Brauhaus Kaffee

All photos by smalltowngirl

I love this coffee shop. 

Still new (open for less than a month, I believe), Brauhaus Kaffee is the newest addition to quaint, downtown Farmington's collection of stores and restaurants. 

The owners, who are residents of Fredericktown, Missouri, have spent the last two years renovating the space.

I'm not sure how old downtown's buildings are, but my guess is that they're from the early 1900s. The sidewalk outside is red brick, and two tables with two chairs each, sit just outside the cafe's front doors. 

The cafe's two floor-to-ceiling picture windows let sunshine stream in, and offer a view of the side of the court house, around which downtown Farmington was built.

Gleaming, subtly distressed hardwood floors are offset by black granite-topped tables and contemporary black leather sofa and armchairs. 

Prints of German artwork hang on the red, exposed brick, and a piano sits in the back. 

Beside the piano sits an empty guitar stand - empty because someone in the cafe has inevitably picked up the instrument to pluck out acoustic melodies each time I've been in the cafe.

I like to think that by way of my Sunday afternoon latte ritual, I'm helping keep Pat, the owner's spirits high. Today we chatted about their scones being hand made from scratch each morning, and about the anticipation over the arrival of their new stove, which will accomodate homeades soups in addition to their already homemade baked goods.

Today, craving something sweet, I ordered a mocha. The taste was just as great as the presentation:

The clientelle is as diverse as one could hope for in a community as relatively homogeneous as Farmington, Missouri is. 

Today, for instance, there were three q-tips (white haired folks), a woman who looked to be my age with a mod, black haircut and a large tatoo on her foot, and another late-20s/early-30s writer-type with a laptop. I couldn't help the excitement, overhearing him voice his enthusiasm about a local, independent magazine.

I hope that Brauhaus Kaffee surives. I take that back, I hope that it thrives, and I have faith that it will. Warm fuzzies will take over my belly when downtowns come fully to life again, and I think Farmington's well on it's way, thanks to places like this one.

Thankful for One More Day

The morning sun was at my back as I drove North on Highway 8. I was hovering just below the speed limit as I approached the Potosi city limits.

There is no turning lane on the highway in that spot, so when I saw a car passing the pick-up, I realized that the truck was in my lane. I slammed on my brakes, gripping the steering wheel with my left hand and throwing my right hand to my horn. 

The grey and black Ford F-150 looked like a wall of steel standing before me as I braced for impact. 

The left front end of his truck struck my front driver's side. His truck scraped down the side of my car, and I watched the shoulder of the road move all too quickly beneath my tires.

I felt my car leave the road, then the shoulder of the road, and finally come to a stop nose-down in a six-foot ditch.

I put the car in park. By the time I got out and turned to look at the scene of the accident, the truck's driver was already halfway between his truck and my car, asking me if I was alright, and

apologizing.

Adrenaline pumping, my hands began to shake. Soon my arms and shoulders began to shiver and shake, too. 

By the time the police reports were written, the car was on a tow truck and I had arrived at the auto shop, I was sick to my stomach and exhausted.

My dad helped me with the phone calls and paperwork for insurance and a rental car, and then I worked a 7 hour day, leaving the office well after 9 p.m. 

I slept for 12 hours last night though, and spent today with a sadness in my stomach that I can't explain.

The sadness was there yesterday as well. I wished someone would hug me so that I could let the tears flow. Instead, I worked. Today I cleaned and unpacked more boxes, and only now, after midnight, in my bed alone, are a few tears falling.

I wasn't afraid. As I braced for impact, I felt at peace with whatever was about to happen.  

What a strange thing - to be aware of that sense of peace even as a Ford truck is pummeling the car you're driving. I think I resigned myself in that moment that I was prepared for whatever hand God was dealing me. 

I was a blessed woman to have landed in the cozy 6-foot ditch that I landed in (rather than in any number of 50+ foot drop-offs along that highway), and while I was at peace with whatever was going to happen, I am so, so thankful that I was given another day to wake up and live today. 

Smalltowngirl

Taken 3/14/09 in Potosi, MO

Week One Recap (spoiler: I held a chincilla tonight!)

It's 9:49 p.m., and I'm sitting in my office in Potosi, Missouri after a full day of work, including eight hours in the office and several more with our board of directors. If ever before this year I had been told I would work in Potosi, Missouri, I would have bet everything I owned that you were lying. (And I'm not a better).

If you had told me I'd love my new position working in Potosi, Missouri, I would probably have laughed in your face. (And I'm generally very polite).

Yet here I am, tired after my first week of work here, but tired in the "sugarplums dancing in their heads" kind of way, where I feel an excitement about what's to come and such a deep peace about where I am in this moment that rest will come easily when I finish this post and crawl into my bed.

This week I have been woken up by the family dog, I've had coffee at the kitchen table with my dad before work, and I've watched my mom get so creative and excited about cooking really great, healthy meals for us.

Wednesday on my way home from work, I saw a deer cross the road in front of me and run down a hill and into a field. The weather has warmed up here, so I've continued to test out my new trail running shoes on jogs in the woods behind the office. Tonight, I held a chincilla in my hands (his little nose was adorable, and his "pricklies" were softer than they looked!).

My coworkers are gracious, thoughtful, and incredibly welcoming. Do not misunderstand me here, they are also hard-working, experienced, many of them very well-traveled professionals. They have brought me into my first week here at the Y with nothing but compassion and kindness, which heals my soul in ways that I didn't know it was even aching.

Do I miss New York City? Of course I do, in little ways, and sporatically. Do I love where I am though, professionally and personally; mentally, spiritually, and physically? Yes, wholly.

All things happen for a reason, and I believe that my new job and new home are no exceptions.

Twenty Four Hours

I gripped the rungs of the ladder, excited. Kids laughed and hollared and water splashed in the pool beneath me as I placed my foot on the first cool, metal rung.

Quickly, I ascended, afraid to look down. The top of the ladder came quickly, and as my eyes became level with the diving board, I realized for the first time exactly how high in the air I was.

What would happen if, at the top, you froze and couldn't get yourself down? Would they call in the fire department like the do when a cat gets stuck in a tree?

All of time stood still for a moment. Butterfiles rose up in my stomach, and fear trickled slowly from my core, into my arms and legs, and on to my fingers and toes. 

It was quiet from the top. A place of relative solitude. The kids down below looked small, and even the lifeguards - in their towers of authority - were beneath me. 

I was on my own, and while I wanted to feel the rush of the dive, I was terrified to actually jump from the diving board now that I was standing on it. 

Whether it was fear of humiliation, the uncertainty of what would happen if I simply sat on the diving board and refused to come down, or my innate sense of courage and adventure, I'm not sure. 

I walked to the edge though. I took a deep breath, and I jumped, a scream of terror and delight escaping my lips as my body hung in the air and began plummeting down. 

When I crashed into the water and made my way back up for air, I couldn't imagine not having had the courage to make that leap.

***

"How are you feeling about the move?" 

With twenty-four hours left, maybe this helps answer that question.

***

Breaking Things to Fix Them

We began talking. I apologized for snapping at you during brunch. You accepted my apology. Things seemed okay, but I had a lot on my mind. We were sitting on the white couch, and you reached out for me. I needed to talk, not to be held. Even now, when you aren't here to hold me, I don't regret that decision.

An hour later, I took your keys off my keychain and set them quietly on your book shelf. You walked out of the apartment as I started to gather the things of mine that had gradually accumulated in your space. I wanted to slip as gently and quietly as I could out your front door, and I wanted the hurt to stop hurting. I didn't want to leave any traces of myself behind to haunt you.

I thought that maybe you were leaving - that you would take a walk and I'd be gone when you came back. A moment later the door creaked open, and you appeared with two sturdy shopping bags. It wasn't until a few hours later that I realized you'd taken them from the stack someone in your building had left in your entryway. I packed my things.

I said to you what I wanted to say. You were standing next to the radiator. You looked like someone had crushed you when I said what I did. I guess that it really wasn't until that moment that you realized how I felt about you. You had already made your decision though, and I needed to go.

You put my bags in the backseat of the cab, and then you wrapped your arms around me. I can still smell the leather of your coat. I could not hug you back. The heaving sobs rose from deep inside me - from caverns of emotions that I thought would be foverever closed. You had opened them up, and now they echoed my heartbreak.

I sat in the cab and watched you walk down the sidewalk defeated, shoulders slumped and arms hanging low. I thought to myself, "I love you," and I asked the driver through choked sobs, "why do men do this?" even though I knew that man didn't do this.

I had prayed for two weeks that our future would be made clear to me. Saturday night we laughed and teased and watched movies, and we fell asleep happy. The next day, I watched those words come out of your mouth, and I heard the tone in  your voice. I think that you were as surprised to hear yourself say those words as I was.

I feel as if someone has punched me in the heart. Looking back at my life, though, I have never had a bruise that didn't heal. And the healing that you offered my heart, Jeff, far exceeds the hurt that you've left in it. Thank you for that.

The 60th percentile

Photo credit: Smalltowngirl, Taiwan 2007

Bon Iver creeps out of my stereo and cars pass quietly down the street outside my open window. I'm in pajamas and glasses, thinking back over the past week, and thinking forward to a future that's looking better than it was a few days ago.

Doubt covers me some days, suffocating me until what started out coming in from the outside seeps through my skin and resides inside of me, infiltrates every thought, and dominates my perspectives on my life.

I read recently that more than 40th of Americans actively dislike their jobs.I was in the 60th percentile of Americans. I'm not used to being so middle-of-the-road statistically.

***

As a kid, I'd get sick to my stomach when the Missouri Mastery Achievement Test would come each spring.

The teacher would seperate our desks so that we could not see each other's exams. She (all of my teachers were women) would explain, using white chalk drawings on a black board, how to properly fill in the little multiple choice bubbles.

She would also make sure that every had two sharpened No. 2 pencils ready on their desks. She would open her copy of the thin paper test booklet, and she would read the test instructions to the class.

I think it was in the very first year that I had to suffer through these exams that I was diagnosed with stomach ulcers for the first time. I would sit, listening to the teacher read the directions, and my stomach would burn. Butterflies would creep from my tummmy into my chest and arms, leaving my fingers tingly and leaving me doubtful that I'd earn an acceptable score again this year.

When my test scores would arrive in the mail weeks later I was almost always in the 98th percentile. How then, at this stage in my life, have I found myself in the 60% of Americans who actively dislike their work?

***

For the last several weeks, I've hoped to understand where my life was meant to go in both the romantic and the professional departments. Doubt had crept in, and as usual, it was suffocating. I looked inward enough to know that I could use some help, and then I looked upward to ask for it.

This week, I was presented with a new professional opportunity that I think would put me back up in the 90th percentile of job satisfaction. And by contrast, decisions were made for me in the romantic department that seem to have answered my own doubts and questions.

Bon Iver eases his was smoothly out of my stereo, and a yawn spreads through my jaw and chest. My eyes water just a bit, and my eyelids droop. Before I close my eyes and fall into sleep, I smile because I can already see the 40th percentile behind me getting smaller as I walk away.

2nd Avenue F Train to Brooklyn

"Second Avenue, F train to Brooklyn." The voice carries from the conductor's lungs over the PA system and into the station.

The word, "Brooklyn," sounds like home to me.

The train doors slide closed, and I'm on my way.