Just For Fun!

My blogger friend Pat Denino was intrigued by a comment I left her about how I track the days by my coffee cups. Saying she'd like to see them all lined up, I decided why not? I've been collecting coffee mugs forever, each one a memory of someplace I've been (or in one case, wish I'd been). It's pretty easy to get into the habit of grabbing the same cup every morning, and once I was living alone, the mugs just weren't getting rotated. So I decided to give each its day and not deviate from that. I found it also helped me keep track of the days of the week once I didn't have a job or school helping. But I had more than 7 mugs in the cupboard - what to do? I decided Tuesday and Thursday would be days for choosing between the leftovers, keep it from being too routine. I like this system!

So let me tell you about my mugs, starting with the front row. The Fender mug is from my days opening shipments at a music store. Companies often threw in promotional items like t-shirts and mugs, and I often got first dibs. It's a nice big cup perfect for lingering on Sunday mornings. Next is my heron mug, made by a local artist. I found it the year a real heron was often hanging out where I took my walks, staring me down. I eventually took it as a sign and that he was watching over me. The mug reminds me of that year and gets my week off to a good start. The dark mug next to it has "Chicago" written in red on it. My late husband was taking lots of business trips that year, one's I couldn't go on, and he often brought me back t-shirts but sometimes nothing at all because he only saw the inside of airports and offices. I gave me a hard time about that - SURELY you could find SOMETHING...  And so on the next trip he had a connecting flight in Chicago and picked up this mug in the airport. Next is another big mug that I bought the year I spent a week in Jackson Hole, WY attending quilt workshops and sightseeing. I talked the bargain motel manager into a coffee maker for my room but we both failed to remember I'd need something to drink out of. I needed a souvenir anyway, although I was hoping to find something a bit smaller. Huge mugs were all the rage that year. Finally, that's a Starbuck's coffee cup on the end, the one with the Hopper painting. My husband had received it as a gag gift where he worked - yes, he drank a LOT of coffee. So now that he is gone, it brings me a little closer to him when I use it.

Now for those extras I choose from on Tuesday and Thursday. On either end of the back row are mugs from the Klickitat Pottery in White Salmon, WA. They take part in the local arts and crafts fair here and they always have something looking different from the rest. The darker mug between them is probably the oldest one of the bunch, bought when we lived in Spokane, WA back in the 1970's and it looks it! The light one is a souvenir from a motorcycle vacation to Canada, although it was bought before we crossed the border. We'd stopped for lunch at The Cross River Cafe in Schroeder, MN and I couldn't resist one of their mugs - my college roommate's last name was Schroeder! It traveled with us the whole way around Lake Superior, arriving home in one piece.

So there you have it, the story of my coffee mugs. And oh - it's the first day of spring. Thought I'd show you what that looked like in norther Idaho today - the view out my window this afternoon.