing with his brother and announced, “I will make Nick a well card so he can feel better.” Then he disappeared.

Seconds later, he reappeared. “This will make Nick feel better,” he said, and held out his three-by-five-inch Well Card:

Isn’t that just the cutest little thing?

Unfortunately, our firstborn son had several legitimate excuses for screaming his head off and refused to look at Jack’s Well Card. First, he is my son and inherited my tendency to handle pain, um, poorly. Very. Poorly. Second, he had already experienced an eye injury once before, while playing around with a rubber snake that snapped back and hit him on the eyeball. That time, Nick took a lovely tour of the ER with George, which ended in a diagnosis of a scratched conjunctiva. He’d had to use antibiotic ointment for five days.

Oh, the trauma of the ointment! Nick dislikes anything that feels uncomfortable or weird, and by dislike, I mean fusses like a cat with its tail caught in the door. He’s physical, he’s loud, and he cannot be reasoned with.

Memories of this previous trauma flooded his panicked mind last night, adding a special intensity to the screaming. I totally sympathized and hugged him until he finally calmed down enough to go upstairs with us and let us look in his eye, which was red but not obviously injured. We told both boys to brush teeth and get ready for bed. George and I discussed options quietly in our bedroom, but Nick overheard us mention the ER, which kicked off a new round of wailing.

“I don’t want to go to the ER!!!!! I don’t like the ER!!!! Nooooooooo!!!!!!!”

We explained—calmly and reasonably—the need to have a doctor look in Nick’s eye to see if there was a scratch and to give him medicine if he needed it. Calm and reason are lost on nine-year-old drama kings.

“I hate that ointment!!!!! It feels weird!!!! And the eye drops HURT!!!! Nooooooo!!!!!”


We asked Nick how his eye was feeling.

“It feels like it has a chip in it!! It feels like it has a DONATO’S PIZZA in it!!!!”

George and I made eye contact over Nick’s head. George, the better parent by far, smiled but refrained from laughing. I did not. With melodrama like this, so specific and exaggerated, he is definitely my son. If we'd had Donato's Pizza when I was little, I'd have used that line. It's brilliant. And funny, too.

Around this time, Jack grabbed his guitar and started singing a Well Song to Nick. He really was trying hard to make his brother feel better. We all were.

Nick and I got in the car to drive to the nearest ER. On the way, he would occasionally yell out in frustration and pain as his eye throbbed, and I would say, "It's going to be okay, sweetie. It's going to be okay." In between wails, he sniffily said, “At least it’s better than last time. Last time, you threw my rubber snake in the trash! That was horrible!”

At one point on the drive, when he was complaining about how much the ointment was going to hurt, I told him I’d scratched my eye with a broken radio antenna when I was about his age, so I knew for a fact that the ointment didn’t hurt. He curiously asked, “A radio antenna? What’s that?” Oh. My. Gosh.

As we walked into the ER, I saw there wasn’t a single person in the waiting room. Last time I’d come to this ER, I’d waited five hours just to be taken to the back. This time, Nurse Ashley immediately took Nick into the triage room. She asked Nick a few friendly questions about the accident, but although he'd been quite the chatterbox on the drive to the ER, he refused to answer the nurse.

He just whimpered. Pathetically.

We had to wait a while in the ER room for a doctor. This is, I think, always the worst part of an ER visit because when you’re lying in an uncomfortable hospital bed in a sterile room full of equipment that looks incomprehensibly alien, there is NOTHING to distract you from the pain. Despite finding Nick’s melodrama highly entertaining, I truly felt sorry for him. I tried to distract him from the pain and boredom by pulling out my Palm Pilot (which doesn’t have an antenna, you know) and taught him how to play Solitaire. He was actually quite perky until the doctor came into the room.

At the sight of her white coat, however, he deflated. More whimpering. More drama. After much protest, Nick finally allowed the doctor to put the numbing drops and fluorescing dye into his eye. The doctor showed me the glowing scratch, about half an inch long, which extended horizontally over the conjunctiva and ever so slightly onto his cornea.

After a few instructions, the doctor fled the scene as quickly as she could and sent another nurse to give us the dreaded ointment as well as a note for school in case his eye still hurt in the morning. This nurse, realizing how she had been sent into a room filled with epic pitifulness, fled as quickly as she could. Nick asked to take the bracelet off, and I said we would cut it off at home. He asked if I was going to scrapbook the incident, and I said I hadn't brought my camera. He said, "You have your phone." So I took a picture of our patient, and we left.




My phone doesn't have an antenna either, by the way.

We walked out of the ER at 9:00, one hour after entering it. I am thrilled to report that Nick’s eye felt fine after a good night's sleep, but my patience is already worn thin after just one application of the ointment. I had to threaten him with no computer time for a week if he didn’t let me put the ointment in his eye. We have 8 more applications to go, and I foresee the need for repeating this dire threat every single time.

I have no one to blame but myself. When my mother reads this story, she will feel totally sorry for Nick and at the same time point her finger at her computer and laugh hysterically at me. She, better than anyone, knows that Nick’s melodrama is karmic payback for all I put her through when I had stitches—twice—as a young girl, not to mention that whole radio antenna episode and other incidents too numerous to mention here.

Some days, karma just bites.

Gratitude Journal #15

Today, I am grateful for coffee.

Today, I am grateful that my stamping blog has passed 20,000 hits.

Today, I am grateful for the people who serve on the Loaves and Fishes ministry at my church. Often, I don’t need to call to ask people to provide meals for families in need. The volunteers call me or send me emails when they hear of a need. It’s beyond heart-warming. It’s soul-warming.

What are you grateful for today?

A Sunday Sermon on the American Media

Jon Katz, author and blogger, posted this insightful commentary on America's media. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

I've found myself tuning out even NPR news lately. So much of what the media spouts seems so unrelentingly negative and depressing. I don't feel like the news is educating me on the issues like health care and the economy. Political pundits and fear mongers do not educate; they thrive by prolonging conflict and making problems worse.

If the linguistic theorists, the Bible, and Walt Whitman are right, we create our world with language. Our perspective is shaped by the words we hear--in our own minds as well as from outside. We know how powerful self-fulfilling prophesy is in the development of children, but how often do we question how our adult worlds are shaped by the words we hear and speak?

Not often enough, I think.

Wouldn't you watch a whole network devoted to reporting humanity's good side to balance the bad? I would watch, not because I want to hide from the bad news but because I know there is more out in the world than just the negative. Sadly, positive news is hard to find. The mass media sell us a world view of panic, fear, and knee-jerk reactions. We are better than that. We deserve better than that.

I see so much to be hopeful for, so much to celebrate, so much to praise on both a national scale and in my private life. Questioning my Intelligence promotes the positive. For those of you who only read it via email, I encourage you to start clicking to the actual site. The sidebar contains inspirational quotations, and I'm going to start linking to other sites that promote positive perspectives, too. I'd love it if you shared your favorite positive sites with me.

On his book tour, Jon Katz has seen an America full of hope, creative problem solving, and positive perspectives on life even in the face of difficulty. That's the America I know and love; and I suspect the rest of the world isn't too different, either.

Gandhi said, "Be the change you want to see in the world." That change starts with our words. Our actions are the follow-through.

Right now, my favorite words are compassion, hope, and gratitude. What are your favorite words right now?

Let's start making some noise...positive noise.

Are you with me?

Words, Words, Words from Henry Ward Beecher

"Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore?"
--Henry Ward Beecher

IM Moo in Review: Favorite Photos and Results

Results of some racers I followed:

George Raihala (#1464) finished in 12:36:46, beating his time last year by five minutes. He was a bit disappointed as he wanted to do a sub-12-hour race, but a personal record is a personal record.

Kris Armstrong (#1742), the husband of my Ironmate friend Rose, finished in 13:57:13, which was a good bit slower than he expected. I suspect sunny and warm race-day conditions made times slower. I was hot, and all I did was watch.

Daryl Petsch (#1908), a nice guy George and I met in line to register for next year's race, did not finish. He had an awesome swim, coming out of the water in just over 1:14 (faster than George), but something happened on the bike ride. I sure hope he's okay.

Mary Boyce (#2552), sister of Albert Boyce (whose coffee I'll be reviewing next week), finished in 12:55:35. She probably won't remember, but I spotted her at the start of the marathon and yelled, "Way to go, Mary!" She was looking good, too.

Keith Grimes (#986), George's boss and first-time Ironman racer, didn't finish. On the bike, he popped a salt pill, which landed too far back in his throat and caused him to throw up. That set up a bad cycle of drinking, throwing up, drinking, throwing up, cramping, walking, throwing up, drinking, and so on. His wife rescued him around mile nine of the marathon. Such a disappointment.

Steve Simmerman (#416), the husband of Elizabeth (one of my kind readers), had a great race and finished in 11:49:06.

So many of you really got into this race, and I appreciate every comment you left here or on Facebook or in an email. Here are two I want to acknowledge in particular.

To reader Robin, whose husband Brent was hit by a truck on a bike-ride to work: I hope Brent is cleared to ride soon and recovers fully from his injuries. Keep us posted, please!

To reader Shannon, whose husband was recently laid off from his work: cyber-hugs to you both. May something even better come along very, very soon.


Now, on to my favorite pictures that highlight our trip to Madison.

George programs his Polar heart-rate monitor to countdown to his Ironman races.

Madison's capitol building is very photogenic, especially against beautiful blue sky.

Mary and Keith Grimes were great fun.



The calm before the storm...this was taken around 5:00 on race morning from the bridge over the parking lot at Minona Terrace.

George and Keith about to head out on the morning of the race.


This spiral ramp on the parking garage is a great place to view the start...assuming you stake out your spot early. The racers have to run up the helix to get to the bike transition area. Harsh.


Athletes getting in the water to start the swim.



Sunrise over the water, slowly filling with 2,400 athletes.

The mass start. It's like watching salmon spawn.



Drew's fist raised, cheering on the swimmers. Drew was just a nice guy Mary and I met while watching the start. He's finished three Ironman races and was having fun taking pictures of this one.

George, after just completing the 112-mile bike ride, starting his marathon. Looks happy, doesn't he?



Mary and I wrote messages for our husbands on State Street. George's call sign in the Air Force was Spot. I don't know who Tina P. is, but I hope she had a great race!

These volunteers are in a snaking line to "catch" athletes as they cross the finish line and give them their t-shirts, medals, and hats. Some finishers promptly collapse, so these volunteers are vitally important for safety and judging who needs to go straight to the medical tent.


Mike Reilly, the voice of Ironman. He's amazing. He starts before the swim and goes until midnight. In addition to general announcing and rousing the crowd, he calls the name of each finisher, says where they are from and if they're a repeat Ironman, and then says, "You are an Ironman!" He's as enthusiastic announcing the winner as he is announcing the last finisher about 7.5 hours later. This year, over 2,100 people finished. It's amazing he can even squeak by midnight.


These girls were part of a big team for a racer and graciously allowed me to photograph them. Their shirts say what all us families and friends of Ironmen are thinking.


This is the shot of George's approach to the finish line. You try shooting a target that just wants to cross a line a few yards ahead. In the dark.


The happy finisher.

361 days to next year's IM Moo. Already counting down.

Gratitude Journal #14

Today, I have so much to be grateful for.

I am grateful for my mother who took wonderful care of my children while George and I were away.

I am grateful for long hugs from little boys.

I am grateful George finished IM Moo and could still walk the next day.

I am grateful still for the Glen Helen Raptor Center. Betty Ross called while we were gone to say that the barred owl George rescued is doing very well and will survive his encounter with the side of a truck. Unfortunately, he is definitely blind in one eye and will probably not be released in the wild. Betty assured us that the center will find a good home for him with an educational program.

I am grateful to be home.

What are you grateful for today?