Slurred Speech and Raisin Bran

Mountains of Snowy Cakes

This morning I woke up at 6:10 to the sound of my phone alarm and half crawled, half collapsed on top of it about 7 seconds later. For a split second, I thought my life was over; then reality set in and I staggered into the shower.

By this point I'm assuming that Joe and his wife must have already taken their showers. I hopped in and soaked myself just as the shower head squeezed the last drops from the water heater. I finished up in two minutes and jumped out shivering like a paranoid chihuahua. It was going to be one of those days.

I layered my clothing because today was pancake day - the day when we serve free pancakes to hungry students on campus for three and a half hours. I knew the high was 40, so I was not hopeful, but any joy in my heart soon faded as I walked outside to find heavy flakes of snow drifting all around me.

"Surely Joe will realize that no one will want freezing cold pancakes in the snow," I thought, "he'll cancel like any sane person."

To my horror and disbelief, I watch as Joe virtually skipped to the car with glee. Then, for the next hour, I grimly waited for someone to state the obvious, that we had to reschedule. No luck. The colder and more miserable I felt the more Joe acted like a character in an old Disney movie, complimented with a singing chorus of woodland creatures. I hope I'm not alone in this, but when people are overly happy in times like these, it tends to irk me even more.

Todays lesson: even when you think your day sucks, realize that nothing is written in stone. I didn't want to go out there. I didn't want to be cold - just being honest. I didn't complain openly about any of this but I certainly wasn't an overly cheerful servant either. Most importantly, I got over it.

Once we got out there the snow stopped and my layers held in strong. Before I knew it, I'd forgotten about myself and was busy taking in the event. It's always a lot of fun to get reactions out of people when you harass them about taking your pancakes. Favorite lines that we yelled to the crowd were:
"Free Pancakes, get them while they're free!"
"Free Pancakes, if they were any freer, we'd have to call them freecakes!"
and
"This is not a pancake mirage. These pancakes are absolutely real and waiting for you!"

I sincerely hope that days like today will rub off on me and I'll take their memory to my bad days in the "real" real world. Even if it's a little obnoxious when your down, optimism can do good things.

Al's terra-cotta smells like hazelnut and mud.