counting hundreds on the table, twenties on the floor

hello old friends.  what have you been up to lately?  it is so ridiculously beautiful here in santa barbara, you almost can't believe it.  it is bright and clear and blue for days.  there is something else we should talk about.  how i moved to santa barbara following the epic fail that was making it work in mammoth, and not one day later i met my synergy warrior amesia, who handed me, on a golden platter, my life.

that sounds dramatic but that is how it happened. 

now 1101 state st is home to the french press and arcobaleno trade, and todd and amesia and i are making it work, making beautiful coffee and selling beautiful things and getting it done.  i love coffee, i love espresso, i love people, i love standing behind a super hot la marzocco and talking to new friends and old.  i love the french press.  i love it so deeply i spend all day every day there working and growing it and making it real.  

it still is beyond me, just a little bit, that in less than 4 months my life could take such a turn and become what it has become.  i miss mammoth, i miss flippant little things like not knowing how to spend an afternoon.  i feel though, that i am finally inhabiting my bones, stretching out my fingers and testing their muscle memory and recalling why i kept coming back to coffee, to people, to business.  

so come see us.  we are lucky and dreamy and we know it.  

love letter to mammoth

we've left mammoth for good. well, not for good for good, but i will, i realize, never live there again. it feels great to realize this. i've drifted un-anchored for years. moorless, right? i have tried and failed to find my place, that sense of place where you realize with your stomach and limbs and brain that THIS IS WHERE YOU SHOULD BE. i've been looking, you know. so we left our mountain top, our beloved mountain top. we cast our eyes to the horizon and set our course back home. but what is back home anyway? back to where my parent's live? do parents make a home? does a couch make a home?no silly. home is just where you put your foot down and say fuck it this is home! and home is santa barbara. it was frightful, the anxiety making a decision like this caused me. when you have moved every year of your adult life, every 9-16 months putting everything you hold onto into a box and unpacking it again, deciding not to do it anymore is fucking scary.
do you regret things? decisions to move that happened years ago that derailed you? do you mourn the places you left or are leaving? do you feel jealousy toward those whose tap roots are deep, who are settled and content?
i won't regret uprooting myself. it is who i am. i am a human who needs to walk circles around my place before i nestle in. and now i know that i am where i should be. who knew?
but this is after all, a love letter to mammoth. our mountain. a pretend life that we stretched and tried and loved. breathed the air and let the cheeks get rosy again.

i love sunday sunday morning

just a sweet sunday by myself.

crawled to the sea that was calling for me so I could swim, swim the ocean wide

we are thawing out in the mountains. the temperature reached 50, then went to 60. and then kept going. melt melt melt.
the sun gives us some sunburns, but it also is waking us up.


thawing, feeling muscle memory, testing it out.
we have to be ready.
todd got laid off and is moving to santa barbara tomorrow.
i am pretty sure we are ready.

hot rainfalls made of magma melt alaska

we live in the shadow of a volcano. we work on its face. we drive over faults to start our days.it sounds so volatile and treacherous but really it is consistent and predictable.

snow

i've settled in the snow, into the winter quiet. this is longest we've stayed anywhere for a little over a year. nothing could be less settled than our employment, than this economy. each day we wake up and wonder if today our number will come up. it is a really terrifying and unbelievably stressful way to spend the work day. senior management walk the halls and i really panic, freak out for a minute, try to understand the logic of layoffs.

the truth is that i can't find any logic in such decisions. work is not a thing i have ever done on autopilot, so i've never feared losing my job. here are good folks, getting laid off, goodbye. hard workers, that is that. not just here. everywhere.

i like the snow. i like the consistency of it: it is quiet to walk in, and my life is constant and that feels right for the first time in... ever. there are fires and books and my cheeks are always red. rosy.

there seem to be a few options, so far as i can see. we can accept this illogical number game and understand that eventually and soon we will be laid off and we can ride it out until it happens. or we can cut our losses, and try to find some greener pastures. i'm afraid they don't exist. i'm afraid to find out if they do or not.

the snow is falling slow and consistently. every morning when i wake up there is a fresh foot of it on the ground and i have to shuffle a new path to the bus stop. underneath there will be grass in 5 or 6 months and the trees will bloom into a late spring. it will smell like 8050 feet above sea level. i hope it will still look like home.

the kind of love that lasts forever

it has been awhile. it has been so long awhile that i can't figure out the re-telling of all that has happened. love was promised, dreams came true, decisions were made, it snowed and fires burned.
extreme optimism was born and encouraged.


the kind of life moments that force your heart to get bigger to contain it all. they happened.

and they kept happening. we decided to put them first.
honestly, what job satisfaction trumps watching best friends get married on top of a hill in the forest?





we walked two miles in the snow to vote our guy into the white house. and then we cried because that hope that we had been daring feel was okay and real! then we started to feel something new: pride. again with the extreme optimism!
the sun set and rose and set and the days got shorter and colder and quiet.

there is nowhere else to look except up and forward. and that is a great feeling.