Browse all posts from The Hot Mess
The bell rings at 2:47 on a Tuesday, which is the part of the afternoon when I'm usually doing one of three things: restocking the sugar caddy (which has been a personal nemesis of mine since...
Lou's shop is empty at 3:07 on a Tuesday afternoon and the door chimes when I come in, because Lou has an actual bell — not a buzzer, not a motion sensor, a real small brass bell on a mounted arm...
At 9:17 on a Thursday morning I look up from the espresso machine and through my front window and across the sidewalk and through Earl's front window and I see, in order: water, Earl, a wrench. The...
Patricia comes in at 10:47 on a Wednesday, orders black coffee, and sits at the counter. I know I'm staring. I can feel myself staring. There are two signals here and I'm trying to process them...
The knock comes at 4:47 PM on a Thursday, and I assume it's Jennifer because Jennifer knocks like she's trying to wake the dead and also possibly alert them to a sale at Target. I'm still in my...
Walter is late. I've checked the clock four times now, which is three times more than I should need to, but the thing about Walter is that Walter is never late. Walter is 10 AM. Walter is drip...
Jennifer doesn't bring a clipboard. That's how I know something's wrong. Jennifer always has a clipboard, or a notebook, or at the very least a phone with seventeen open tabs of ideas she wants to...
He walks in at 2:15 on a Wednesday and I know immediately that something is either very wrong or very right because this man is vibrating. Not literally. But also kind of literally. He's late...
5:47 AM, and I'm in the shop because my brain decided that sleep was optional and anxiety was mandatory, which is how I've ended up standing behind my own counter in the dark like some kind of...
Thursday. 3 PM. The bell rings. I don't have to look up anymore. I know the sound of Grace arriving the way I know the sound of my own heartbeat—steady, expected, a rhythm I've built part of my week...
Lou's Barber Shop closes at 5 PM on weekdays. This is not negotiable. This is not flexible. This is as fixed as the tides, as certain as Walter's Tuesday drip coffee, as reliable as my ability to...
The first warm day sneaks up on you in the northern Midwest. One day you're still wearing three layers and questioning every life choice that led you to a region where April can mean snow, and the...
I've been coming to Milly's Diner for over a year, and I've never actually looked at the walls. This is embarrassing to admit, given that looking at things is theoretically one of the easier human...
The text comes at 7:14 AM on a Thursday: "Can you come Saturday? Morning. Garage." No punctuation flourishes. No explanation. No emoji, which—to be fair—Dad has never used an emoji in his life and...
This is a test post. We're debugging the system. Your patience is appreciated while we chase down gremlins in the machinery. Nothing to see here—just a developer poking things with a stick to see...
Jennifer shows up at 8:47 PM with a bottle of wine I won't drink and a bag of cheese puffs I absolutely will. "I brought sustenance," she announces, pushing past me into the apartment like she owns...
She doesn't look like a hundred-dollar bill. I don't know what that means, exactly—I'm not sure hundred-dollar bills have a look—but when she walks in at 2:47 on a Tuesday afternoon, nothing about...
Earl Whitfield has been running the antique shop next door for forty-three years, which means he's been watching storefronts come and go, owners burn out and move on, and one young woman move in...
I'm cleaning the apartment because Jennifer mentioned something about "spring energy" and "clearing stagnant chi," and while I'm not entirely sure chi is something I believe in, I *am* sure that the...
Patricia's order is a ritual. Half-caf, oat milk, extra hot, light foam. Every element matters. Every element has been negotiated over months of careful calibration—the day she declared the foam...
Tuesday, 10:15 AM, and Walter is late. Walter is never late. Walter arrives at 10:02 like clockwork, orders drip coffee, sits at the counter because he likes to watch me work, and draws a smiley face...
The morning rush is in full swing when the bell chimes and chaos walks through the door. Not metaphorical chaos. Actual, physical, three-feet-tall chaos in the form of a preschooler who immediately...
The grinder doesn't die gracefully. It makes a sound like a cat being stepped on inside a garbage disposal, shudders twice, and then emits a thin wisp of smoke that smells like burnt ambition and...
The morning lull is my favorite hour that isn't 5:47 AM—that particular window between the before-work rush and the lunch-adjacent wanderers, when the shop breathes and I can actually hear Betsy's...
This is another test to verify email sending on direct publish.
Thursday at 3 PM, the bell rings. I don't have to look up to know it's Grace. Nearly two years of Thursdays have given me a kind of internal clock for her — the soft push of the door, the measured...
This is a test post to verify email sending on publish.
5:47 AM. The shop is dark except for the light over the counter. This is my favorite hour — the before. Before the bell rings, before the orders, before I have to be anyone for anyone. Just me and...
The morning lull is supposed to be quiet. That's the whole point of the lull — the pause between the early rush and the mid-morning stragglers, the twenty minutes where I can restock the pastry case...
I close the shop at six, flip the sign, and stand there for approximately forty-five seconds before I realize I cannot be in my own head tonight. Mom was here. Mom sat at a table and drank coffee and...
The afternoon lull is my favorite part of the day, which probably says something unflattering about my personality—the part where nothing happens, where I can wipe down the same stretch of counter...
Tuesday. 9:47 AM. I don't have to look at the clock anymore. My body knows. Something in the rhythm of the morning shifts, and I glance up, and there he is—Walter, pushing through the door like he's...
I wake up without an alarm, which means I wake up confused. There's a long moment where I lie there, heart racing, convinced I've overslept something catastrophic—the shop, a delivery, some...
He comes in at 2:47 on a Tuesday afternoon, and I know something's wrong before he reaches the counter because he's got the look—the one where the body showed up but the mind is still three blocks...
Todd shows up at 7:43 in the morning with a gasket. I know it's 7:43 because I've just unlocked the door and I haven't even turned Betsy on yet, which means I'm standing there in yesterday's apron...
The bell on Earl's door sounds different than mine. Deeper. Older. Like it's been announcing arrivals since before I was born, which it probably has. Everything in Whitfield's Antiques has that...
The succulent has been dead for six weeks. I know this because Jennifer gave it to me six weeks ago, pronouncing it "literally impossible to kill," and I have apparently found the one exception to...
Patricia has been sitting at the corner table for fourteen months, and I've never once seen her look out the window this long. Usually she reads. That's her thing—the corner table, the book, the...
Lou has been cutting hair across the street for forty years. I know this because Earl told me, and Earl knows everything about everyone on this block in a way that should probably concern me but...
The afternoon lull has fully lulled—Walter's been gone an hour, his smiley face dried in his cup, and I'm wiping Betsy's steam wand for the third time when the bell sounds almost startled to be...
In Which Quiche Is Excellent but Boundaries Are Better Jennifer picks me up at 9:15 on a Sunday morning, which means I've been awake since 6:30 trying to figure out what to wear to a church women's...
In Which the Quiet Before Opening Holds More Than I Expected The shop is dark at 5:47 AM, which is how I like it—just me and Betsy humming awake, her indicator lights glowing orange in that way that...
The text comes at 7:43 AM, which is early even for Dad. No words. Just a photo. This is how David Champion communicates—biscuits, coffee beans, images without context, and the expectation that you'll...
In Which a Photograph Explains What Showing Up Actually Means Walter arrives at 9:47 on a Tuesday, which is to say Walter arrives exactly when Walter always arrives, because Walter has been arriving...
The first time Grace comes in on a Tuesday, I almost don't recognize her. Not because she looks different—she's wearing the same kind of business attire she always wears, the same careful posture,...
She comes in at 2:23 on a Tuesday, and I almost miss her entirely because I'm elbow-deep in the espresso machine trying to figure out why Betsy has decided that today, of all days, she's going to...
Milly shows up at 6:14 AM with a mop, a bucket, and the kind of energy that suggests sleep is for people who don't have health inspections bearing down on them like judgment from on high. I'm still...
The bell chimes at 6:47 PM, which is thirteen minutes before I officially close, but the shop is empty and I've already started wiping down the counter with the particular aggression of someone who...
Jennifer arrives at 6:45 AM, which is fifteen minutes before I open, which is also fifteen minutes before I've finished my first cup of coffee, which means I'm operating at approximately 47%...
The morning is going fine, which should have been my first warning. I've learned to distrust fine. Fine is what happens right before Betsy decides to stage a protest, or before I discover that the...
Sunday evening. Shop's dark below me, the last of the day's coffee smell rising through the floorboards the way it does when the building exhales. The wood remembers footsteps. The ceiling remembers...
Todd walks into The Hot Mess at 2:47 on a Thursday afternoon without a toolbox, which is how I know something is wrong. Or right. Or different. Todd without a toolbox is like me without coffee...
I see Walter at the downtown grocery on a Wednesday morning and my brain short-circuits the way a computer does when you ask it to divide by zero — not a crash, exactly, but a fundamental inability...
I wake up at 5:14 AM, which is sixteen minutes before my alarm, which means my body has decided that sleep is a suggestion it's no longer willing to follow. This has been happening for nine days. I...
Jennifer picks me up at 8:47 AM on a Sunday, which is thirteen minutes early, which means she's nervous about something she's pretending not to be nervous about, which means I should be nervous too....
I hear it through the wall at 2:15 on a Friday — or rather, I don't hear it. What I hear is the absence of the hum that's been there since Jamie moved into Petal & Vine eight months ago, the low...
Patricia tips one cent. I want to be clear about this — not one dollar, not one percent, one cent. A single penny, placed on the counter next to her exact change with a precision that suggests she...
I have the coffee ready at 2:58 because Grace is never late and I am never not ready for her, and these two facts have formed a kind of covenant between us that neither of us has ever spoken out...
He comes in at 2:40 on a Thursday, which is the dead zone — that stretch between the lunch rush that wasn't really a rush and the afternoon regulars who won't arrive for another hour. The shop is...
I drive twenty minutes to bring my father coffee beans he could buy himself, and I do it on a Tuesday because Tuesdays feel like neutral territory — not a weekend visit that means something, not a...
The envelope is under the door when I lock up Thursday night, and I almost miss it entirely because I'm replaying the cortado I pulled wrong at 4:15—too much microfoam, not enough integration, the...
The thing about espresso machines is that they're basically tiny controlled explosions happening inside a metal box, and when you think about it that way, it's actually remarkable that Betsy has lasted this long.
I find the adoption paperwork while looking for my W-2. This is not how I intended to spend my Sunday morning. I intended to spend my Sunday morning drinking coffee and ignoring my responsibilities...
Patricia is wearing lipstick. This might not sound significant. People wear lipstick all the time. It's a normal human activity that millions of people engage in daily without it being worthy of...
The list is six items long. Inventory the backup milk supply. Email the roaster about next month's order. Call the plumber about the leak under the sink that I've been "monitoring" for three weeks,...
So. Here's the thing about me and technology: we have what I'd call a "complicated relationship." The kind where I accidentally close seventeen browser tabs while trying to open one, and the WiFi...
I've been on this block for fourteen months, and I've never once crossed the street to Lou's Barber Shop. This isn't an oversight. I wave. He nods. Sometimes, if the weather's particularly...
Dad calls at 11:47 on a Tuesday, which is how I know something's wrong because Dad doesn't call during work hours unless someone's dead or dying, and even then he'd probably text first to ask if I...
Jennifer arrives at 7:03 AM with a clipboard. This is never a good sign. "Today," she announces, letting the door bang shut behind her, "is your day off." "I don't have days off," I say, because I...
Jamie from Petal & Vine is standing in my doorway at 6:47 AM, and she looks like someone who has recently fought a war and lost. "Coffee," she says. "Industrial strength. I don't care if it's legal."...
The scones are burning. I can smell it from across the shop—that particular char that means I got distracted again, probably by the espresso grinder which has been making a noise like a wounded...
Thursdays at 3 PM, I have a black coffee ready before the bell finishes ringing. Grace doesn't know I do this. Or maybe she does and has chosen not to acknowledge it, which would be very Grace of...
The woman orders coffee "the way my grandmother used to make it," and I know exactly what she means before she explains. "Weak," she says, almost apologetically. "With too much sugar. I know that's...
The package is on my doorstep when I get home, tucked against the frame like it's been waiting patiently, and I know who it's from before I pick it up because I'd recognize that handwriting...
Jennifer arrives at 1 PM with three canvas bags, a stepladder, and the kind of enthusiasm that makes my left eye twitch, which is never a good sign but is an especially bad sign when the bags appear...
The bell rings at 2:47 PM on a Thursday, and my father is standing in my coffee shop. No warning text. No "stopping by later" or "need anything from town?" Just David Champion in the doorway, wearing...
Betsy starts making the sound at 6:47 AM, thirteen minutes before I'm supposed to open, which is exactly the kind of timing that makes me believe the universe has a sense of humor and I am frequently...
The father is maybe sixty, with a gray beard and the kind of hands that look like they've built things. He's helping his daughter carry boxes to her car—she just graduated, she told me earlier,...
The radiator sounds like a cat being stepped on. Slowly. Repeatedly. I've been ignoring it for three days, which is my general approach to problems I don't understand, but this morning it added a new...
The bell rings at 2:47 on a Tuesday, which means Walter. I know this the way I know that Brazilian medium roast smells like hazelnuts and honesty, the way I know the third floorboard creaks, the way...
Jennifer arrives at 7:03 AM with a clipboard. This is never a good sign. A story about friendship, boundaries, and learning to say no to the people who love you most.
There's a table by the window—second from the door, the one that catches the morning light in a way that makes everything look like it belongs in a coffee commercial—and for four years, it belonged...
Jamie's shop smells like green things and water and something floral I can't identify. Petal & Vine. I've walked past it maybe two hundred times, always meaning to go in, never actually doing it....
The apartment is silent at 5:47 AM, which is when I start the ritual. French press today. Ethiopian Yirgacheffe—the floral one, jasmine notes, the one Noah requested in his single piece of...
The delivery truck arrives at 2:47 PM, which is thirteen minutes early, which shouldn't matter except that I'm in the middle of explaining pour-over technique to a customer who actually wants to...
She comes in at 2:15 on a Tuesday, and I know something's wrong before she reaches the counter—it's the way she holds herself, shoulders curved inward like she's trying to take up less space than she...
The day starts with Betsy leaking and ends with me dropping an entire carafe of cold brew on a customer's laptop, and somewhere in between there's a rush that doesn't stop for three hours and a...
A Facebook group. For moms. Specifically for moms who are tired of being told to "cherish every moment" while they're running on four hours of sleep and cold coffee and the kind of adrenaline that...
It started with the espresso machine making a sound I'd never heard before. Not a *bad* sound, exactly. More like a wheeze. A mechanical sigh. The kind of noise that says, "I'm fine, everything's...
Let me tell you about Patricia. Patricia comes in every Tuesday and Thursday at 2:15 PM, and I have spent the last four months dreading 2:15 PM on Tuesdays and Thursdays like other people dread...
Jennifer texted me at 7:43 AM on a Tuesday, which should have been my first warning sign. Nobody texts good news at 7:43 AM on a Tuesday. That's the time slot reserved for dental appointment...
It started, like most things in my life, with me not knowing what I was doing. I'd been writing little notes on coffee sleeves for months by the time this happened. Nothing profound—"Happy Tuesday!"...
I woke up crying this morning and I don't know why. That's a lie. I know exactly why. I just don't want to admit it. One year ago today, I drove away from my parents' house with everything I owned...
I didn't mean to adopt myself in cat form. That wasn't the plan. The plan was a kitten. Something small and fluffy and uncomplicated, the kind of cat you see on Instagram sitting peacefully in a...
The pipe in my back room exploded at 7:43 AM on a Tuesday. I know the exact time because I was looking at the clock when it happened, calculating how long until I needed to start the first batch of...
I've been running The Hot Mess for seven months now, and I thought I understood the patterns. There's the Morning Rush crowd—they want their coffee fast and don't care if I spill a little on the...
I thought I knew all my regulars. This is the thing about running a coffee shop—you start to feel like you *know* people, even when you don't. You know that the guy who comes in at 7:15 every weekday...
Day eighteen started like the previous seventeen: with coffee, determination, and the absolute certainty that I was fine. I was not fine. But I didn't know that yet. Or maybe I did know and was...
Someone left a karaoke machine at The Hot Mess. I should clarify: someone left a karaoke machine at The Hot Mess after the Mitchell family's daughter's fifteenth birthday party, which I had agreed to...
Owen Harris started coming to The Hot Mess three months ago. He seemed nice. Lonely, maybe—the kind of person who lingered over his Americano, asked thoughtful questions about the coffee, told me...
I opened the shop on December 26th because it was Friday. That's it. That's the whole reason. The Hot Mess is open Tuesday through Saturday, and December 26th fell on a Friday this year, so I opened....
I woke up at 7:23 AM on Christmas morning in my apartment above The Hot Mess, and my first thought was: *I'm fine with this.* My second thought was: *I need to be fine with this.* My third thought...
I almost didn't go. I was sitting in my car outside Todd's parents' house at 6:47 PM on Christmas Eve, engine running, hands on the steering wheel, having a full existential crisis about green bean...
They walked in at 4:47 PM—I know because I was watching the clock, wondering if anyone else would come in before closing. The couple walked in holding hands like they were the only two people in the...
Jennifer showed up at my apartment door with takeout and a gift bag, which meant either (a) she had exciting news, (b) she needed something, or (c) both. With Jennifer it's usually both. "I brought...
Pastor Coleman caught me after service with what he probably thought was a friendly smile. "Rena, I've been thinking—your story is incredible. Would you consider sharing your testimony next Sunday?...
Betsy exploded at 9:47 AM on the busiest Saturday of the month. Okay, "exploded" is dramatic. She didn't explode. She made a sound like a dying whale, hissed steam in three directions at once, and...
I've been trying to make croissants for four days. Actually, that's not accurate. I've been *failing* to make croissants for four days. There's a difference.¹ Attempt One ended up as hockey pucks....
I've been open for seven months, and I've never seen a health inspector. This is not something I was consciously aware of until precisely 10:47 AM on a Tuesday, when a woman in a polo shirt with a...
I woke up at 5 AM because anxiety doesn't believe in sleeping in. The numbers were doing their thing again—the thing where they line up in my head like soldiers, merciless and precise. Rent: $875,...
I opened The Hot Mess this morning at 7 AM planning to serve coffee. That was the plan. Make espresso. Steam milk. Maybe knock over the sugar caddy once or twice for authenticity. Go home at 6 PM...
I was not prepared for the post office on a Tuesday afternoon. To be fair, I'm rarely prepared for anything—I once went to the dentist on the wrong day, showed up to Jennifer's birthday party a week...
Sterling Ashworth walked into The Hot Mess at 10:37 AM on a Tuesday, and I knew immediately that I was doomed. Not doomed in the "Betsy's leaking again" way or the "I've knocked over the sugar caddy...
It's 9:47 PM on a Tuesday in December, and I'm bone-tired in that way where your feet hurt and your back hurts and even your hair somehow hurts.[^1] The Hot Mess is finally clean—well, "clean" by my...
The weather app said "scattered showers." This is not scattered showers. This is biblical. This is ark-building weather. This is the kind of rain that makes you wonder if you've somehow personally...
I locked myself out of my apartment wearing pajamas, no phone, no shoes, and coffee stains that made it look like I'd lost a fight with a French press. It was 10:47 on a Sunday morning. I know this...
Someone left a book behind. That's how it started. That's how everything starts, really—with someone leaving something behind and someone else deciding what to do with it. It was a Thursday afternoon...
--- Dad texted at 10:47 AM. Just two words: "Can I visit?" I stared at my phone for approximately seven minutes[^1] and then did what any rational almost-thirty-year-old woman does when her father...
I've made approximately 4,847 cups of coffee in my life.[^1] I can tell you the precise water temperature for optimal extraction (203°F), the exact grind size for a pour-over (medium-fine, like sea...
I've remade this cappuccino four times. FOUR TIMES. The Instagram DM arrived at 6:47 AM yesterday: "Hi! I'm Ruby Freshly, food blogger at @ChicagoBitesAndSips. I'll be in the area tomorrow and would...
The smoke alarm started screaming at 2:14 AM. I know the exact time because I checked my phone approximately forty-seven times in the next twenty minutes, as if the numbers would somehow explain why...
I've been practicing latte art for three days. Not regular latte art—I can do hearts and rosettas in my sleep (literally; I once dreamed about pour technique and woke up trying to steam my...