Summertime Memories!

Did you read up there at the top that I’m out & about this week? Well, I have two lovely ladies writing for me & today I’d like to introduce you to my first! Her name is Lindsay & you can find her at I aspire to be the person my dog thinks I already am. She’s an honorary Featurette for helping me out this week!!!
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Hi Monologue readers! I am so excited to be a guest blogger for Kate! I went to high school with Kate, and although we didn’t really hang out back then, I e-stalk her regularly, reading her blog and living vicariously through her adorable Facebook pictures. 🙂 I am not a mom, nor a wife, nor even a girlfriend for that matter. I consider myself a hybrid of Bridget Jones and Elizabeth Bennett. I have a corporate job (which I loathe), I love my dogs, wine, Grey’s Anatomy and getting packages in the mail. And I am honored to be here on the Mommy Monologues to share some stories.

The theme here is Summertime Series. There are so many directions I could go with this. At first, I was going to write about my days as a camp counselor in college. But that entry probably would have not made much sense, as it would be filled with stories that were only hilarious at the time they happened because I was drunk on sunshine, the wilderness, and no cell phone reception.

When I start to think about summer, many memories come to mind. Camping, laying out by the pool, road trips to the beach, weddings, college orientation, margaritas. But I have decided the stories from the summer I worked at a small coffee shop in college are by far the most entertaining.

I wrapped up my freshman year in college and decided to stay in town to work through the summer. I got a job at a brand new coffee shop/restaurant called Colorado Coffee House, which was down the street from my apartment. Something should have flipped a switch in my brain when I found out the owner had zero restaurant experience, but thought that having a business degree would lock her into success. I went in for an interview and Miki loved me immediately and asked me to come work for her. She was very sweet, extremely energetic and endearingly ignorant. She used broken grammar and used to refer to me as “Miss English Lady” because I would correct her verb tense.

Miki was a single mom with 2 teenagers. She brought her Aunt Sandra in with her to act as cook at the Colorado Coffee House (CCH) – she was there to ramp the cooks, if you will. Did Sandra have restaurant experience? No. She was a mid-sixties widower who had fingers like Madam Mim from The Sword In The Stone.

I was initially hired as a server at the restaurant, but after I discovered that they made no money, I decided to become a cook. I worked almost every morning, cooking omelets and breakfast sandwiches. This means I worked with Aunt Sandra. She left her glasses in the most obscure corners of the kitchen. I got so fed up with it, that I finally labeled a Styrofoam cup, SANDRA’S GLASSES, and neatly placed all four flour-dusted, egg-encrusted pairs in there. She used to tell me “Show me a dirty kitchen and I’ll show you a fabulous cook.” In my mind, I’d retort: “Show me a dirty kitchen and I’ll show you a woman who is too lazy to clean up after herself.”

I was not alone in my struggles with Aunt Sandra. A guy named Josh worked with me every morning, and he would laugh at my cheeks turning red as my blood pressure rose. Our barista was a quiet hippie named Emily. Aunt Sandra used to play Norah Jones and Charlotte Church over the stereo system in the restaurant, and Emily would threaten to skewer her eyeballs if she had to hear Ave Maria one more time. We accidentally “lost” that CD…

There are many, many Aunt Sandra moments that have been lost to memory, but I’ll never forget the time Mandy walked out of the kitchen with an omelet and grits to take to her table. It was the only table in the tiny restaurant, and Aunt Sandra ran to the kitchen door – suddenly remembering something crucial – slapped it open with her Mim-hands: WHACK! against the wall. “Mandy!” She shouted from the doorway, as Mandy was setting the food on the table in front of her customers. “I hope you didn’t serve those grits, I forgot to throw out the ones from yesterday!!” From here on out, my dad and I referred to the restaurant as Yesterday’s Grits.
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Thank you Lindsay!

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