I'd rather dance with you

Last time I mentioned my job at the cafe, I wasn't a full barista yet.  I confidently spread mayonnaise on sandwiches in the kitchen and skulked around when a doppio or macchiatto order came in.  Well, take a good look my faithful (two) readers!  I have now mastered the latte heart.  Mastered as in, can usually make a passing one and if I don't, I quickly turn it into a latte milky way with a wave of a mini-whisk.

Working three jobs is not always easy though, hence the hiatus from blogging for the past couple months.  Sometimes I would come home after a long day and then I'd sit with some thrown-together dinner...only to wake up ten minutes later slumped at my dining table and a smear of food on my cheek.

I searched "falling asleep while eating" and the only pictures that came up were of babies and little kids. Go figure.

One morning I spent a good ten minutes searching the house for my keys, only to belatedly remember stumbling home the night before too tired to care about anything.  Sure enough, I checked my front door to find my keys still stuck in the lock.  

Last week, I fell asleep on the bus and woke up a few stops after I was supposed to get off.  In my 10+ years of transit riding, this has never happened.  I've always had some freak sixth sense that wakes me up right before my stop.  (Sometimes I miss my stop because I'm not paying attention, but that's another story).

I'm 95% sure this is me.

About this time last year, I talked about how I had suddenly become clumsy.  This year, it's something different but also somewhat troublesome.  I've started dropping items.  I can no longer hold a cup for more than three minutes.  Anything after that and it suddenly drops out of my hands.  I'm not sure why, but my fingers inexplicably become nerveless and this has resulted in more dropped coffee mugs (and resultant burns from splashed hot liquids) than I'd like to share.  I'm actually afraid to hold anything for more than a few seconds now.  Coasters that remind me to set my drink down are my friend.  Spill-proof cups would probably be even more so.

This would be great for when I fall asleep at the table too.

So as long as I don't hold any hot cups of coffee for an extended period of time, it's probably a good thing I have a job at a coffeehouse, surrounded by caffeinated implements.  Working as a barista is fast becoming one of my favorite jobs of all time.  The day I learned to work an aeropress, I was so excited I couldn't sleep that night.  Last week, I had a dream that one of our regular customers returned a drink only 1/4 finished because I had made it poorly.  I woke up in a cold sweat.

Maybe that's going overboard. 

My favorite part of the job, hands down, are the regular customers.  I love working a job that has a regular set of faces.  I'm notoriously bad at remembering faces and names.  I have to meet a person a few times before I can usually pick them out of a crowd.  One time, I walked into the restroom at CalArts and a girl there said "OH HI" in a super bright tone.  When I looked really startled, she explained rather sheepishly that she saw me all the time in the library, where I worked.  Another time, a girl sat down next to me on the bus and started talking to me in a rather familiar way.  I talked with her, mostly to be friendly but also because I assumed we had met somewhere and I just couldn't remember.  It turned out later that she didn't know me at all and she was just a somewhat creepy individual who asked me for my number before I left for my stop.

But having a regular set of people come to the cafe and seeing them in the same context helps me to put a name to a face and an order to that name much more easily.  I love shooting the breeze with people and people are always readily eager to suggest the next book or band or movie for me to enjoy.  Even if it doesn't become my favorite, there's always something to talk about when I finish reading.

And because I get to make my own music playlist at work, I like dancing around while I'm steaming milk or restocking cups.