Steamy Seductions

Okay, I give up. Winter’s won.

I’m not throwing in the towel because it’s the fourth time this winter that I’ve seen significant snow in Georgia. And for all you northerners, the Atlanta definition of “significant snow” is a simultaneous snowflake sighting and a mob at the Publix akin to Black Friday at WalMart.

Neither is my dachshund’s refusal to go outside the reason for my surrender to the season.

The way I know that winter has won? I actually consumed a hot beverage this morning. I risked scalding my tongue to get my insides warm.

It’s like this: I don’t drink coffee. I never developed a taste for it. And why would I sip hot tea when I can gulp Chick-Fil-A unsweetened iced tea? It’s kind of like the old adage that “wine is fine but liquor is quicker.” I drink tea to quench my thirst, and cold goes down faster than hot.

In fact, I’ve estimated that in my lifetime I have consumed enough unsweetened iced tea to float a mid-size cruise ship. My kids have already been instructed that upon my death I wish to be cremated and sprinkled in the drive-thru of Chick-Fil-A.

But here’s the irony: my house has a built-in Miele coffee system, an expensive machine that has a steam nozzle and other features appealing to coffee enthusiasts. I can program it to speak to me in German, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, English, Italian, or French. It has a counter that will display the number of cups of coffee or espresso that have been dispensed since it was purchased. It even has a security system that I can set to keep people unfamiliar with the unit from using it.

Even crazier is the fact that I, the one who does not drink coffee, am the one who ordered the machine. And it’s been used exactly six times in seven years. I don’t know how to set the language or the security system, and I haven’t ever gotten the German warning that means it’s time to descale the unit after 100 coffees.

My thinking in purchasing the Miele coffee system was that it could be used to circumvent my then-husband’s serious Starbuck’s addiction. Why not put in our own mocha machine? I thought. That, combined with the fabulous office he had over the garage, the beautiful pool, the home theater, and the fully-equipped home gym, meant he never needed to leave the house.

My plan didn’t work so well. As it turns out, it didn’t matter what was in this home. He liked to get his mochas elsewhere.

A month or so ago, he began texting me in an effort to have me meet with him so that he could present some options for paying the money he owes me. To my mind, there’s only one acceptable option, and that is for him to pay me the money he owes me. But I guess he needed to try. The conversation went something like this:

HIM: Coffee tonight 630 pm

ME: Excuse me?

HIM: Coffee starbucks

ME: I don’t drink coffee.

HIM: I forgot . . . organic water with a twist of lime

(Okay, you did forget. It’s unsweetened tea. And there’s no such thing as organic water)

HIM again: I bring the lime btw

(At this point, I’m grossed out and stop answering his texts, which strangely continue throughout the course of the day)

HIM: ??Yes?

HIM: Ok I will see u then

HIM: Seriously just biz . . . .

HIM: Seriously if u can’t that’s fine just let me know


Needless to say, I didn’t show up at Starbucks that day. And while winter may have won today, it will be a Kalte Tag in der Holle before I ever succumb to his steamy seductions.

That’s German for “cold day in hell.”

Wound Too Tight

My cuckoo clock stopped working. It’s been hanging on the same wall for several years, working just fine, until one day when it just stopped. There are no batteries to replace, since a cuckoo clock is wound by pulling on the weighted cords.

The instructions that came with it are in German, which made it difficult for me to diagnose the problem. But I gathered from the pictures that it’s very important that the clock be correctly balanced, both horizontally and vertically. Looking at it from the side, I decided the vertical balance might be off, so I stuck a folded business card behind it. And when that didn’t help, I folded the card again. Still didn’t work.

The pendulum on the clock has a weight on it that can be adjusted up and down. The higher up the weight goes, the faster the clock ticks; move it lower, and the clock moves slower. Again, balance is the key.

Fooling around with that pendulum brought back memories of the metronome that stood on the piano when I was a kid. Now, I never asked to have a metronome. I hated the thing because it was very good at pointing out how rhythmically and musically challenged I was. And that would have been fine if my parents had heeded the metronome’s warning about my lack of musical talent. Instead, that damn metronome announced to the world with every tick-tock, tick-tock that the only way I’d ever make it to Carnegie Hall would be as a paying customer or a ticket taker. And that meant I needed to practice harder.

Here’s the thing about metronomes and cuckoo clocks: if the pendulum swings two ticks to the left, then it’s going to swing two tocks to the right. It’s the law of pendulums that they must swing the same distance in one direction as they do in the other. And if, for some reason, that doesn’t happen, then the thing is broken.

I think we’re all pendulums, to be honest. In the past few years, I’ve caught up with old friends, and I can’t think of a single exception to the pendulum rule. The people who were wild in high school and college have swung exactly that far in the opposite direction, especially when it comes to how they’re raising their own kids. The straight-laced, zipped up kids from way back when (including my very own self) have turned into irreverent smartasses. And the ones who were never too extreme – well, their pendulums still aren’t swinging out so wide in either direction. They were balanced then, and they’re still that way.

Balance is everything, it turns out. Or as my friend Grant (aka Sister Louisa) says, “I know there’s a balance; I see it when I swing past.”

My clock still isn't working. And I'm thinking about not getting it fixed. Because seeing that pendulum hanging there completely still is a reminder that maybe a little tempering of the wide swings in my life wouldn't be such a bad thing. Maybe I could use a little balance.

Because minus that balance, of course, one might rightfully be called cuckoo.