Fancy coffee

Happy Belated Easter to those of you who celebrate it. I hope you had a beautiful day with plenty of chocolate bunnies and well...lots of other chocolate, too.

It is vacation around these digs and I’ve been doing many things that somehow don’t seem to include blogging. When I peeked in this morning, even I was surprised that it’s been 4 days since I posted anything. I didn’t intend to be *that* quiet.

We’re making some progress around here with projects. Not nearly as fast as hoped, but that’s okay. The pace in this house is very relaxed and the lad has been catching up on his sleep. Sometime in the latter part of the week, he’ll be back at the grind, working on school assignments that teachers love to dump on them two minutes before vacation begins. Despite catching up on sleep and the relaxed pace, he has been really good about helping around here over the weekend. Without even being asked. He just pitched in and started doing. I have let him know that I appreciate that tremendously. So nice not having to beg and cajole and then get stinky about it. I think he’s demonstrating just how grown up he’s become, without the slightest awareness of it.

On other fronts....the hummingbird feeder is now up and open for business. It’s just cool enough out so that the wasps are staying out of sight today. So maybe the hummingbirds will find it before the wasps. According to the Spring Migration Map, the ruby throated hummingbirds are practically in my back yard already and should be in my backyard within the week. Well, I hope so anyway. It’ll be awfully disappointing if not a single one comes to visit. Still too cold at night to start putting out the hanging flower baskets, so the feeder will have to do the job of attracting and enticing the little hummingbirds to stop by and stay.

In the Things That Make Me Laugh department...I stopped by Dunky Donuts earlier and ordered my usual at the squawk box. Large Coffee, Cream Only. The place was deserted. As most of the town is today. Between Easter vacation and our Patriot’s Day, the streets were eerily devoid of life. So, I suppose the fellow manning the drive-up window was also a little more relaxed than usual. As soon as I told him what I wanted, he said, “That’s a large coffee, fancy?”

Fancy? “No,” I said, slowly,"Large Coffee, Just Cream. No sugar.” And as an afterthought, I asked, “What’s a fancy coffee?”

He laughed and said, “I know you. I recognized your voice and I *know* you don’t like sugar. I’m teasing.”

Oh. That made me laugh, too. Guess I’m a more frequent visitor than I realized.

When I pulled around he was all smiles and handed my coffee to me. I like the young people who work there. They are the friendliest folks. Most of them are from Brazil and English is their second language, but in the short space of time they’ve been there (about a year), their English has become remarkably fluent and we mostly have mix-ups owing to our respective accents which are foreign to each others’ ears. But what makes them really different from the various other service employees at other establishments around town is that they are friendly and engaged. They really do know their customers and they are wise enough to make the considerable effort to know their customers. And I’m sure they put up with plenty of abuse from snotty customers, but they deal and keep on smiling and make mental notes for the next time. When you think of the hurdles of working in a different country where the language isn’t your first language and you’re dealing with a few hundred customers every day, the challenges are enormous. These young people have already learned many things that will give them an advantage as they grow older. They won’t be working there for too much longer, I suspect.