The Hill at Oso Lago.

Sometimes you do it.  You know you shouldn’t, but you do it anyways.  You get attached to a thing… an inanimate object… something silly or small or that gives you comfort. It could be because you use it all the time, or that someone gave it to you, or it could just be some quirky, weird, emotional thing… regardless of all that, you’re attached to it.

 

Then the day comes… that attached object goes missing, gets broke, or just plain wears out.  C’mon, don’t look at me like that… you know you’ve got something like it in your life. For me though… it was my mug.  My mom gave me the mug. She had received it as some promotional gift somewhere at a truck show or something. She never used it.  I was in need of something to carry my coffee while I traveled.

 

Most of the travel mugs are poorly shaped and made to just fit into a standard “cup holder” in a car.  Which, you know, seems nice and all, but usually that small, can sized slot doesn’t have the height clearance for the cups.  It’s really a perfect example of disharmony in the world.  But I found harmony in my travel mug.  It was a fat-bottomed mug (hmmm… isn’t there a “Queen” song something like that?). You know the kind, the kind that look like the space capsule from the Apollo space program?  That mug served me well, for years… while traveling the country in a truck and while steering my desk at my current job.

Then one day, I noticed that I would periodically find a spot of coffee left where Mr. Mug had just been sitting.  I thought that it must be because Amy had set the bottom in some coffee on the counter and it had soaked into the sure-grip surface, or that, in my excitement to touch that sweet caffeinated nectar that I had let a drop escape. I knew deep down that neither were the case.  It was like watching your elderly-grandpa-like neighbor, who used to go to the mailbox religiously, begin to falter, get the mail later, and then sometime not at all for a few days.  It was painful… Mr. Mug was dying.

 

Then came the fateful guardrail crash.  The crash had thrown everything around in the van, but Mr. Mug did his job.  He held that coffee so it didn’t spill.  In fact, after I limped the van home, I came back to the house and finished my coffee. I was sore, but me and Mr. Mug had pulled through.  Amy had filled up Mr. Mug with a fresh batch and set it down on my table… I took a drink… and there, on my table… was a ring of coffee. I dared to hope I was wrong. I asked Amy… “Did you set this in coffee on the counter?”  I knew the answer before she spoke it… “Well, did you spill coffee while filling it???”  Again, I knew the answer before it was said… no. I went to take a drink and then… the dribble… from the bottom.  Mr. Mug’s day had come.  He had died.

 

It was a sad day.  We I had a brief moment of silence and we ceremoniously put him to rest.

 

It was hard to do, but I persisted.

 

Because of Mr. Mug’s lasting impact, I began to look for another mug.  I searched high and low. Sure, I had skinny-bottomed mugs, and tall mugs and plastic mugs and stainless steel mugs… but none of them were stable. None were skid-free.

 

So I did what you would do… what anyone would do.  I began to search the internet for a replacement.   But can you really find a replacement for something like Mr. Mug?  He was free, fat-bottomed, and stable… honestly, those are three characteristics I look for in friends, and I had just stumbled onto them with Mr. Mug.

Google Shopping, Ebay, Amazon.com… Skinny mugs abound.  Fat bottom mugs are hard to find… cheap (sniff, not free) fat-bottom mugs just don’t exist. I looked and looked… but I couldn’t find a replacement that appealed to me. I couldn’t pull the trigger.
The desperation was palatable.  Amy saw the sadness and the gloom the next morning when she handed me my coffee in a skinny, plastic, unstable, so-called travel mug.  I took it to the truck, I looked at the dash where Mr. Mug usually sat… it’s deceivingly slippery surface that appeared flat… but only appeared that way.  I set the skinny-bottom mug there and climbed in to my truck. (It’s a truck, you have to climb in… you fall into cars) I dare not trust Mr. tiny-hiney to hold my coffee on that oh-so-deceptive slippery surface. I tucked it onto my seat, to my right and wedged it between my lunch bag.  That’s not very comfortable, or stable… in fact, it’s probably illegal in New York City or something. Oh well, I guess I was going to have to make due.

 

When I came home from work with little ms. Tiny Hiney, Amy showed me nice, stainless steel, fat-bottomed, stable mug from Cabela’s.  But ouch… it was $20.00 or so.  I just couldn’t do it. I guess I was just going to have to live a life of precariously balanced, skinny-bottomed-mug’s of coffee in transit as I traveled… I’d probably die in a fiery crash some day because of it… but I guess it was meant to be.

 

So, I had been in the routine for a week and a half now and I just felt out of sorts.  I came home today and my wife gave me a gift.  It was wrapped in nice paper, and taped with computer printer labels, because obviously we had run out of transparent tape. (note to self, hide all transparent tape from Chloe, she likes to tape her nose, hands and other body parts just for fun). I opened it up and what did I find?  A new, stainless steel, fat-bottomed, stable, sure-grip mug.
Yes, it’s shiny and pricey, but let’s face it… that’s the cost of stability these days.
I swear I’m not going to get attached to him.

 

Do you want to help me name him???