Sleeplessness, coffee, cups, and blue calico china...

Sleeplessness, coffee, cups, and blue calico china...
11/17/11
11:21 am

She was starting her 'Nanowrimo' writing later in the day than she had been. She had gotten up later that morning because she had woken in the middle of the night and taken several hours before being able to get back to sleep. When she woke in the middle of the night it had felt as if it might be early in the morning at an hour that one could reasonably get up for the day. No, it had been much earlier than that. If she got up then, she would have found herself napping for hours during the day.

It had been one of those nights she sometimes had, where lying down was too uncomfortable. If she sat up in bed, for some reason, she was usually able to fall asleep. One could not sleep sitting up without one's head falling over, so this was not a completely viable solution. Her strategy was to try to maintain this back and forth sleeping pattern long enough until she was sure she could lie down and fall right asleep. The process took quite a while.

Nothing was coming immediately to mind that she wanted to write about. She had not made notes of things to write about. She sat there hoping something would come up.

She had made the same breakfast as the previous day, since that had been so tasty - the veggie bean salad. The instant coffee this time had creamers from McDonalds in it instead of the instant powdered kind. These little containers said 'coffee creamer' on the package rather than 'half-n-half', and they said 'needs no refrigeration', though she kept them in the fridge. What were they actually made of? This coffee left a more acidic after effect in the mouth than she thought it did with the instant creamer.


She had gone to a committee meeting the evening before. It seemed to have gone well. It had been a small group - only about half the committee members. They had been able to discuss amicably and constructively the plans for an immediate fundraising activity. They had talked a bit about the other planning efforts they needed for the yearly event that was their purpose.

She had had to have a ride to and from the meeting because of her fear about her car. Her friend tried out her car in the parking lot and felt the car was ok to drive, that the brakes were what one called gentle brakes. She would have a lot of grocery shopping to make up for all the days she'd been making do. One thing she wanted now was an extra container of grated cheese as a back-up supply. She wanted other supplies like this on hand for those times when one did not know if one could get out shopping. More canned beans, more instant creamer, more kneckerbrodt, One could always keep an extra unopened package of cheese on hand. This was sounding a bit too obsessive. One would always have to worry about using up the food before its sell by date, and then going through a restocking cycle again.

That evening she'd gotten a call from a friend who had worked with her at the bakery. They had kept regularly in touch through the years. She had been wanting to talk to this person to get advice about her car brakes. No, he told her, this tire repair would not at all effect the brake lines or the brakes, but check the brake fluid. That could be low and/or leaking.

Several years ago he had moved out of NYC to rural NY and had been loving being there. He was glad not to be living in the city anymore, though his work took him there often. She had a hard time believing this because she knew how much he had loved the city. And here he was telling her how much he loved the city. She thought it was a good thing he was realizing this. Whether he could or wanted to do anything about it was another matter.

The landlord's contractor crew had just dropped off some gear down below that they would need for working on the roof. They had shingling and gutter repair to do above some of her windows. Last winter there had been huge icicles hanging off the roof and gutters that were positioned exactly over the propane tank. Not only did they look like they could fall down and pierce the tank, they dripped water over the tank which then froze into a thick ice cap. She never knew how the fuel man safely broke through that ice cap to refuel the tank. She just hoped she would wake in the morning before the workmen's ladder with a workman on it was up outside her window. She did not want to be getting out of bed in full view of them. She would have to tell them to rattle their ladder in warning, as she had no intention of sleeping in the dark of a shade covered window.

12:23p 844 words

What else had she thought of telling about? No, she had not thought of telling about anything, at least not that she could remember now. ...

She had had another idea for what to do when there was nothing to write about. Look around the room and arbitrarily pick something and ask some questions about it. This might either give a little story to tell about that thing or it might trigger an association. Whenever she thought about this strategy - she had a few times- she always had a stock item that came to mind as the object one would look around the room and fall upon - such an obvious object, and in this case she had already told about it in certain respects, but not really. The coffee cup.

In her case she had two coffee cups by her side. One held the coffee, or what was left of it, and the other, a deep blue cobalt cup, started out in the morning with hot water. That was empty now. Though she loved the deep blue cobalt china cup, deep blue was not a good color for black coffee. Black coffee, she felt, needed to be drunken out of a light cup. One somehow did not get the proper feel of the black coffee - of its body - if there was not seen in a light colored cup. Glass cups were also terrible for black coffee. There the light shone through the coffee and made it seem thinner than it was - it took away the feel of the coffee's body. Coffee with cream went well in a dark cup, but she had not thought of that when she'd fixed her coffee this morning. Her favorite coffee cup - seemed like years since she'd used it though, and why was that she wondered - was a blue calico mug. The inside was white and the outside was a lovely cobalt blue glaze calico pattern. This china was earthenware though so it did not hold up well. It cracked and broke easily and the glaze crackled.

She had first come upon this china in a homeware or gift shop in Philadelphia when she was going to art school there. It came in blue or brown patterns and was made in England in Staffordshire. Was that also the pottery brand name? It had existed a long time, though she did not know its history. She did not remember how she got her first piece, whether she had perhaps bought herself a mug or a teapot. She loved tea and teapots back then and had collected a couple. That Christmas when she went home to her family for the holidays, she asked for some of this china as a Christmas and/or birthday present. Her family gave her quite a bit of it. She thought she had made a still life painting that winter with her new coffee pot in it.

Her sister took on the job of replenishing the calico mugs through the years, since they broke or degraded so easily and quickly.

She just remembered why she'd started using these cups instead of the mugs. It was easier to drink hot liquid from the cups because of their slightly belled shape and thinner lip. It allowed the top surface to cool just enough to sip it right away.
1:02p 1403 words

The blue calico china mugs broke so frequently, often because a cat had knocked one off the table or the counter, and making pieces of broken china which of themselves were so pretty, that she had made art pieces out of some of it. One mug had broken cleanly in half. Inside this mug she had painted a miniature imaginary landscape panorama. She loved the idea of another world being inside the cup - like the peephole sugar Easter eggs she used to get as a child. The two halves of the cup were meant to be positioned slightly apart so that one would look through the broken opening, as if through a door or a window, to the view inside.

During that sleepless session she had again toyed with the idea of perhaps taking in the stray cat that had adopted the house and which the house's residents had adopted. The woman downstairs out back who put out food for all the animals had been seeing to it that this cat was well fed, along with a few others who would only dart in and out quickly to grab a bite. This cat was very friendly though. No one knew where it came from. It was an orange tom cat. The lady downstairs was making sure he could sleep in the enclosed porch and that he got in and out of the porch. There was a cat door as well. Each tenant was only allowed to keep one cat. This lady had a cat who was on its last legs. Sir Orange would be a perfect replacement, but she had said she did not want another after the old cat.

1:32p 1687 words