{Creamy} Bitter Sweet Like ...

{Me}lissa

My mom drinks a lot of coffee. At least a full pot before she’s able to function each day. She zombies her way downstairs every morning and then transforms into this Energizer® Bunny®-meets-Wonder Woman-meets that crazy Target lady* [not to be confused with this awesome "Target Lady" played by {new} SNL-alum and one of my idols, Kristin Wiig] ...

To my mom, coffee is a necessary day-starting ritual. Her coffee facts:

• Her brand-of-choice:  Folgers®.
• Brand she hates:  Starbucks® [cool new website though].
• Cream:  Spoonful of the powdery stuff. Any brand.
• Sugar:  None that I know of.
• Cups per day:  At least 2 pots.
• Mug of choice:  Anything she can stumble-upon half-asleep.

{Me}

It's been 25 years since aforementioned mother gave birth to her first child. Now I, too, drink a lot of coffee. Well, if you can still consider it coffee after what I do to doctor it up. My reasons for drinking coffee are both relational and tastetational.  In a later post, I'll go more into my barista background and future dreams of starting / owning a community cafe in honor of my grandmother. But for now, I'll just share my coffee facts:

• My cafes-of-choice [I have no idea which brands they serve]:  Kaldi's, The Crooked Tree, Meshuggah, most any local shop with people I like ... and, mostly for convenience, I heart the 'bucks too. Occasionally, especially during roadtrips, I'm a fan of QuikTrip's latte/cappucino-maker. Coffee snobs everywhere are judging that sentence. Errrr.
• Brands I hate:  N/A.
• Cream:  At least 4 Coffee-Mate liquid creamers per cup, or preferably just a few pours of their French Vanilla or Hazelnut-flavored cream. Nice and cold, so my coffee is perfect temperature for drinking. I'm also a frequent purchaser of White Chocolate Mochas or Vanilla Lattes with Soy Milk in them ... NEVER hold the whip. Especially at The Crooked Tree, where the whipped cream is homemade and so so so so good.
• Sugar:  At least 4 packs, any brand.
• Cups per day:  Around 3.
• Mugs of choice:  At my old office at Mindshare in Saint Louis, I loved the process of choosing a random mug from our kitchen's collection. My top three ended up being:  1. The "Coffee with the Experts" mug I stole from Brian Getz, 2. This "News Channel 5" mug I would often drink from when I felt like pretending I was a news anchor like my two faves Casey Nolen or Ashley Yarchin, 3. Some cheesy mug with some state name I can't remember. It was a black mug with some faded neon print and images. Something you'd get your grandma from a place you vacationed. Or something she'd get you, rather.

So that's how I like my coffee:  Creamy {or milky}, bitter [just because it's inevitable; otherwise I'm not really a fan of bitter tastes] and sweet [so so so sweet]. . . and while I wish I'm tempted to say, "I like my coffee black, just like my men," the intended metaphor here is in regards to my recent move to Chicago...

I was born and raised in Saint Louis, Missouri. Well Saint Charles, technically, but Saint Louis is where I went to college and is the city I fell in love both in and with. About a month ago, though, I accepted a job in Chicago. And just a week ago, I started that job. My feelings about the transition can be summed up in the way I like my coffee:):

Creamy / Milky:  I'm not lactose intolerant, but I do experience a little stomach-weirdness when I drink too much milk or coffee filled with milky stuff. And that unsettled stomach feeling has certainly presented itself through this moving process. I feel so close to so many people, memories and places in Saint Louis; so I felt a bit unsettled with the idea of a permanent move like this. 

Bitter:  One of my best friends, Katie Campana, is having a baby soon. Things like weddings and bridal showers and graduations and birthday parties, I can plan a bit ahead for. I can make during the weekends without too much hassle. But things like this -- like a child being born to someone I've been friends with since elementary school! This, I can't plan on a well. I may not make it home to be there in the hospital with Katie when her little bundle of joy arrives. And those are the kinds of things that make me bitter about leaving. Big life events like these that I'll miss now. 

...Plus, those miscellaneous epic nights I'll no longer have with so many of my close friends. We'll still have epic nights, just now with a little more planning and traveling involved. And I'm bitter about that. I don't want to miss out on the Fridays after work when we all meet up at whoever's place seems most convenient [usually the "wang cave" - home of Josh Saleska, Adam Sommer and Adam Truesdell] ... then we slowly but surely decide what to do / who else to meet up with and end up dancing the night away or meeting some hilarious new friends or with any sort of story that we end up bonding over the next morning while we shove our face with greasy breakfast food. If we're motivated enough, that's often followed by some outdoor adventure like bike-riding or walking to some local festival or running errands for some upcoming event. Or maybe we just watch mindless television all day. Either way, we're together, and it's spontaneous and wonderful. And I'm so bitter that I won't have that any more.

Then there's this city! The concerts/festivals/local meetings want to attend, the progress I want to help make, the groups I want to stay apart of, the gym I want to still pretend to exercise at, the history I want to keep embracing, the news I want to keep up with. . . .Saint Louis is such a great city, and it's only getting better. I'm bitter to be leaving that. I also feel a bit guilty for leaving it. Like I'm selling out or something. 

Lastly, of course I'm bitter about the sharp decrease in time I'll get to spend with my boyfriend. From seeing him every single day in person to now only on weekends will be an adjustment I don't love the idea of getting used to. It feels like I'll miss him a lot, which sucks, right? But even worse, what if I don't miss him as much as I expect to? Well, I'm bitter either way. 

Sweet:  Obviously, this new job is the sweetest incentive of all to move. I'm working for Digitas - one of the biggest and best agencies in the world. My new client, Whirlpool®,  uses Digitas as their "agency of record", which means I'm surrounded by not only a team of people who do exactly what I do [search engine marketing], but I'm a part of a huge and talented team of people who do it all for the same client! I get to keep improving on my specific skills in SEM while also growing my knowledge of and experience with the rest of the media our client uses. I get to brainstorm ways to share the gospel of these high-quality kitchen appliances, and I get to be right there in the thick of the evolution of digital media as I do it! My office is just a few blocks away from so many of the vendors I'll work with, including Google and DoubleClick Search, who I already got to meet with in-person my first week. My new agency offers the full package to great clients, and I get to learn about the whole process - for example - our agency went through to create these super sweet Miller Lite Punch Top Can videos. I get to learn about all of the features that make my mom swear that KichenAid® mixers are the greatest piece of kitchen technology she's ever used [and she's a professional caterer/ cook / chef / baker, so she know this stuff], and I get to teach her how to shop online for the appliances she already loves! The job -- undeniably - very very sweet.

I'm lucky enough to already have a handful of friends who live in Chicago, so those special life events and epic weekends will still be possible... just with different people than I've been used to the past few years. And I'll make new friends. Like Frank, my new Blue Line buddy or the guy who owns the sweet art store downstairs or my roommate's good friend Julio who I've already been lucky enough to enjoy a few beers with. So making new friends, re-acquainting with old friends and making memories with 'em all ... some more sweetness to look forward to.

The city I'm leaving ... sure, I don't get to be a part of Saint Louis in the way I wanted to be. But, I get to experience a whole new city and observe it first-hand as a resident. So I can keep the great things in mind for the day I do move back to my hometown. I can learn what makes Chicago so great, and go back to Saint Louis eventually to recommend those things to my city's leaders. I get to really try making it 'on my own' in a city that is ranked one of the best cities for young professionals time and  time again. I get to experience some of the best restaurants, bars, theaters and stadiums in the world. ..and I get to tell everyone in Chicago how great Saint Louis is and thus secretly convince them all to move to Saint Louis when I do. ... ;)

Lastly, regarding the boyfriend... this one was tough to figure out any 'sweetness' to... but is anyone really eager to segue into a long distance relationship after a great 5-minutes-away relationship? Meh, not us. But some of the sweet things we've discussed seem to be more than just ways to get through the bitterness. We really are excited to sort of see what we're made of and kick ass at communication and planning and all of the things that could make us a better team than we were before. We're pumped to get to explore two cities at once, together. He'll keep me posted on Saint Louis news, and I'll fill him in on my Chicago fun. We'll have a couple weekends every month to try out new things in each of these cities together. We'll become much more familiar with Skype and Google Hang-Outs and make much more use of the unlimited texting / calling we're already paying for. We'll finally make a dent in our "Books2Read", as the travel between our two cities is cheapest via train or bus, and both mediums are great for reading. We'll have something new to try in our relationship that we'll look back on if it works out as one of the phases that made us the couple we've become. It'll be sweet.


This move ... maybe it's also a bit like the way my mom likes her coffee. Maybe it's a necessary life-starting ritual. Maybe this experience will make me the Wonder Woman my mom believes I can be and is to me. Maybe this is really growing up, and I'll look back on this blog post some day with three more pages full of "sweet" reason I moved to Chicago. And the "bitter' stuff won't be so bad.  Maybe I won't need as much cream or sugar in my coffee when Chicago's done with me. Coffee will be sweet without it? 


P.S.

*Why can't I find the Crazy Target Lady commercial on Target's YouTube Brand Channel!? MarketingFail.

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