I am always happier when I have some painting to do, so if you get grumpy at the thought of doing your own room painting, we can probably make everyone a little happier pretty quickly. Contact me if you have any painting you need to have done.
(Important Note: Painting Speed in the video is not to scale!)
I saw this mug on a friend-of-my-wife's website, and knew I needed it. [“needed”] So when she had a pre-sale offer that came across my IG feed, I jumped on the chance to add this to my collection. Eventually one showed up in the mail, and when I opened it, I just loved it. The proportions and weight and texture had that “just right” feel to it.
And that was the last time that the mug was “mine”.
Gracie's eye's lit up and without saying anything at all, said “I'll take that!” and the mug instantly became her regular hot-tea companion. “You do know that I bought that mug for me, right?!” Gracie's shrugs as she pours her Piper and Leaf Cherry Christmas tea into it and walks to her art studio. (The candle in the picture with the mug is my wife's guilty conscience gift to me for Christmas…since the mugs were out of stock over the holidays, she was trying to make it up to me (while still continuing to use the stolen mug!?!)
“HUMPH!”
[2]
☕ Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining
With that firm “Harrumph” still ringing in the air, I was thumb-scrolling through my IG feed again (not necessarily trying to figure out how to get back at Gracie for her larceny) Holtz Leather came to the rescue! Let me say first that my online alias is “Café655” for most things like Instagram, Slack, Fortnite, YouTube…and so Holtz's new mug was a win-win for me: not only was it a really cool mug, juxtaposing pottery and whiskey barrels, but they gave me the option of putting my name on it, so take that, Gracie!
[3]
☕ Still Drinking Coffee Together
In spite of her light-fingered way with my mugs, I still love her, and want to drink coffee with her for the rest of our lives. I am a great lover of ritual and ceremony, so when Gracie and I started drinking together every morning before the kiddos wake up, I thought, “Not only do I want to drink coffee with this woman every morning, I kinda want to drink from the same mugs for the rest of our lives. To that end, a few years ago, I had a local potter make me 6-each of 2 mugs…one for her and one for me. Why 6? Well, at the rate that my kiddos were destroying our house slowly when they were toddlers, I thought I probably better assume that these mugs will be broken regularly, so having some backups made sense to me. Our morning coffeetime has become such a wonderful part of our lives that Gracie painted a portrait of them for me for Christmas, which now sits on my office desk, reminding me of our many sleepy morning conversation and her 1st comment to me many mornings as her “morning person” husband starts to chat immediately, “No talking until you pour me some coffee!” which makes me laugh, but she is not usually laughing when she says it for some reason🤷♂️.
[4]?
Wait? [4]?
And, as I was writing about my [3] favorite mugs, I realized that I had to write about 1 more mug, though it is not locally available. It was, in fact purchased a little over 22 years ago in a little Adirondack mountain village named Lake Placid, NY. I grew up quite near the quaint Olympic village. There I was in Northern New York with my family, and I had quite abruptly fallen in love with a gal from Alabama (too long a story for a newsletter), and was considering asking her to marry me…which, you know…is a big decision. As I thought about it, I knew that I somehow needed to make quite a firm decision about my intentions before approaching her with the query, right? So I decided to do some solo backpacking around the Avalanche Lake area.
On my way, backpack gear stuffed in my Arcteryx pack, I noticed an EMS Outdoor Store in the downtown area of Lake Placid. Outdoor stores were like catnip to me at the time, so I automatically parked my truck, and went inside, not realizing I was about to see one of my most prized possessions for the first time. There amongst the dehydrated food, water bottles and med kits was a little splatterware mug that caught my eye. It was tiny, really an espresso cup more than a mug, but I just liked it a lot, so walked out of the store with it a few minutes later. I mean, I paid for it! I didn't walk out of the store with it without paying! Unlike my wife, I don't steal mugs :)) And that mug along with my French press that I carried with me to brew my Green Mountain Coffee Roasters coffee became a symbol of the time of reflection, prayer and hiking I did as I decided to pursue trying to convince this exquisite girl to marry me. The fact that she said yes and has stuck around to drink coffee with me for the last 22 years has made this one of my favorite possessions, which I have with me every day, hanging from a carabiner on my briefcase, the clicking noise it makes as it swings reminding me of the many good things I have been given.
By the way, Gracie, thanks for marrying me and becoming my coffee-buddy! I can tell that you really like it from the fact that you sometimes drink your coffee from soup bowls:
