independent vs. codependent

There is a time in everyone's life when they come to a cross road. I'm sure some people even find themselves at a cross road a few times in their lives. Do you go left, right, straight; do you turn around and go running back the way you came. Everyone has to make these decisions for themselves, but these are the times when we want someone else to make the decision for us more than anything in the world.

So, right now I am standing on the cross street of Independence and Commitment. Ya, fun streets to be standing on, right? It is difficult to be so far apart from your partner, your best friend, the person you want to never not be a part of your life. I have had my fair share of confusion in my relationship. I just never know how I feel about it, which to me is a bad sign. If it was right, wouldn't I just know that; it should be obvious; shouldn't it? I find myself wondering, yet again, whether my partner and I are really meant to be together forever. There is no doubt in my mind that the man needs to be a part of my life forever - he and I are best friends. But, where my confusion comes from is if me not wanting to lose him is worth settling for a relationship that I am not 100 percent satisfied with.

To be honest, I really can't describe why my relationship is not what I want it to be. I have tried, many times, but I do not succeed in making people understand. But, shouldn't it be enough that I know deep down that it isn't right? Shouldn't me not being 100 happy with it be enough to make me realize that it probably isn't meant to be. I don't think I should have to try so hard to convince myself that all relationships are not perfect - that you have to work at them. I think that if my partner and I were meant to be, we would be. I would be happy all the time; I wouldn't have any reasons to doubt us. So why then do I doubt it all the time.

Maybe there is just something wrong with me. Maybe, I am not meant to be in a steady relationship at this time in my life. Maybe all my stress and anxiety about my relationship is a clue that I am not ready to be so utterly committed to another person. I am such an independent individual; maybe I'm not ready to be co-dependant, yet. I'm only 22, why do I feel the need to be settled? That is the thing, I don't, yet my partner does.

This is what happens when you spend hours on end sitting in a coffee shop not having many customers. You sit and blog about your inner-most thoughts. As you can tell my thoughts definitely form one of those tangled webs that Sir Walter Scott was talking about when he said his famous quote.

"Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive."

The only person I'm really deceiving here, though, is myself. I have to stop filling myself full of lies and half truths and open my eyes. What do I want; What will make ME happy?

progress report

Today is Sunday July 19th. I have been open now for 19 days. As of day 18, yesterday, I am pleased to report that I have sold 114 burgers (of all kinds: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, bacon cheese burgers. You name it; I've got it!) Also in those 18 days, I have sold 118 espresso/coffee drinks. Here is the tally thus far:

Cappuccino 2
Mocha 43
Latte 14
Breve mocha 10
Breve latte 1
Soy mocha 2
Soy latte 2
Hot Chocolate 14
Americano 6
Coffee 24

Obviously, as you can tell, mochas are the drink of choice around here. Everyone seems to like a little bit of coffee with their hot chocolate :)

This has all shocked me quite a bit. When I started planning this adventure a year ago, I really had no idea what to expect. I didn't know who was going to be in town; I had no idea how many fishermen where going to be in and out of town. Like I said, I just had no idea what to expect - it was all a guessing game: how much food to order; how many cups and plates to order; what equipment did I need.

I was sort of waiting for the worst. When I got down here and finally opened, I had 54 burgers. I thought that would last me quite a while - my mom and I were thinking at one point that I might only sell 100 all summer. Well, we were sure wrong - I hit 100 on day 16!

I will be down here for 43 more days -maybe more if I decide to stay a little ways into September, but by then, I may be getting a little sick of PA. Who knows?

So... if it keeps up like it has been, I will be selling 272 more burgers while I'm down here. I don't know about coffee drinks, though. They are sort of hit and miss. Some days I sell a bunch and some days I don't sell any. The golf tourney is in August, though, so there will be a lot of drinks sold then, I'm sure!!! It really depends on who shows up for the tournament. I hope a lot of people will come into town - at least for the second day!

The Tourney is August 19th and 20th... come one; come all!

Making some coffee...

The Hard Part

The hard part about operating a business in a rural town in Alaska is sort of two-fold. The first, and most obvious, is not knowing how many customers I am going to have. The second sort of follows in line with that - not knowing how much supplies to order.

It has worked out pretty well so far. I have only had to have two emergency grocery orders put on the plane to come down to PA instead of being mailed. But, I really wish that I could get it together and not have to have my mom running around Sitka for me. But, it has just been so unpredictable. One day, I will sell 1 burger and the next day I will sell 10. There really are not even that many people around, but somehow I have been selling a lot of burgers. I have sold 60 in the last 9 days. Which, considering I really didn't have too high of hopes for this shop, is really good. Don't get me wrong. I knew that people were going to buy stuff and I was going to have fun, but I have not been expecting to make much of a profit. I just want to make sure I make back all the money that has been put into it. At this point, I don't really know how I'm doing in the profit department. I just know I have a lot of bills I have to pay before I can start even thinking about making some spending money for Europe.

Right now, I mean right this very moment; my problem is something a little bit more odd. So, to make sure that I have enough milk, while making sure it doesn't go bad, I keep a few gallons in the freezer. Yes, milk freezes and stays good while it is being kept frozen. It does however, go bad faster once it is unthawed, but it will live past its expiration date!

So, my problem right now, is unthawing the frozen milk. I took a gallon out of the freezer and put it into the fridge 2 days ago, and that puppy still isn't thawed out yet. I don't know what to do. I need milk, and it is not ready. I have some boxed milk that I will use if I have to, but that is a last resort. Not because it taste bad or anything, just because it is more expensive. The boxed milk actually works just fine; it tastes just the same.

For those of you who didn't even know there was such a think as boxed milk, yes, there is such a thing. It is packaged just like the boxed soymilk, rice milk, chai tea...etc. The milk is basically vacuumed, so all the air and bacteria is removed, which gives it a long shelf life. I don't really know how it all works; I just know that it tastes just like regular milk and lasts a long time. Before it is open, it has an expiration date that is a year down the line. I'm sure it is good after that too, that date is probably just for FDA purposes and what not.

So. I have a bunch of hamburgers coming in on today's plane because I only have 12 left, and I won't be getting my big order for another week. The last thing I want to happen is to run out of burgers!!! That would be horrible. So, I had to ask my mom again to run around for me up there in Sitka. She is so wonderful. She deals with a lot of stuff in the summer. My dad always calls and needing groceries, parts, hooks, hootchies, etc. Now I’m always calling her. If I were her, I know I would get frustrated and annoyed, but she has been dealing with very well I think.

Thank you mom; you are amazing.

Coffee Update

I know I just posted a blog, but I decided another one was necessary. This site is supposed to be about my coffee adventures, but the last couple blogs have been mainly about Port Alexander, so I thought it was time for a coffee update.

First of all, I made my first cappuccino on Sunday and it didn't go very well. I couldn't get the foam to foam enough. The milk got hot before I had enough foam to really make the cap. Other than that, though, things have been pretty good. I am starting to master my blended mocha. When I first started making them, they were a little too runny, but I'm getting it now!

I spent three days learning how to make drinks at 4 J's in Sitka, and I got a lot of pointers from my amazing friend Nessa. All the tips I collected really came in handy. There were so many things I didn't know! The most important, was that a shot of espresso goes bad in about 30 seconds from the time it starts coming out of the machine. I would never have guessed that.

Every person that orders drinks has given me nothing but positive feedback. I hope everyone is being honest rather than just trying to be nice to me and not hurt my feelings. Most coffee drinkers are not really "nice." If the drink is not up to their standards, they tend to tell you about it. But, all these people have known me since I was little, so I don't know if maybe they just don't want to hurt my feelings. I hope they are being honest and just love the coffee!

Tomorrow is another day. I will go open the shop for the 8th day in a row. I can't believe it has been a week already! It really only feels like just yesterday that I opened and was scared silly. When I made my first mocha, I had no idea if it was going to taste right.

Nessa told me that by the end of the summer I was going to be a coffee drinker. Well, after a week, I am still not drinking coffee, and I don't plan on starting anytime soon. I have of course tried a few of the drinks to taste if they are drinkable or not, but I do not like any of them, so hopefully I'm in the clear.

The Uniqueness of a Small Town!

Most people probably don’t think about what it takes to power their houses – when they plug in their hairdryer in the morning and it just works, they don’t think anything of it. Well, in Port Alexander, things are a little different. You can’t plug in your hairdryer in the morning unless your generator is on, which means you have to get up, get warm clothes on and go outside to start your generator. And, lets just hope you have fuel because if you don’t, you have to go siphon some out of a 50 gallon barrel then put it in your generator, then start it, then you can go inside to take your shower and blow dry your hair. Most people in PA don’t bother with things like blow drying their hair in the moning, but it was just an example that I thought would get my point across.

Here in PA, we have to fill 50 gallon drums with fuel from the Eyak, then depending on which side of the bay you live on, you have to either push them off the dock and tow them across the bay with your skiff, then roll them to your house. If you live on tract A, all you have to do is roll them to your house, but man, when it is low tide, good luck getting that drum up the ramp.

What made me think of all this is that I was sitting in my shop, which is right at the top of the pier and I saw Trevor and Dan rolling fuel drums up the ramp. They were the fuel drums for the City, so that means they have to go all the way to Bear Hall, which is pretty far away, so they had their work cut out for them.

It is just so different here. We get our power from generators, our heat from wood stoves, our hot water and ovens are fueled with propane, which is something even harder to mess with than fuel drums. Dragging a 100-pound propane tank out of our skiff and up to your house is pretty difficult. I can’t do it by myself that is for sure. Well, maybe I could; I haven’t tried since I was about 15-years-old.

Thankfully, this summer I only have to deal with a little generator at my house. It takes gas instead of diesel too, so it’s cheaper! It is a little 2000 wt generator, and it is pretty fuel efficient, so I don’t have to have too much gas to power the house. At the shop, I don’t have to deal with a generator at all, thank god. I have so much equipment in there that I would need one heck of a generator to power it all. If I wanted to be able to use more than one thing at a time I would need an even bigger one. But, Bill L. one of the men who lives in PA, he has a generator going 24/7 on the property across the boardwalk from my shop because he is powering a coast guard radio tower with it. So, he is letting me plug into his power for about $225 a month, which is actually sort of a lot, but man it is worth it to not have to deal with hauling fuel and starting and maintaining a generator, not to mention I would have had to buy a decent generator, too.

It truly is a different way of life here. Nobody could really picture or imagine it unless they came here. We get mail once a week in the winter and twice a week in the summer. It comes in on a boat…we don’t have any grocery stores, so we have to order everything from Sitka or Juneau or somewhere like that. It is really a different world.

I wish that everyone I know could come to PA and see the BEAUTY of this town. I don’t even know how to describe it. The trees, the ocean, the boardwalks, the starts, the smell; everything truely comes together to make the most beautiful place on earth.

HOME?

I love Port Alexander. I was born here, yes here... in my home... no hospital... no doctor. This town will always be a part of me; I will always be drawn here. I don't know exactly how to describe it, but I get drawn here. After I'm away for so long, I have an urge to return; a severe homesickness; a need so deep to return HOME.

I have many homes. Sitka is my home because that is where my family is; Washington is my home because that is where a big portion of my life took place and my dear friends and my boy friend are there, but Port Alexander is my home because that is where I was born and raised, and spent every summer that I can remember fishing with my dad. Most of my childhood memories are centered around PA: the lake, the red can, board walk races, the play court, the point, the bridge, the dock, the golf tournaments, pot lucks... the list goes on and on.

It is hard for me to sit here and watch my home slowly disappear, vanish before my very eyes. PA used to triple in size every summer once the fishing season started. The dock would have so many boats tied to it that you would think it was going to rip right off the pier. This year, though, the day before the king salmon season opened (July 1) there were only 10 boats at the dock. That is nothing compared to the 40+ that used to show up. And now, since it opened, the dock is COMPLETELY empty... no fishing boats in sight. The difference from back in the day to now is that there is no longer a place for fisherman to do their laundry and shower. I never realized how vital those two things were until they were taken away. If fisherman don't have a way to do laundry, get food and take showers, than they can't very well fish in that area. They then migrate other places that do have those facilities.

Enough about the logistics... there is a whole mess of reasons why it is horrible that there is no more barge in PA that buys fish and offers laundry facilities and what not to the fisherman, but I will not bother you with those details now. BUT... I will include a copy of an essay I wrote for my English class a couple years ago... writing about all this made me think of it, so i dug through my old folders and and found it!!!...

So here it is...and it is even more true now than it was when I wrote it on Jan 17, 2008.

Port Alexander, Alaska

I'm home, but nothing is here. Not a boat, not a buoy, or even the smell of fish.
In Port Alexander, we used to say, you don't find the fish, the fish find you. Maybe that's what happened - the fish found someone else, bringing an end to my way of life, my home.

On June 12, 1987, 20 years ago, I was born into a small community on the tip of Baranoff Island, in Southeast Alaska. When I was younger, the town seemed to be full of adventures and family and friends. A mooring station for the Southeast Alaska trolling fleet, Port Alexander was home to 40 year round residents, but in the summer that number tripled with fisherman. I remember a dock with more boats tied to it than anyone could have though possible, a one room grocery store, a cannery, the house my sister's grandma used to live in, smoke coming from every house's chimney and the boardwalks full of kids playing. Port Alexander was my home. Not perfect, but more preferable to being on the water. No fish to clean here. No father telling me to go run through the lines.

Maybe once every four days, the boats would return to port, where we would sell our fish and re-ice for the next trip. There were hot showers and telephones, land to walk on, and people to talk to besides our captains. With a lot of weed and a lot of beer we would spend our evening on dry land in flat out celebration. We could relax here. We could stand without swaying to the movement of the ocean. Before dark we'd gather drift wood and make a bon fire on the beach, roasting marshmallows, and making s'mores, we would talk about what we were doing once summer was over. As it got late we would stumble our way through the woods back to our boats in wonderment of whether we would be fishing in the morning.

So much to remember. The time we built a zip-line going across the lake; the sounds of laughter, and fires crackling; the slow dread that we would feel when our captains told us we were headed back out. Larch Bay Maybe. Cape Ommaney. Nasty, horrible place where the waves themselves could kill you.

Now I stand at the top of the ramp, looking down at the empty dock, and what used to be the small grocery store. Depressing really, what time can do. You'd think there would be someone left, some boat still tied to the dock, but Port Alexander has been erased from captain's logs. There are no fish here, and therefore no reason for anyone to come, it is a ghost town, where the only thing left is the sound of waves crashing on the beach.

The Grand Opening

After spending a week in Sitka, riding to PA on the Eyak in gale force winds and spending four days working my butt off, it is finally finished. Problem Corner Cafe has officially open for business.

Today was my test run. I sold 18 burgers and a few mochas. All in all, I would say it was a darn good day. And I for one am glad. So many people have put some much time and energy into helping with the shop that I want it to meet everyone's expectations; and I think that it will. After today's test run, I have every faith that this summer is going to be a good summer.

It took a lot to get here - let me tell you!

Friday, back in Sitka, I called Dave on the Eyak to figure out what time I needed to start loading my stuff onto the boat. He said he would be at the city wall for loading at 2pm. So, knowing the Eyak and knowing Davy; I had my first load to the boat at about 2:30. Really, I should have known better than to even show up that early. I still had to wait a half hour to load my stuff. After my pallet of grub and gear from Costco was loaded onto the boat, I asked them what their plan was for the day. I still had a pallet full of fridges and freezers, as well as a plethora of other items strewn across town: some at my mom's house, some in Harmony's storage locker, some at Sarah's house... I was quickly told by Dave that the weather was not looking good, so they wanted to get out of town as quick as possible to try and get ahead of the blow. So, I jumped into go mode and drove to the storage locker. I loaded all the freezers and fridges into my truck, and absolutely everything else into Sarah's Subaru wagon (thank god she had a wagon...I always kind of wanted to give her a hard time about it because it is kind of a "mom" car, but I was sure grateful she had it that day.) We also had to get my luggage and different bits and pieces of equipment I had at my house.

We got it all into Sarah's car and organized in an actually pretty nice fashion. I threw a lot of equipment (toaster ovens, crock pots, coffee pots) into large trash cans that were then taped closed - hey, you do what you gotta do; everything made it down with out breaking. I also frantically through books, cords, plug-ins, ice cube trays and everything else that I had accumulated for the shop in to boxes and crammed them into Sarah's car as well.

When we got to the Eyak, someone else was loading stuff, so I waited for about 20 minuets, then we got all my stuff on board. Man I had a lot of stuff, but I'm going to be living down in PA for the summer and running a business, so I think I deserve to pack heavy in this situation.

After the boat was loaded and the passengers were ready to go, we of course ended up staying in Sitka for 3 and half more hours. That is how it goes with the Eyak... it is all HURRY UP AND WAIT. But, we eventually were on our way. Leaving the harbor, I could tell it was going to be a bumpy ride. It was pretty rolley even 10 minutes out of town. I took two seasick pills about 5 hours before we left, so I figured I would be good in that department, but those don't help the feeling of seasickness. Yes, the pills make it so I don't actually vomit, but when I am standing up, I still get the gross headache that goes along with being seasick. After about 2 hours of hanging out in the wheelhouse chatting with Dave and the rest of the crew, I called it a day and went to bed. I woke up as we were going around Cape Ommaney and had to use the bathroom, but when I stood up I got thrown across my little "state room" and thought better of it. I laid back down and thought to myself "just fall back asleep; just fall back asleep." Cape Ommaney is usually about an hour and a half out of PA, but It took longer than that due to the weather. It was blowing 40 knots and the seas were averaging 15 feet, with some 20 foot waves - thankfully my little pep talk worked, and I was able to fall back asleep. I woke up as we pulled in to PA a few hours later - THANK GOODNESS!

The four days that followed my arrival to PA were eventful and stressful. We didn't have the right fitting for this, we had the wrong part of that, we miss calculated how much material we would need, we couldn't connect our water, our water heater wouldn't work, or pluming was not designed the way we thought it was, there wouldn't be a plane to bring parts for a day and a half, the Eyak left Sitka without our parts.... the list goes on and on, but I won't put you to sleep by explaining all of it, although it would probably be a good way to vent. Just know that Mike and I ran into a lot of problems and stressed out about it all, but in the end it all worked out. It took longer than it could have, but also not as long as it could have.

I opened today, like I said in the beginning. All is going well so far. One of my mini fridges doesn't work, which sucks, and it took me a good couple hours to get my espresso grinder to work, but it seems to be working pretty well now. I think I need to make the grind a tad bit courser, but It has been working fairly well so far!

The first drink I made was a vanilla breve mocha (a mocha made with half and half instead of milk, with a little vanilla syrup). I made it for Dave on the Eyak cause the boat pulled up to the dock right as I got my espresso grinder fixed, so I wanted to try everything out! He told me that was his drink when we were riding down the weekend before (although he said he liked praline flavoring, but I am not that fancy).

Tomorrow is the GRAND OPENING... today was just the test run. I hope everything goes well.

PICTURES SOON!!!