Grape jelly

This morning I, Lady Tamara of Lochaber, am having toast and jelly with my tea. I do not have toast and jelly. I may have toast and honey or toast and marmalade or jam but never jelly. It is grape jelly. Today, when I wanted to feel powerful and strong I am feeling small, innocent and curious in a very childlike way about what adventure my day may bring. I am lingering over this letter as if waiting for Garnet, my Teddy Bear, to waltz over, sit to tea with me and tell of how she saved me from The Grey Man last night. I wonder if they serve jellies or jams at www.LochaberHighlandEstates.com .

I was doing some volunteer work for the Chamber of Commerce at their office. I am on the Taste of the Metrocom committee. I am calling our members for donations for silent auction items and also calling local restaurants to participate. I hear this little voice from the Executive Director’s office “I need a brain”.  What? She needs a brain? “I need your brain.” Now she wants my brain? Sounds like a movie script featuring brain eating aliens.  Of course, just like in a movie when you are watching it and screaming “NO!!! Do not go it is a trap!!!!” I get up and move slowly to the door where I cautiously peek around the corner of it. “I need to pick at your brain mine is not working.” She wonders why she is my “ex-wife.”  Maybe this brain thing should have come up months ago. Her man loves her though and he may not care about her brain issues. How many of us would love to hear our ex-wives or in my case husbands admit they need a brain or even just to pick at ours? I giggle and ask how I can help.

Fridays are coffee from Starbucks day for Shaggy. She looks forward every week to getting a late` from there on her way to work just on Fridays. I am not a fan, never have been. I prefer Its A Grind.  The junkies who frequent Starbucks to get their fix and feel metropolitan are for the most part intense, serious, unhappy, disgruntled and extremely selfish. I have never seen anyone other than myself and my children express joy or childish abandonment at one of these places.  We pull serenely into the parking lot to enter the drive through. There is a line out to the street. We can park and go in so we proceed through the parking lot which is packed. I turn around and ask her if she would rather go to the donut place first and get her apple fritter and then return to Starbucks. Since it is just across the street this is fine. We are attempting to leave the parking lot; I pull slowly up to a blind corner that connects the drive through with the exit to the street and inch my way to see around it. Psycho soccer mom comes charging into the path to the drive through without even a glance in my direction. She did not look right nor did she look left. She just dove for the drive through. I apply the brake and stop several feet from where her monster SUV would have smashed into me. She has still not looked around her. I lay my hand on the horn for a very long moment. She is startled to see me there. As I am recovering from this brush with death by coffee crazed sub-human another dim-witted sub human comes racing into the drive through / exit road and seeing her blocking the drive through he decides to turn to the left to avoid her not slowing down mind you he sees me still now, desperately trying to escape the parking lot and still he does not slow down he speeds up and swerves left to avoid her and right to avoid me. It is just coffee!!! It is just Starbucks!!!! They are not going to run out!!!!! It is not like they are giving away i-pads today!!! Yo!!!! They sell it by the pound buy some and make your coffee at home!!!! Shaggy only drinks coffee once a week. She does not drink it at home. This is supposed to be a treat not an encounter with psycho coffee junkies. It feels like the scene from Batman where Bruce’s parents are killed in the alley for a strand of pearls…. Surreal!!

Us tea drinkers are so much more civilized.