On the 18^th day of Christmas coffee, my true love gave to me, a double cappuccino –

A friend took this picture on another visit. I don't normally carry a camera with me on my runs.

Christmas was good.  My kids are old enough now that I don’t have to spend the entire time at my sister’s house on Christmas evening untwisting and liberating toys attached to cardboard like Hannibal Lecter was attached to that hand truck dolly.  What is up with that?  You’re finally done untwisting and discover microscopic threads securing Barbie’s hair.  Or worse, the talking puppy you just unleashed needs eight “C” batteries in order to bark and move its friggin’ head (isn’t the real puppy we have at home enough?!) and no one, NO ONE, keeps a supply of C batteries in the junk drawer.  Triple A, maybe, and a 9-volt if you’re lucky, but “C”, eight of them?  C’mon.  I love my family, but I had children long after my siblings did, so they weren’t thinking when purchasing Puppy Grows and Knows Your Name and taking into account the psyche of my then 4-year-old.  She opened it and wanted it and never processed the one to two hour lead time it takes to actually get that puppy growing.  I’m not sure we ever figured out how to program it to know her name.  Damn, it came with a computer disc.  By the end of that Christmas night a few years ago, I had untwisted so many toys and shoved so many batteries into the cavities of so many animals, I felt dirty and had not finished a single conversation I’d started with another adult.  I’m not sure I ever finished a sentence.  But, hey, I’m just being nostalgic.  Last Friday was nothing like that.  The girls got clothes and shoes from the aunts and uncles, and any electronics thrown into the mix, surely they knew more about than I.  I think my eight-year-old has been day-trading in her room.

So Christmas comes and goes and we’re left with the day after, which is fine unless one of your children got a set of drums from Santa and you’re babysitting two dogs that are not your own.  It’s like taking care of someone else’s children.  You don’t want to yell at them like you do your own kids dogs, lest they report back to their parents owners that you’re a bitch and I don’t mean that in a dog way.  I love Lucky and Milo as if they were my own but they’re not, so I can’t really train them in a few short days NOT to sleep under the covers right next to me in bed, NOT to lick my face as if they had OCD, NOT to love me as if I were the most important person in the world to them.  Sorry, I have to take a moment.  They left this afternoon and, oh geez, gimme a sec…  I didn’t expect to miss them this much.

All right, so we got the drums going, the dog derby continuing, the food in the kitchen and pantry has mysteriously doubled in size and needs to be eaten, the in-laws are still wandering around (again, I love ‘em, but you have to include the in-laws in the chaotic picture) and my husband has suspiciously disappeared to do his annual half-off Christmas decoration shopping.  It was time for a run.  Got the shoes laced up and tucked a few dollars into that tiny little pocket they include in running shorts so that I could finish my jog at one of my three local coffee houses and buy a cappuccino.

I live in one of maybe four neighborhoods in Los Angeles where you can actually walk to someplace worthwhile besides a 7-11.  Within two blocks of my house, I have no less than three great places to get a coffee, sit down and people watch (or write a screenplay).  I chose The Gelato Bar and Espresso Cafe because they care as much about their coffee drinks as they do about their Italian ice cream, the atmosphere is sweet and the line is never out the door.  The run was brief for someone training for a marathon but I got out of the house when it was necessary and ended up supporting a local merchant who made me a perfect double cappuccino (half-caff, of course) to close out my afternoon.  There is an art to steaming and frothing the milk to compliment the espresso.  Never take a barista for granted.  Mine created a heart in the foam (as I’m noticing they do a lot) which seemed like such an ideal way to end my Christmas coffee countdown.  For that, a perfect five and a thank-you.

I’m not going to go back through the song.  If you’ve joined me somewhere along the way, by all means spend the afternoon reviewing my 18 days of Christmas coffee (yes, eighteen) and then subscribe to my site so you never miss all that happens after.

Next: everything else

On the 17^th day of Christmas coffee, my true love gave to me, a morning mug to save me -

It went something like this…

I made boeuf bourguignon for Christmas Eve dinner, referring to it as Julia Child would, with a high-pitched trill in my voice.  Shortly after the girls and I ate twenty-seven cookies for dessert, they announced they were going to sleep.  It was 8:20pm.  Normally, any parent would be thrilled that their children were putting themselves to bed, but our girls had retired no earlier than 10:30 during the winter break so far, and 8:20 sounded like a recipe for disaster, unlike the boeuf bourguignon, which was a recipe for success.  My husband and I tried to talk them out of their lunacy and my cousin helped by stopping by with gifts around 8:40, but they still hit the sack by 9, determined to do away with Christmas Eve by slumbering until the big show.  We were told in no uncertain terms that we would be awakened at 6:30am sharp the following morning.

Before dinner, I’d slipped two silver tipped Tetra fish into the littlest one’s fish tank (because the fish store woman told me I had to within two hours of their purchase), hoping against hope that the munchkin wouldn’t notice them before morning so that I could leave a note and give Santa credit for the surprise.  I’d run into an elf at the mall who suggested that I take care of the fish request myself because they usually don’t survive the journey from the North Pole (and because you never know who’s reading this post).  At about midnight, my husband was upstairs with pipsqueak who, surprisingly, was still unable to fall asleep, when she noticed fish one and fish two.  The husband tried to distract her, then telepathically asked the fish to hide in their castle, to no avail.  Within minutes, the sisters were all abuzz about the growing fish population in the house and their deep sleep cycles were nowhere to be found.  I bashfully took credit for the Tetras and rushed the girls off to bed with threats that Santa would skip our house if he thought they were awake.  (What would you do?!  It was almost 1am!)  When the little one asked to curl up in our bed, we couldn’t agree faster that it was an excellent idea if it would help her FALL ASLEEP!

At 1:30am, I was lying sideways in the king-sized bed within the six inches I’d been given by my daughter, my husband and my dog’s two boyfriends, Milo and Lucky (another post altogether), when my daughter whispered that she “just couldn’t fall asleep.”  I was a nanosecond away from deep REM and ordered her to “just try” and it came out sounding like Linda Blair in “The Exorcist” which is probably why she started crying…again.

At no point on my website will you hear me refer to myself as a great mother.  I’m a mother who sometimes has great moments, and sometimes channels Joan Crawford.  “I’m not mad at you.  I’m mad at the dirt!”  I’m unsure if Crawford actually said those exact words, but that’s how I felt in bed Thursday night, approaching 2am.  I wasn’t mad at my daughter.  I was mad at the situation.  Facing Christmas morning with a little more than four hours sleep was a recipe that includes four letter words.  But here’s where the coffee comes in –

It wasn’t even light outside when a beep, beep, beep in a distant land startled the whole house.  The alarm was going off in my middle daughter’s room as the dogs started stirring in the bed.  Then I heard footsteps pad downstairs, followed closely by squeals that “Santa came!” followed closer still by footsteps padding back up the stairs and into our room.  My oldest was gentle at first, “Get up, Mom.”  But after I moaned and groaned and rolled over into the additional three inches I was afforded, she got mean and I didn’t want Christmas to start out that way so I got out of bed.  I don’t remember traveling from the bed to the kitchen, but I do recall being enchanted that I’d set the timer on the coffeemaker and had Trader Joe’s Wintry Blend waiting for me.

I’m not a morning person.  My husband would announce that this is a grotesque (more than gross) understatement.  Sue me.  But coffee allows me to think I’m a morning person by providing me with routine, caffeine and love.  Between the hours of 7am and noon, I can paint your house.  So it was with great satisfaction that, as the first mug went down, so did my exhaustion level.  Santa had come and it was time to enjoy what he’d brought the girls.  The fish were happy in their new home.  It was cold enough outside to make a fire.  The mother-in-law had cinnamon buns in the oven.

I cried inside and prayed silently for an afternoon nap.

Next: the end of it all and the beginning of the really good stuff

First of all, next year, there will only be 12 days of Christmas coffee.  You, my faithful readers and the thousands of friends you will have turned on to my site throughout 2010, will not have to listen to me gripe about how difficult it is to organically and melodically incorporate six more days into a song that wasn’t that good to begin with.  I mean, really, ten lords a-leaping?  I can’t relate to that.  And truth be told, growing up with Andy Williams, this is how I first heard the song:

On the first day of Christmas my good friends brought to me, a song and a Christmas tree — (first verse only. All other verses, “a song for the Christmas tree.”)

On the second day of Christmas my good friends brought to me, two candy canes and a song for the Christmas tree…

On the third day of Christmas my good friends brought to me,

three boughs of holly

fourth–four colored lights

fifth–a shining star

sixth—little silver bells

seventh–candles a glowing

eighth–gold and silver tinsel

ninth–a guardian angel

tenth–some mistletoe

eleventh–gifts for one and all

twelfth–all their good wishes

So you can imagine my confusion when I was about seven and heard someone sing about turtledoves and a partridge in a pear tree.  For a moment, the world was not the safe place I’d imagined it to be.  It was a little like when I moved out of the house after high school and discovered spinach was a green, leafy, lush vegetable and not a frozen green brick boiled into a soggy green lump.  Life was full of surprises.

What was I talking about?  Right, the 14^th, 15^th and 16^th days.  On day 14, I was zipping around town and stopped in at home for a quick break and evaluation of gifts.  Did I have enough?  Did I spend too much money?  Should I take something back?  Yeah, as if I’d go into any store two days before Christmas to return something and stand in the back of a line thirty people deep?  Who are those people anyway?  What are they returning?  Someone was naughty after they’d been nice and now they don’t get the Wii?  Okay, so I’m home and in the pantry eating my thirteenth cookie of the day (maybe it was fourteen) and I spotted one of those little Starbucks Via envelopes on a shelf.  I’d received several of them months ago as giveaways and never tried them, mostly because I’ve never had the need.  I don’t see the point of instant coffee.  It’s not as if it comes with its own hot water.  I guess if you want one cup and don’t feel like making a pot?  So I try this Via stuff and, yes, it surely does taste like the real thing but it smells like my mom’s Nescafe and for some deep, dark reason I can’t access, that’s a bad memory for me and so it wasn’t a product I’d seek out in the future.  If instant is your thing, Via is the ticket but I have a sneaky suspicion this is going to be the laserdisc of the Starbucks empire.

Moving on, I have to address my tea-drinker readers.  It’s a little like boxers or briefs (I wear neither).  You usually pick one and stick to it.  We all have our reasons.  Mine is that coffee tastes deep, dark and rich (again, like my men) and tea tastes like aromatic hot water.  I steep that little sucker for hours and I still pretty much just taste the water.  But here’s the thing.  I like water.  I take mine without ice because I already have cold blood and the ice cubes just get in the way.  Anyhow, I’ve been known to have tea every now and again because I’m in the mood for something gentle and soothing and coffee has been accused of neither.  In the throes of Christmas Eve shopping, I had to stop by Peet’s for their Holiday Blend and with the purchase of a pound, you get a free cup of something.  I opted for their Winter Solstice tea because it sounded festive and gosh darn, it was.  I added a little sugar and some milk, waited about 20 minutes so the top of my mouth wouldn’t be scalded, and sipped it in my car all the way home.  It was perfect for the afternoon, a hint of citrus, a hint of holiday spice.  I really do get the tea thing.  I’m just not a tea person.

Slouching toward Christmas Eve evening, the family attended an adorable childrens’ pageant mass at the Episcopal church we attend.  (I’m a lapsed Catholic and that’s another post.)  My girls wouldn’t participate because when the genes were distributed to my children at conception and divided evenly among those of my husband and mine, they got the “shy” gene from the Neil side of their parentage.  The idea of dressing up like a shepherd in front of people they don’t know, or even people they do, sounds worse to them than a trip to the dentist.  So we sat and sang the holy Christmas songs and basked in the fellowship of those attending, looking good in the indirect low light, and then headed home for the obligatory last minute wrapping and viewing of “White Christmas” and “Love, Actually”.  I had a cup of nog and then needed a mug of something to keep me awake, and so brewed a pot of the Peet’s Holiday Blend to finish out the evening in front of the fire and Hugh Grant.  Sometimes I think I like Christmas Eve more than Christmas Day itself.  The coffee was superb and I was still sleepy enough to get myself to bed before 2am so Santa could do his thing.

Let’s review:  Starbucks’ Via instant coffee gets a 3.5 for taste, but a 1.5 for relevance; Peet’s Winter Solstice tea gets a 4 for the mood it put me in; and Peet’s Holiday Blend coffee gets another perfect 5 for being a perfect brew.

Next: Let’s finish this damn thing up.  I have so much more on my mind.

On the 13^th day of Christmas coffee, my true love gave to me a three pound Java-Log…

What the hell’s a Java Log, you ask?  It’s one of those fake logs, like Duraflame, that you use in the fireplace, except it’s made out of recycled coffee grounds.  No kidding.  I put some real logs on top of it (which defeats the eco-friendly aspect of the product), light the corners and enjoy at least two hours of Crackling Sound!  Illustrious Flames!  That’s what it says right on the package.  How could I not love these?!

The family has been snuggling together on the couch watching movies every night since the girls got out of school last Friday.  “9 ½ Weeks”, “The Godfather”, “Bad Santa”.  What?  Inappropriate?  My husband even received a Snuggie from a work client as a Christmas gift – you know, one of those blankets with sleeves that are all the rage.  We now own a brown one and it makes all of us who wear it look like St. Francis of Assisi.  Naturally, the girls fight over who gets to wear it next, because they’re hard wired to fight over every damn thing my husband brings home over the holidays.  I’m not Solomon so I didn’t threaten to divide it, but instead insisted on wearing it myself last night during a bitter cold evening in Los Angeles (it almost dipped below 40°).  Between the Snuggie, the cookies I ate all evening that my mother-in-law baked, “A Christmas Story” on the television and the Java-Log glowing in the fireplace, I thought life was perfect – and then my youngest burrowed into me and said “I love you soooo much”, and I knew that it was.

Uh oh.  That Java-Log got me all sentimental.  On a scale of one to five, I’ll have to give it a five.  Crackling Sound!  Illustrious Flame!

Next: the neighborhood coffee place

On the 12^th day of Christmas coffee, my true love gave to me, 12 ounces by the sea…

My youngest daughter is going to be a weather girl when she grows up.  I didn’t say meteorologist because I don’t think she’s concerned about why and how the weather evolves.  She only wants to know two things – should she wear shorts and when is it going to rain.  And isn’t that pretty much all the weather people tell us in Southern California anyway?  What to wear and whether or not our commute will be delayed by the knuckleheads who don’t slow down when it rains and then blame someone else when they cause a five car pile-up on the 101 and make us all late for everything?

So my seven-year-old daughter, like Dallas Raines without the perpetual tan, reports the weather to me every morning after checking on Weather.com.

“It’s going to be sunny on Christmas,” she tells me a few days ago, as if someone just poked her in the eye with a sharp stick.

We are so pathetic here in LA that the best we can hope for in our brainwashed Currier and Ives minds on December 25th is rain.  If not rain, please give us clouds.  If not clouds, at least let it be chilly enough so that we don’t feel like idiots when we make a fire and start roasting chestnuts.  Many years ago, I remember going to a friend’s annual family Christmas gathering and him answering the door in shorts and flip-flops.  Soon after, I moved to New York.

I’ve been back now for some time and the other night, I had a realization of historic proportions.  No matter what time of the year it is, regardless the expectation of holly, ivy and snow, everything is okay if you’re at the ocean.  It’s as if the atmosphere by the sea is full of endorphins that elevate your mood instantly.  It’s tough to be a grouch about Southern California when you feel the salt air on your skin and hear the sound of the water.   And when it’s Christmastime and the boats on the bay have decorated themselves with lights and music and drunken sailors and exist simply for your enjoyment, well, no bah humbug here.  I watched the boats go by with a cup of Peet’s in my hand (from my sister’s kitchen) and even the coffee tastes better when you’re at the ocean.

When you’re down in the dumps, have a cup of coffee on the beach and look out at the water.  (I’d suggest a glass of wine, but my site is DailyCupofJo.com, okay?)  My Peet’s the other night, a full 12 oz., gets a 4.5 for helping me focus on how good we’ve often got it in Southern California.  It would have come in at a perfect 5, but it wasn’t hot by the time I got down to the boat parade.  What are you gonna do?