Thanks A Latte (It never, ever gets old does it?)

So, I'm turning into my mother, but not in the normal ways. In the really weird ways. Like in the way every time I talk to her on the phone she gets lost. She's lived in Southern California her entire life, but for some reason when we get on the phone she gets sucked into a weird vortex and I can time my watch to twenty minutes into the conversation when she'll suddenly stop and say, "Dammit! I'm lost. Get some sort of map up on your computer." and then I help her find her way home. - The other day I got lost in Target while I was on the phone. TARGET. Not like lost where I was afraid I'd never find the exit, but lost in the way where I didn't know where the clothes section was, or how to find the housewares. In Target. That's like my hometown, I should be arrested for getting lost in there.

Or like how she has worn her eyeliner the same way since 1973. The other day someone suggested I try smudging, or smoking, or something weird with my eyeliner, and I had a total meltdown inside, and scream-whispered, "But that's not how I learned to do it in 6th grade?!"

Then yesterday I went out and bought an espresso machine.

Oh yeah. That's right. I'm my mother.

Now, this may not seem that crazy - lots of people have espresso makers you think. And they do. But do lots of people pack a suitcase specifically for bringing along their espresso maker on vacations? Let me repeat: A whole extra suitcase. For her latte machine. Because sometimes coffee shops run out of soy and she doesn't want to be left in a place where she can't have her soy latte because for the love of God, how's she supposed to control her menopause if she can't have her soy?!?!

So, here I am getting lost in Target, looking for the coffee maker section when a staff member kindly directs me over to them. Then stands and helps me decide which one I want (which is weird, because it's Target, not a car dealership, I don't usually get such attention, nor do I want it. Target is for throwing hundreds of dollars of things in my cart, then slowly as I make my way around the store, deciding I don't need this thing, or that, then dumping said item in the wrong spot of the store because I'm not about to go find out where it is really supposed to go, I still have ten thousand different kinds of loofahs to look at, and winding up at the register with a sweater and a spatula I hand to the checker and say, "I'll just have this gum, I don't want these things.")

Anyway, I'm standing there trying to decide which machine to get and the teenage guy is like, "Well, what do you need it for?"

I'm opening my own coffee shop, and this way if I buy one here I can make about two lattes an hour. What do you mean what do I need it for?

"Uh. . . for making lattes?"

"For just you?"

What is he, some sort of latte expert?

"Well, probably just me. But someday I might make them for someone else if you know what I mean *wink*" Why I feel the need to talk to teenage boys like I'm some pervy mom out of an after-school special, I have no idea.

"I do." He's totally un-phased. And because he's so calm I proceed to get less calm, and more talk-y.

"I drink coffee too."

"So you don't really need this?"

"No, I do."

"Ok."

"I need it for the soy milk. Well, and I like lattes, and how fun because I can make like pumpkin ones in fall and stuff, but soy pumpkin."

"That sounds-"

"-Not because I'm like allergic to milk or anti-animal products or anything, I love meat. And cheese. Well, I love cheese more than meat, but you know what I mean. I'm not against them. I'll eat bacon like a motherf*&er."

"What?"

"It's just the soy is the key, because it's good for you. For women. For me, mainly. See, you probably don't want to know this. . . " But of course I don't stop myself from telling him. "But I haven't had my period in a long time. I went off the pill because I don't want to be all dependent on chemicals, but my period has decided to go on a permanent vacation, and so I'm starting to get a little freaked out, because it's been like 9 months, and I'm clearly not delivering a child right now, so it didn't stop because I was pregnant, it just stopped, I don't know, to fuck with me? Anyway, I've been reading that soy is good at balancing your estrogen levels and whatever, so I've been getting soy lattes every morning, but that shit is expensive, so I figure I'd just make my own, and help my hormones check themselves before they wreck themselves, and so I need this machine really for my womb. This machine is for my womb."

**stunned silence**

**equally stunned silence from myself** Sometimes a time machine would help me out in life soooooo much.

"Well," the kid said reaching for a box. "This one might be womb-worthy."

Awwwwww! I LOVE HIM.

So I bought it, and told him I'd make him one anytime. But of course he was already running into the back room where I'm not allowed to go, before I could get the whole offer out.

So, here I am. Latte machine in hand. Slowly, but surely morphing into my mother.

There are worse things to be. That's for sure. I just wish I could have gotten her less crazy traits, but oh well. Maybe those will come when I get more of this soy into my system.