A domestic morning

A domestic morning. Our weekly shopping spree. This week, our produce was supplemented with Afro-Cuban music, belly dancers, Missouri Coalition for the environment and a woman talking about wind power. We enjoyed the little festival with our iced coffee from Kaldi’s. I was torn as I sipped it—they roast their own, sell their own, and make their own baristas into award winners. They served my the drink with great conversation, complimentary coffee grounds for the garden, in compostable corn cups. They give me no reason to hate them. But I wanted my coffee shop in Soulard, and now they are celebrating their newest shop, opening next month in Soulard’s East wing.

I thought of the plot Joe and I had spotted for our shop—a long warehouse, exposed brick and a garden to the West—this morning as I pulled produce from the crisper, readying the ingredients for our vegetable soup:

Courtesy of Soulard: 1 small cluster of broccoli, trimmed to small crowns • 2 medium red potatoes, and 1 medium yellow onion, sautéed together first; 1 large (I mean LARGE) carrot, sliced Lays®-thin
From the pantry: 1 bottle of Full Circle vegetable juice, 1 can Full Circle diced tomatoes, 1 can of green beans, home-canned zucchini from Joe’s grandma Mimi

By the time I was trimming the pineapple and sharing the two feet of counter space with Joe, I had forgotten our imagined coffee shop and began making the cleaning to-do list. I was surprised by the comfort I found in straightening our home. I wanted to do it well and make it comfortable, our own.

The perfection of this was slightly tainted when I flipped Joe’s sheets to flatten the bedding. A corner caught the fan and twisted it’s dangling chain around the light. “It’s okay,” I shout. “I’ve got it. It just sounded bad.”

“Hmm?” he said between oatmeal-and-banana filled teeth. He hadn’t heard.