WANTED: My Own Personal Coffee Club (and a 26-hour day)
by Tess F. |
September 16, 2011 01:47 PM |
7 comments
Tess F.
Location:
Cranford, NJ
Favorite Flavor:
Pumpkin Spice
If you could travel back in time, what era would you live in? I like where I am now. Facebook. iPhones. Movies on Demand.
How do you unwind after a long day? DVR'd TV with my husband, who always makes me laugh.
Three things you cannot live without…My family, my iPhone, my coffee.
I am a member of the Coffee-mate Brew Crew.
When I was a kid, my mom had a special routine after our collective morning rush. She would walk us to the bus stop, watch us head off to school, and then meander over to another neighborhood mother’s home for an hour or two of coffee and chit-chat.
This fall, I will find myself childless a whopping three mornings a week for the first time in five years. I wish, more than anything, that I could say I would be spending that time relaxing with good friends and good coffee like my mom once did. But the truth is, even if I had the time to spare (which I don’t), I don’t think any of my closest friends would either. And in a way, that is mighty reassuring, because it reminds me why I’m so close with them in the first place.
Once upon a time, it was easy to have tons of friends, friends who were just like you, friends who were nothing like you, friends who you aspired to be, friends who were much worse off than you, but you secretly enjoyed spending time with because it made you feel so much better about yourself.
But a lot of that changed for me after I had kids, not because I became less tolerant of others (viva la difference!), but because I just have so much less time to give.
Ten years ago, I could catch up on the previous night’s TV with office pals, meet a friend or two for lunch, grab a post-work drink, and then chat on the phone for two hours, all in a single 12-hour span. These days, if I can sneak away one evening a month for dinner with four friends at once, I consider myself incredibly lucky.
These days, I only have so much time to spare, so when I do, I want to really make it count. That’s why I feel like my circle of close friends has gotten so much smaller—when I do have ten minutes for a quick phone call or a blessed evening away, I want to share it with someone who really “gets” me—whether it’s a shared love of Parks and Recreation or the shared guilt that comes from juggling a career and kids.
So it’s no surprise then, that the women I’d most want to have in my own personal coffee club, like me, most likely wouldn’t have the time to join it. But if we all did (a girl can dream, can’t she?), here’s a quick list of my requirements for membership:
MUSTS
1- Parent status, preferably also juggling a marriage and a career, but not mandatory
2- A solid appreciation of irreverent TV staples like Arrested Development and Community
3- A deep love of all things pop culture, from the red carpet to the bestseller list to reality-show train wrecks
4- A healthy sense of humor
5- A slightly neurotic side
6- A taste for COFFEE-MATE
EXTRA CREDIT
• Mild-to-obsessive interest in any of the following: makeup, indie rock, home design and décor, and a certain rapper turned underwear model turned big Hollywood star and producer, who shall remain nameless.
Do you have a coffee club? If you did, who would you include and why? What would be your requirements for membership?