…but I missed you today. OK, I did have half a cup at 10:30am, but since I had been up since 6am for an 11 hour meeting, it was rather late considering I was awake for 4 and a half uncaffeinated hours. Horrors! I think I’ve mentioned on here that I wasn’t a coffee drinker until 2001 when I started working in this one particular office. I didn’t even drink coffee the whole 5 years I was living in the Northwest, nor any of the years that I went to college or grad school. Say wha?? How did I…what the… I know. Unthinkable, right? Especially living in Washington and Oregon, hello!

But here’s a funny thing. Coffee machines have gotten really fancy since the last office I worked at had their little Mr. Coffee maker in the kitchen which started my addiction to coffee in the first place. I remember when I started a month long on-site freelance gig at Oxygen Media, I waddled over to the kitchen with my mug on the first day (I was 7 months pregnant with Claudine) only to stop in my tracks when I was faced with a choice of 3 massively huge coffee makers. No no, these were machines. Huge. With lots and lots of buttons. Like what was I supposed to do with these things? I stood there for about a minute, staring, then turned around and walked back to my desk, coffee-less. I think I went coffee-less for a few days before asking someone to show me how to use the big scary machines. Why so long, you ask? I don’t know. Maybe because people would then know I was a freelancer and the new person around the office, or they’d judge me because I was about to drink a cup of coffee, but was clearly hugely pregnant. You know, stupid stuff that was just compounded by pregnancy brain.

When I left the house this morning without any coffee, I figured that the facilities I was headed to would be catered with breakfast. I was right, but resting on the kitchenette counter was a coffee maker…but where was the pot with freshly brewed coffee? *@%#& I don’t freaking know how to use this single serve coffee maker!

As you know, I keep a very late bedtime of around 2am and then wake up around 7:30 or 8 each morning. Having to leave the house so early this morning required some major adjusting of my schedule and it was disorienting to walk to the subway in the dark. When I got off the train at Bryant Park 35 minutes later the sun was just starting to rise. I had 10 minutes to spare, so I sat in the park for little while (oh, by the way guys, they are already starting to set up all the booths for the Bryant Park Holiday Market, gah! It’s not even Halloween yet!). I had my camera with me but I didn’t take pictures. I just liked sitting there in that dusty light watching the city emerge from darkness. Even at that hour, the streets and sidewalks were buzzing with people on their way to work. It’s not that I particularly love midtown, but that right there, at that moment in the middle of all that morning activity, made me feel alive. I rather enjoyed the whole ritual of “going to work”. As long as it’s only once in a while.

Mark is still going non-stop as this week has proven to be just as busy as last week: a bunch of wholesale orders, brisk online sales, 2 weddings and 2 cake orders plus the Flea this Saturday. I’m still not working these days but I am waiting for at least 2 projects to start which are in their contracting phase (and I’m not breathing any sighs of relief until I have a definitive start date - anything can still fall through). It is so weird though, because despite the lack of work, the days have been so busy and I almost can’t remember - or even fathom - working 8 hours a day in addition to all the stuff I’ve been doing daily just to make sure everything is running smoothly. It’s not like I am taking on more or less stuff around the house. The laundry still needs to get done, the house still needs to get cleaned, Mia still needs to get dropped off and picked up, business emails still need to get answered and cookies still need to be packed, but how did I work on top of all this? It makes me realize how crazy our schedule is when I’m juggling 2-3 projects and that the current pace of affairs is so much more sane, so much more civilized. I think this is why I still don’t have any leftover energy to tackle that long list of projects and it makes me feel a little less guilty, because you know what? Life is just busy, period.

One thing that I *have* been doing with this bit of spare time is meet with friends for lunch or a coffee. Even though I never feel out of touch with people anymore because of all the various ways to stay connected (like a friend and I realized the other day that we had “talked” via twitter, facebook, email and text…all within 2 hours, geez), it is so nice to be able to sit down across from one another and catch up. I even went impromptu boot shopping the other day with my friend RJ which turned into a shopping therapy session. We sat on the bench at a shoe store and analyzed and rationalized to death potential shoe purchases. But it’s those moments I miss when I am crazy busy - shopping with a girlfriend, being an enabler of purchases, and waking around the city window shopping, looking at stuff, being inspired by stuff. When I’m working, there is too much staying indoors. Sometimes days go by when I don’t even leave the house because I need to stay focused on work and there is so much to get done.

I’ve had many fantasy thoughts lately about the business supporting us so that I wouldn’t have to take on so many projects at once or worry when there is a dry spell. Some days I feel like this is achievable. Other days I am not sure whether it is even logistically possible in our current situation if Mark can even single-handedly bake that many cookies a month to pay all of our bills. Maybe one day I will do the math. I am a little afraid to find out.

You know you want some, but you’ll have to come to the Brooklyn Flea this saturday to get it. We’ll be replacing our watermelon coolers this week with some of this action because this is really yum!

Is it really wrong that my morning and afternoon coffee is sometimes the highlight of my day? It’s not so much the actual drink, but just allowing the luxury that the one cup allows - a chance to sit down, relax, and not have to think much or type (though I do often type with one hand, coffee cup in the other). Hard to believe that I only became a coffee drinker 9 years ago, and even more tragic is that I wasn’t a coffee drinker in all the 5 years I lived in Portland and Olympia (really? All those summers without a tall glass of iced coffee??). My addiction started, not surprisingly, the last time I started work in an office. It was a shared space between us, a small design firm, and 2 other architecture companies in a big Flatiron loft. It was completely white, including the Herman Miller office furniture, beautiful lighting, and a bright red Womb Chair in the corner. It was gorgeous as far as office spaces go, and I sat near the kitchen and the coffee maker, where the aroma would drift over to where I worked. It really was one of those water cooler situations where getting a cup of coffee was an excuse for a break and some chitchat with officemates. I don’t miss working in an office at all, but I do miss the coffee chitchat which is why I think I find myself flitting about facebook and twitter all day. Even though I probably would be so much more efficient if I banned myself from any of those sites while working, I’m just going to justify it by saying that it helps me keep sane while working at home.

We’re supposedly going to thaw this weekend. Temperatures are going to hover between 45-52 degrees and I’m excited, never mind that it’s probably short lived. We’ve been going through a dreadfully long winter and I can’t even remember what it feels like to walk outside and feel the sun and be warm. As much as I love cozy sweaters, scarves and hats, I think I’ve decided that I love dresses and sandals even more. I’ve been slowly amassing a very small collection of dresses after not owning or wearing any for years. Maybe I’ll even put one on tomorrow! We’ve got some friends coming over, and it’s going to be 45 degrees! Wahoo!

Fall is here - although it may not feel like it on a 70 degree day, which is the kind of weird warm weather that we’ve been having for a week. We had been planning all summer to serve some kind of hot chocolate at the Flea, seeing how well our watermelon coolers did during the hot weather. Last Sunday we gave it a try. It is a recipe that I’ve used at my last four jobs and has even been featured in Cheers Magazine (scroll a bit down) - a Hot White Chocolate with coconut, lemongrass, ginger, vanilla, and other spices. It really is the perfect drink for Whimsy & Spice as it takes a traditional product and infuses it with untraditional flavors. It was, however, not quite the perfect drink for a warm October day, but it was a good measure of how well it might do when Fall weather settles down in earnest. I’m going to sell it at every Flea until the end of the year so look for it, especially when the weather cools down.

Yes, we are drinking lots of coffee here (oddly enough, I was not a coffee drinker when I lived here). And we finally got to visit the cafe that Mark’s sister keeps raving about, Cafe Besalu in Ballard. Their flaky, buttery pastries did live up to the hype.

It’s not officially summer in NY until you experience a heatwave, and well…we’re in one right now - the first of 4 days of 90+ degree heat. Niiiice. Despite the heat, Mark’s still headed to the Flea which should be interesting, but we are now going to offer cold, summer drinks in addition to our usual goods. This week Mark will be making his watermelon cooler with shiso leaf and lime. Shiso is a member of the mint family and is used in Japanese dishes (Korea has their own Perilla leaf that is similar in appearance, but sharper in taste). He’s been making watermelon coolers for years, sometimes with lemongrass, sometimes with mint, but we thought shiso would make an interesting counterpoint to the watermelon and offer a flavor many people might not be familiar with. So if you happen to be out and about in Fort Greene, stop on by.