A new way to have No Fun

I can only think of last month as “Arrrgh-ust,” not because of some quirk of my Nawtha Bawstin accent, but because it was supposed to be quiet. We’d cleared the decks to get caught up on life maintenance and R&R. Alas, what really happened was that it was crazed and scheduled to a fare-thee-well. Yes, we got all kindsa projects done, but all the catching up came at the expense of the day to day stuff. Closets were cleaned, sorted, and dealt with, but laundry went unattended. The garage and basement were sorted out, but this blog suffered. You get the picture.

One of the nice things was that Mr. G was at home much of the time. We got said projects done, we caught up with friends, we cooked. We went for walks, often ending up at one of our favorite coffee places, The Atomic Café. Now, many of you know that while my character Emma Fielding drinks coffee like a fiend, I do not. If you see me drinking half a cup at a conference, it’s usually because I’m already so wound up that the caffeine actually seems to chill me out. I don’t know if that’s actually true, or if it just sends me into a parallel universe where I think I’m slowing down, and I raise fewer eyebrows than if I kicked back with a whiskey at 7:00AM. What I usually drink most of the time is best characterized as a “warm milky drink,” something that is decaf, nonfat, coffee-and-chocolate-flavored, no whip, thanks. They actually named “the No-Fun Mocha” for me down at Atomic, mostly to save time. Other places use up a whole wax pencil trying to get the equation right.

And now I’ve taken the No Fun to a whole new level: Soy milk.

It’s been raining a lot here, and worried that I’m coming down with a cold, I didn’t want to add dairy to the mix, so Mr. G suggested soy milk. I was skeptical: last time I checked out a soy bean, there was no udder. But I like tofu, even crave it occasionally, and since I wasn’t in the mood for tea or water, in the name of bold experimentation (and believing you can gag down any food if it contains chocolate), I gave it a shot.

“No-Fun with soy milk, please.” The gang at Atomic, coffee purists who are kindly indulgent of me and my eccentricities, gave a collective look askance. I could only shrug. “I’m trying to see how far I can move away from coffee without actually leaving.”

They obliged. Not only was it better than I expected, the soy milk added a nuttiness (somewhere between almond and hazelnut) that went nicely with the chocolate. Score.

Over the years people, hearing my order, have asked “why bother?” The short, perky answer is that it is a way to have something that tastes like ice cream at breakfast. The snarky answer is that I do it because I can. The thoughtful answer is that it allows me to participate in a real-life community with a centuries-old tradition of sociability.