Zoe vs. the First Day of Kindergarten (Or, How I Burned a Hole in My Stomach with Coffee)

September 9, 2015. Zoe's First Day of Kindergarten---A Timeline, with Coffee

6:40 a.m. -- Zoe wakes us up, half an hour before we need to be since she doesn't have to report to her new school until 9 a.m. I pour her some apple juice then make coffee. She gets dressed immediately, no prodding necessary, then we wait till 8:40 to leave, at which point she says she doesn't want to go. We insist.

Coffee tally: Two (large) cups of coffee.

9:30 a.m. -- While Zoe "attends school" for one hour, the PTA treats the parents to a Big Box o' Joe and some donuts out in the school's garden. It is hot but I am meeting new people, which means I must have a prop, so I pour myself a cup.

Coffee tally: third cup.

10:30 a.m. -- For a special treat on her first, grueling, day of kindergarten we take Zoe to a local cafe for a blueberry muffin, which she managed to enjoy even though the blueberries were, in her words, "too sweet."

Coffee tally: fourth cup, iced this time.

2:30 p.m. -- Zoe and I head to the aftercare so she can meet the staff as well as the kids she'll be spending her afternoons with. One block from our apartment, her mother laden with bags in fulfillment of the supply list, Zoe has to go to the bathroom. I ask her if she can make it to the aftercare, which is only a few blocks away. She says yes. At the next corner, she revises her previous statement. And it's poop. So we take a detour to Starbucks, which is closest and has a relatively clean bathroom.

Coffee tally: still on four, but just as Zoe felt a certain bodily pressure a few minutes before, I am feeling pressure because, as my own mother taught me, it's rude to use the restroom in a place of business without buying something. I decide against a chai, which is what I usually buy in Starbucks, because I'd already been planning to go to my usual cafe after dropping Zoe at the after school---which happens to be around the corner from the cafe---to have a chai and do some work while Zoe got used to the new place so . . .

2:45 p.m. -- We finally exit the bathroom. A line of people are waiting. I apologize. There is now no way I can leave without buying something. Why this something has to be coffee, I don't know, but it's like I can't help myself at this point, or like I'm curious what will happen to me.

Coffee tally: fifth cup, tall blonde roast with half and half.

3:10 p.m. -- We arrive at the aftercare. Zoe does not want me to leave. It is hot and humid and I've been sweating so much under the weight of the school supplies, the hot coffee (again, why?), and the hostile stares of Starbucks' patrons with full bladders that when she grabs on to one of my shorts-clad legs, she slides down to the floor and it's kind of like Flashdance. So I stay for a while, watching her break one freshly sharpened pencil (first day!) after another until we both start laughing. Finally I am dismissed and, not daring to wait one moment longer lest she change her mind, I dash out the door, directly into a thunderstorm. It's okay, my usual cafe is only around the corner, after all. I hurry there and arrive soaked to find it is closed.

Moment outside time -- It is never closed.

3:50 p.m. -- No chai. Or coffee.

3:51 p.m. -- Duck into local bookstore to bide time till storm stops. It is raining hard like it will be a short storm but it is not a short storm. Acid churns in my stomach. I start to feel a similar non-patron-using-bathroom guilt I'd felt in Starbucks and decide to buy something. Luckily they sell my other vice. I see a book I'd been meaning to buy that will soon be a movie. Only problem is the cover of the book is the movie tie-in version and it's got the actor's giant face on it. I'm a book snob. I can't buy a book with a movie tie-in cover, which I suppose is judging-a-book-by-its-cover adjacent. The owner says she has the paperback version with the alternate, original cover. So I buy it.

Coffee tally: still on five, plus a book.

4:25 p.m. -- The rain has slowed so I venture out. Where to next? A few doors down is a bar and next to it an ice cream shop. I could do the bar as wine is motherhood's other beverage of choice, but the idea of drinking on a stomach empty of everything but acid seems like a bad idea. And I don't want to be drunk when I pick up Zoe in less than an hour. Once again, I could choose something else besides alcohol or coffee but I have no imagination. I choose the ice cream shop. I seem to remember they have chai.

4:29 p.m. -- They do not have chai. What they have is ice cream, huge desserts, and coffee. The girl behind the counter suggests the chocolate chip coffee. So I say, sure. Maybe it will be like dessert without buying one of the actual desserts. She makes me the coffee drink and then rings me up saying, "One java chip coffee." It's then I realize she'd said "java chip" before and not "chocolate chip" so I was unwittingly doubling down.

Coffee tally: ridiculous.

5:00 p.m. -- I sloshed my way back to pick up Zoe, who, of course, didn't want to leave, but now I really needed a bathroom. So we got home, where I peed forever and it was mostly French Roast.

Coffee, in the guise of innocence.

(Continuing the school theme, also this week I made my debut on BLUNTmoms with my 10-step guide to surviving Catholic school. Zoe, naturally, is going to public school.)

Zoe: 108; Universe: caffeinated

For more of Zoe's hijinks, follow me on Facebook and on Twitter at @zoevsuniverse. 

I need a win here, people. 

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Zoe vs. the Keurig (plus an ode)

Coffee, beautiful life-giving coffee. It is my second thought every morning when I wake up, my first being an inarticulate scream.

We have a regular coffeemaker and a Keurig. Two ways to get my fix. One thing standing in my way: a cranky four-year-old who wakes up even worse than I do.

That's the stuff!

I'm not even talking about the out-there OCD rituals and demands that occur with unsettling regularity. Though they are troublesome.

I'm talking about something I did to myself. One early morning, when it was still dark so Zoe insisted on turning on our kitchen light then got upset because it was too bright and would neither stop crying or allow me to turn off the light, out of desperation I latched on to a way to distract her. 

"Zoe, would you like to make my coffee?" Since Zoe, like most small children, likes anything that smacks of adulthood, she immediately perked up. (Coffee references run like a caffeine-withdrawal fever dream through my unconscious.)

I handed her a K-cup then pressed the power button. She eyed me critically for a moment. Then pressed the power button, paused, then pressed it again so she could be the one to turn it on. (What ever had I been thinking?)

As we waited for the water to heat, I sprawled forward over the counter while she stared, saucer-eyed, at the machine, waiting for The Miracle. When the water was ready I showed her how to insert the K-cup, close the lid, then press the middle button, an operation that dragged on and on---she had to keep inserting the K-cup and taking it out, then closing and opening the lid. 

The road led to coffee, but it was a circuitous route, and one we then had to travel every day with all the attendant bumps and detours that you don't seem to encounter until a four-year-old is behind the wheel.

Much here beyond my reach.

The offer once made could not be rescinded so now there's no getting my coffee without her "help." If I try, the sound of the machine gives me away, and though a mug of coffee is produced, it will most certainly be cold by the time I'm done making amends for my crime. By then she can make me a fresh one.

As is my wont, my suffering has inspired me to write bad poetry. This time I was moved to ruin Keats.

Heat that day-old sludge in the microwave and enjoy!

Ode on a Coffee Urn

Thou Keurig sitting on my countertop

Keats died young.
Coffee could've saved him.

Thou delivery system for my hit

What obstacle 'tis this, neath towhead mop

Lying athwart me and having a fit?

   Too early this, the sun is not yet up

   Through fogged mind, I fasten upon a cue

   A way to make my interests her care

   A plan that promises to fill my cup

   With Goddess Java, that heavenly brew.

   Forever will I love and it be fair.* (Also: far.)

Thoughts of French roast are sweet but the real deal

Is better. Therefore coax overwrought child

With K-cup, upon kitchen stool to kneel.

She is now slowness where before was wild.

   Forever thou seemst to dwell, beyond reach

   To a four-year-old's pace I am in thrall

   Oh how I wish that faster she would go,

   But speed is not a thing that one can teach

   Coffee is truth, truth coffee, that is all

   Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Zoe: 65; Universe: 0

* Italics for lines from actual poem. Old English-major habits die hard.