This morning I was preparing my second cup of coffee (and honestly, I could use another two or three today if only it didn’t make me shake and feel like crap after the first two) while holding Breanna. She was staring with big, curious eyes while I spooned out the coffee and measured the sugar so I explained it to her.

“You see, Breanna, this is my religion. I don’t have to go to a church or read a holy book. It’s quite simple in that sense. But the Church of Coffee is still demanding.

“First of all, like the Christian God, the Coffee God is a jealous God. Do not forsake it to cozy up to a cup of morning tea. Do not worship the much lower demi-god of decaf. They are nothing but empty idols who will not carry you like the Coffee God does. You will be left tired and broken.

“There’s also a serious time commitment. While you are free to worship from home, it must be done much more frequently than your average once-a-week-on-Sunday worship at the local church. You must worship every day. EVERY DAY. Do not fail to worship your coffee every morning, for if you do not bow before the Mug Of Steaming Beans, the Coffee God will be angry and He will smite you with a nasty headache.

“If you wish, you can join other coffee worshippers at a shockingly wide variety of churches – Tim Horton’s, Second Cup, Starbucks, even small privately owned cafes. The nice part of this religion though, is you can feel free to just worship privately in the comforts of your own home. You can convert others and share your faith with them by brewing up a pot of coffee or you can be a solitary practitioner with a single cup of instant.

“Just like many major religions offer slightly different denominations, there are many spiritual coffee paths that you can choose to explore: Regular coffee, flavored coffee, black coffee, coffee with sugar, artificially sweetened coffee, coffee with milk, coffee with flavored creamers… If you seek frilly religion, you can seek out the lessons of the latte,the cappucino, and the high priest, the espresso.

“Somewhat similar to a cult, the religion of Coffee is reluctant to let you go. Once you become involved in the church, you will find it very difficult to leave, but you will likely find you have little desire to escape anyway.

“Be sure you are serious before starting a relationship with the Coffee God and enter into the sacred covenant of coffee-making with caution. However, rest assured that once you have entered the church, salvation is always only a cup away.”

Yawn. Forget my normal two-cup limit. I’m so tired today that I think I have to take communion for a third time after lunch.

Five years ago, planes crashed into the World Trade Center, into the Pentagon, and into the ground. Almost three thousand people died on the 11th of September, 2001. D.C. Roe has created a fantastic project called 2996. Interested participants signed up and were assigned one of the 2996 victims of September 11th. We were given a name, a link, and asked to remember.

The saddest part for me is not only that Klaus was one of the victims; it’s that it was so difficult to find any information about him. Several Google searches brought up page after page of 9/11 memorial sites, all of which contained the same small blurb about him. Perhaps, buried in the middle of all the memorials, there might be a page with more information about him written by someone in his native Germany. I hope so. I hope it’s only that I can’t understand enough German to be able to find him. I’d like to think that somewhere, someone has written his story. If I died tomorrow, the world could still find out who I am because of this site and because of others who would write about me. It saddens me that I can’t find the same overload of information about him.

What I do know is that Klaus was only 31 years old, one year younger than I am now. I know by his picture that he was quite attractive. I know that he was married, and I wish I knew her name. I know he was a father to one child, and I can’t even tell you if it’s a girl or a boy. I know that he was flying from Linkenhein, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany on a business trip with two other executives from BCT Technology AG. I don’t know where they were going specifically or what business was on the agenda, only that Klaus was the director of development since 1994

Klaus boarded Flight 175 and left Boston’s Logan airport that morning, headed for Los Angeles. He was on the plane that hit the South Tower in New York City.

If you think it’s hard to care about or feel for someone that you have never known you are wrong. Because today I am sitting here and not only crying for the loss of 2996 people overall, I am crying for a man I never met, someone I know little about, and wishing I could somehow reach out to a widow and fatherless child that I will never know.

Just in case there was any doubt or thoughts that I’m embellishing, here’s a little 16-second video for you.

Ms. Overachiever will be ten months in two more weeks. I don’t know whether to be impressed or go hide in a dark corner and weep.

I completely forgot about Love Thursday over at Chookooloonks yesterday. Oops. I even had a picture for it. So here it is anyway.

I tried to take a nice picture but Breanna just wanted to stand up on the rock and Hayley was strangely nervous (strangely because she frequently has no trouble pushing her down at home) so it ended up kind of blurry. Hayley kept wrapping her arm around Breanna to keep her from falling over. I guess it just shows that even though she can get a bit rough, she really does love her little sister.

Sometimes, even though I live with her, Hayley’s vocabulary startles me. People compliment me all the time about it but really, I didn’t go out of my way to teach her to be well-spoken. All I did was avoid any form of baby talk. She never had owies or boo-boos, I always called them cuts and scrapes. As a tiny baby I always called her body parts by their proper names so that she knew she had a vagina and not a hoo-ha, wazoo, or any other name for it. Beyond that, I never did anything special. I didn’t sit her down with flash cards, drilling her for hours a day. I guess she just inherited her mother’s love of words and natural verbosity.

That said, there really are times when she says things and I wonder where she got them from because I don’t necessarily remember teaching them to her. Other times, I know the origins of the words, expressions, or sentences but they still take me by surprise when I hear them come out of her mouth.

Some recent Hayley-isms:

(To George’s sister) “I’m so happy to play with you because I don’t always get the opportunity to see you.” Opportunity?!

“Look Mommy! There’s dinosaur bones under this bench! Oh. It’s not dinosaur bones, just a stick. I thought it was a pterodactyl.”

“We have to say grace before we eat because it’s important to be grateful for our food. Some people don’t have any food.” (Trust me, she doesn’t get the grace thing from this heathen-filled household!)

“Oh, this is too difficult.”

“Cricket! Get out of the bathroom IMMEDIATELY!” (She totally gets “immediately” from me and all the times I’ve said it to her, but it’s still funny to hear.)

She turns four in less than two weeks and I can hardly believe the time has flown so fast.

What our household will be like for the next decade or so:

Hayley just purposely farted on Breanna’s head. Signs of the future.

I can’t even express how incredibly sad I was to wake up this morning to the news that Steve Irwin was dead after a stingray attack. I remember first watching “The Crocodile Hunter” years ago with George. We both thought he was a certifiable loon but we loved him and his show and often stayed up too late watching it before bed. For ages we would holler a loud “Crikey” in a questionable imitation of an Aussie accent.

There were times I disagreed with things he did, like the time he was feeding raw chicken to a crocodile with one hand while holding his baby with the other, and boy did he ever come under fire for that. Overall, though, he was such a wonderful person. He was only as crazy as he was because he was so incredibly passionate about his work. He brought animal awareness and interest to so many people, especially kids; on top of that he helped bring that awareness to animals that don’t often get a favorable mention the way that the cuter, furry animals do. As much as I love reptiles myself, you couldn’t pay me enough to get as close to komodo dragons as he did, and that’s what made the show so much fun – the fact that he would go ahead and get right among them, talking about them like they were just misunderstood teenagers.

I feel so badly for his family. Wherever he is, I hope there are lots of crocodiles and funny reptiles for him to play with. Rest in peace, Steve.

Over at Motherhood Uncensored, Kristen was talking about making some motivational posters for moms, something that would feature things we can actually relate to as opposed to the cheesy “dream big” written beneath a tiny scorpion crossing the vast desert or whatever.

Thanks to the nifty tools over at Flickr, it was easy to come up with four quick “momivational” posters.

Because, really, a princess has to be a princess even when she’s sneezing, sniffling, and coughing up a pancreas.

Ah, sisters. Always there for you.

The scary side of parenting.

And finally, don’t let the man (or the toy store) get you down. Boys can play Barbies and girls can drive bulldozers.

This is surprisingly addictive. I had to force myself to stop at four. If you do one too, go drop by Kristen’s site and let her know!

Ahhh, the weekend. It’s not even 9 am on a Saturday morning, and yet I’ve already had so many fun things happen. If by “fun” you mean “not so much”.

1. Breanna woke up briefly at about 7:10 am. She barely even opened her eyes and rubbed at her little eyelids with her fists so I was happy to think that she might just go back to sleep for at least another hour. She was having her milk and her whole body was going limp as she drifted off peacefully. I was just about to go back to sleep myself when THE PHONE RANG. At 7:15 in the morning on a Saturday! The ringing snapped everyone under age four to a fully awake status and all hopes of sleeping were dashed completely. The worst part is that it was a blocked number and the message was just static so I have no idea who it was, and therefore I can’t return the favor by calling back the next time I wake up at 3 in the morning.
2. Yesterday I woke up in the wee hours of the morning with a massive, extremely painful toothache. I took some Tylenol and that helped a tiny bit for about 45 minutes. Last night, George got me some Advil, which helped tremendously. This morning I had some more pain so I took another dose. The pain is almost gone now, but the swelling is still there. The swelling is making me feel very beautiful indeed. One half of my face looks normal. The other half makes me look like The Rock.
3. I looked over and saw a gigantic spider running across the living room carpet. In an effort to keep my children from adopting my phobias, I managed to calm my inner hysteria and although I wanted to, I did not climb up on my chair, screaming. Instead, I watched to see where it went (in amongst the animals of Noah’s Ark, ick), prayed that Breanna wouldn’t decide to play in that very spot, and then I ran to get the vacuum. I then pretended that there were some crumbs I needed to clean at the bright, early hour of 8:30 am, and I sucked that fucking spider right up. It was HUGE. As big as my head! Or maybe just the size of a silver dollar. Either way, if it’s bigger than a silver dollar, to me it’s huge.
4. Ever since I sucked the monster up, I keep brushing at my arms and legs, thinking that I can feel something crawling on me.
5. Breanna spewed milk all over me.
6. Hayley has asked me no fewer than ten times in less than one hour whether she can go visit her grandparents today despite the fact that I have said we’ll see and to please stop asking.

If it was at all possible, I would go back to bed for an hour or two.

How about some creative fiction to start your weekend off on the right foot?

—

Ultimatum

You’re going to think I am the bad guy. I know it. I don’t care though. See it as you will.

She was a nude model in my art class. After, she came to look at what I had drawn. This kind of behaviour is extremely rare. Normally the nude models get the truck outta there as soon as class is over. Must be weird, you know, having a room of people ogle you and scrutinize your every line, curve, and bulge but she was fearless. She was the kind of woman who commanded respect, by her mere presence.

Taking long pauses in between sentences she mused, “When I look at what you’ve done there, it stirs something in me… It makes me feel. It’s like… it creates a tension between all the facets of my self” she trailed off.

I’m not into new age crap like that, I couldn’t care less about her selves or her facets. I gave her some cocky response about my critics always noting my artwork was masterful at evoking emotion. She seemed surprised I had critics, so continuing with my arrogance, I explained that I only attended these classes for the nude models. I was an established artist not needing instruction or classes.

She was hot, but a little too femme for my liking. I liked to be the femme one in relationships, and didn’t want to compete. When she started to make advances, I briskly responded, “there are no vacancies in the friend hotel my dear, sorry.” I liked using seemingly innocuous but truly condescending words like “dear.”

I’ll just make a long story short by telling you this. Seven years of monogamy later we bought a house together. We were sexually compatible, and I’m a simple person. It doesn’t take much to keep me happy, so eventually she roped me in.

Well- things can’t stay simple forever I suppose. It was time for A TALK. She was telling me I was too self involved, all I thought about was my art, things had to change ex-cetera ex-cetera. She said that tomorrow was our anniversary and I needed to show her that she meant at least as much to me as my art, or she was leaving me. She asked me to wear a dress and heels, look sexy, and meet her for dinner at Chardullos.

She said something like that. I didn’t hear really. I was too distracted watching the way the moonlight was reflecting onto her hair. I was noticing how the glow of the streetlights intermingled with the smoke from my cigarette and illuminated her face. I remembered the deadline for my upcoming show and fleetingly wondered if I had any cobalt blue oil paint left.

The next day, I was painting with fervor. I was painting that moment, the look on her face, the smoke, her expression so pregnant with emotion. I was covered in paint, I had been painting all day, all night. A momentary glance at my watch revealed that it was almost midnight.

I heard her burst in, her keys hitting the side table loudly breaking any concentration I had achieved. She looked at me, looked at the painting, and started sobbing uncontrollably.

My critics always noted my artwork was masterful at evoking emotion.

—

This story was written by Krista from The Silent K, an eclectic hobbiest/artist who is passionate about art. Unlike the character in the story, she has no critics and would gladly benefit from taking some drawing classes. The writing prompt she chose to write this story was this:

Write a short scene in which one character reduces another to uncontrollable sobs without touching him or speaking.

This post is part of the September Blog Exchange. This month’s exchange is a little different – we’re all writing short (fictional) stories based on the 13 Writing Prompts found at McSweeney’s. Meanwhile, I’m hanging out and sipping martinis at Krista’s site today, and the full list of participants can be found by clicking here.