Monday, August 12, 2013

I Heart Coffee


I remember exactly when I first started drinking coffee. I was fourteen and staying with my aunt in Alabama for a couple of weeks one summer.  She and her girlfriends would often visit during the day and these visits were always over coffee. I was at that age where it did not interest me to go outside and play like a child, but I was not old enough to really visit with the grown women, either.  I decided the least I could do was partake in the coffee. My aunt helped me fix up the little cup of coffee with a lot of milk and a lot of sugar. I remember thinking it was not so bad that way.  To the best of my recollection, I left the coffee drinking in Alabama when it was time to go back home.

About a year later, during the summer, I developed a very strange habit for a teenager—I started getting up around five every morning and watching the sun rise over our back yard. Coffee reappeared. I found it was very enjoyable to have a cup of coffee on these early summer mornings. When school started I found myself in first period with a very sweet, but very troubled teacher. She apparently had a drinking problem and would be barely coherent many mornings. She would assign us bookwork and would doze at her desk. I found it necessary to have coffee every morning to keep from dozing at my own desk. Somewhere in that same year, I discovered coffee ice cream.

The only time since then that I have parted ways with coffee was during both of my pregnancies. Caffeine caused contractions that made my belly like a basketball-sized rock and also could have potentially caused my babies to be premature, so I regretfully said “see you later” to my beloved beverage.

Over the years we have seen the delightful development of a coffee culture, including things like coffee houses, exotic coffees, and all sorts of cool coffee gadgets like Keurigs and, the latest object of my desire, the Nespresso. My daughter and I went to the Pacific Northwest a couple of years ago and discovered that instead of little snow cone stands everywhere, they have little coffee stands! We were in heaven!! And now I hear that coffee c

As I have grown older, my coffee tastes have changed. I started thirty-something years ago adding lots of milk and sugar. I soon dropped the sugar but stuck with the milk until this past year. Now I have dropped the milk and am surprised to find the black coffee to be delicious! Two weeks ago I had my first straight, black espresso and that was just almost too good to be true, but I think I may have hair growing on my chest now. The only thing that has not changed is that I have never liked the screaming-hot coffee that my parents like. I prefer to wait for it to cool just a bit before I drink it. 


Lately, I have seen two different artists who paint with coffee. (I will try to link to their work on the blog version of this article.) A couple of months ago one of my art quilt magazines had a challenge to make art quilts that celebrated coffee and/or tea. I have made one coffee cup quilt and have collected many coffee-related cotton prints for future projects. Clearly I am not the only one who hearts coffee. Do you heart coffee or hot tea? Tell me about it! 
My much-loved Coffee Cup quilt.


Lately, I have seen two different artists who paint with coffee. (I will try to link to their work on the blog version of this article.) A couple of months ago one of my art quilt magazines had a challenge to make art quilts that celebrated coffee and/or tea. I have made one coffee cup quilt and have collected many coffee-related cotton prints for future projects. Clearly I am not the only one who hearts coffee. Do you heart coffee or hot tea? Tell me about it!

A small selection of coffee art:

What Happens After Midnight


When I was younger, my mother always told me, “Nothing good happens after midnight.” My weekend curfew was midnight as long as I lived with my parents, even after I was twenty! Of course, I thought that it was a silly curfew and a paranoid way to look at the world to think nothing good happens after midnight.

As I got older and started paying attention to the news, I began to realize my mother was actually correct! Murders, rapes, car wrecks, etc., seem to mostly occur between midnight and six in the morning. Actually, my observations over the years lead me to believe that two in the morning is when things really begin to get ragged out in the world.

As can be expected, when I went off to college I was regularly out and about all hours of the night, sometimes dragging back to my dorm in the morning sun. We would stay out all night watching a lunar eclipse, or camping in line to get football tickets, or just sitting on a mountaintop solving all the world’s problems. I felt safe then, partially due to the ignorance of youth and partially due to being always surrounded by large groups of friends.

Now that I am a mother and I have curfews to set for my own kids, midnight is the chosen hour. As I said, maturity and experience taught me that being out and about  after midnight exponentially increases the chance of being involved in tragedy.

But I have to say that not EVERYTHING that happens after midnight is bad. This morning at 1:30, one of my dogs woke me up wanting to go outside. I let her out, then after a few minutes of waiting for her to return, decided to go outside and look for her. I grabbed a spotlight we keep charged up and handy—an important thing to have when you live in the country—slipped on some shoes, and went outside. First, my light found a pair of yellow eyes looking back at me just thirty feet away and not far from my chicken house. I kept looking at this pair of eyes until the creature decided to run for it. It was a fox! I shone further up the hill and found two pairs of yellow eyes. This time I was looking at two coyotes. Sweeping my light on around I found a small herd of deer at the crest of the hill. It is amazing what goes on all around me when I am (normally) sound asleep. Thankfully my chickens were locked up tight!

I thought about other times when we have gotten out of our warm beds, driven out to a hilltop, and lain in the bed of the truck watching meteor showers. And there was the time in South Texas when we loaded everyone up and drove out to a high spot near Choke Canyon Lake to watch the re-entering space shuttle fly over.

My husband told me a story about one time when he was in high school and he and some friends were camping out by the river. They saw what looked to be the most gigantic falling star of all time. They thought they were either hallucinating or had just witnessed an asteroid strike. The next day the news reported that a satellite had re-entered the atmosphere and had put on quite a light show in the process.

My conclusion is that as long as you are out in the country, after midnight can be fairly safe and quite interesting.  If you are in the city after midnight, it is best to make sure you are tucked in somewhere safe and can avoid the after-midnight meanness.