cafe de olla

If I wake up too early, the morning is grey and chilly with a light fog hovering above the lake.  Plans for bread making and spice cake baking quickly dissipate within a few short hours as the day warms up. Suddenly it is 80 degrees and I'm in shorts, on a walk, feeling the heat of the sun on my back. An open bedroom window must be shut because the cold keeps us up. It is just too exciting. Such is October, a month that I love and feels twice as long because of schizophrenic days that have you feeling you've had two days and not just one. 

I made cafe de olla one cool afternoon and drank the entire olla leaving my mind swimming with ideas of happy things to make. My thoughts had me excitedly weaving in and out of the present and the future. It's my new cure for hesitation. August and I danced to Cri-Cri songs. I then showed her how a duck walks and she threw her head back and gave me the biggest belly laugh I have ever heard, she could barely stand. How incredibly silly I must have looked. That memory will never die. 

Daydreams, not hallucinations, took me from houseplant covered porches to sheepskin slippers on old pine floors and then west coast backyards where chickens and goats roamed. Names like Solangel, Foresita and Xoxichitl were inspired by the coffee, orange and canela scented kitchen. I could even see Lunamia. I realized I had not made dulce de leche in almost three years. The caffeine did it's work for hours. But by evening the tickling was becoming tiresome and even painful. I knew that I'd have a caffeine hangover the next day, and I did, but it was nothing some fresh cactus and pineapple juice couldn't fix. 

Still a bit high today, I feel somewhat lucky that caffeine has this effect on me. I have never been able to become a habitual coffee drinker. The trip is just too much for me to handle regularly. There was a time when one espresso would do me in. I'd be sick as a dog. The charge was just too much, keeping me up for hours and hours, high as can be. Now I know to drink water, have a piece of sweet bread and enjoy where those little beans take me.

1 Comments:

Blogger moonshinejunkyard said...

i had to laugh right out loud at your duck walk and august's belly laugh. the BEST moments of motherhood! i can't even imagine caffeine having this effect although i love the idea, the trips you get to take, the imagination bursts. the way you write is so wonderfully evocative.

Sunday, October 27, 2013  

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