Ugh, With This Again.

Hold onto your butts, pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and get ready for the most cliched and redundant read of the year, but this at least includes a coffee review.  I’ve repeatedly seen “Happy Anniversary of this should just take two weeks” and “It’s been one year since normal” tweets on my feed since the start of this month.  All the bread that was made, the lack of toilet paper, people getting into plants, mask fights, zoom meetings, do not seem like a year old memory because we are still living it.  There’s more toilet paper now but where I live, there are still limits on it and other household supplies.  The biggest topic running around this month is, “What was the last normal thing you did before the country shut down?”

For me, the day before lockdown was announced, I had gotten my new Nintendo Switch in the mail (waiting for a limited edition design was beneficial as later models in most game consoles have bugs fixed such as the infamous roaming controller or hard crashing for no reason) and had a coffee date with my friend from junior high.  I headed that afternoon to Saugus, Ca to meet up with my friend, see her new kitten, and check out a place for coffee she had seen not far from her house over in Santa Clarita.  We stopped at a grocery store in the same parking lot to pick up a couple things for something she was doing later that night but the atmosphere was already eerie.  The shop was out of canned goods and bottled water and crowd control lines were confusing.  With hands empty, we left and went to get coffee.

Well, I got coffee, she doesn't drink it but it was a chance to hang out that wouldn’t end in me stealing her new baby kitty.  Underground Coffeehouse had no line to order but most of the plush indoor chairs were taken up by single diners using the upscale styled café as their own personal Starbucks.  It was overcast and a tad cold outside so no one else was around when we opted to dine outdoors.  Little did we know that would be the only option to most of America for public eating for the next 365+ days.  The staff were young and nice, prices decent, they are eco conscience, all while advocating to bring attention to and help to the fight against human trafficking.  My order was a repeat of my favorite can’t-make-at-home drink, a lavender latte (this could change as of this week when I learned of a friend’s new rental house having a lush lavender bush, citrus, and herbs that I can help myself to).  Outside, we chatted about the curious flu in the news, my excitement to play with my Switch, family life, and looking forward to our next coffee discovery, which still hasn’t happened and it’s been a year since seeing her now.  The coffee was smooth, airy, lightly roasted, with the lavender flavor on top and gone by the time I got to the bottom of the cup.  I wasn’t disappointed or surprised as I’ve said in previous blogs that Barclay’s (in Northridge) lavender latte keeps the flavor consistent and thorough unlike any other I’ve tried.  A small drizzle came and went during our time sitting out there but we didn’t move, we enjoyed it.  It would be appreciated in a new light over the next few weeks, turned to months, turned to over a year and still going.

That day, I went home and got my game console set up.  In a few days, a game I had been anticipating for over a year and a half since it’s announcement would be released and I’d requested the weekend off work so I’d have ample time to play.  Come the weekend, I was told that I’d get my PTO but to hang by the phone because the store would be closing and we would have to await further instruction as to when we could open again.  It wasn’t until July when our store did their new Covid training for a couple of days in preparation for a July 4th opening but as Covid numbers fluctuated, our actual limited capacity opening date became September/October.  Not only did I have plenty of downtime to play, but so did the world, leading to the Switch and Switch Lite systems selling out globally, but the game I wanted to play, became the highest selling game of 2020 and placing it at number 15 in the list of highest selling games of all time.  For perspective, the game hit the number 15 slot before being on the market for a year, with games above it being classics like Pac-Man, Tetris, and Minecraft which have each been out for decades.  On the bright side, I now had tons of people to play the game with as we all sat at home.  Politics, current events, and my own family’s health issues caused me great panic.  Half of my immediate family spent time in hospitals for various non-Covid reasons, but it was difficult to hear them having to be all alone while going through their crisis/surgeries.  The helpless feeling got me to connect with my therapist who was so integral in keeping my head up as well as connecting with my friends online, some old and some new, to discuss the challenges the United States was facing.  Another help was switching to half caff coffee.

Out of the horribleness of 2020, there were some positives.  I read a couple statistics that stated that only one child had died due to the flu last year versus in previous years the number of children dying was upwards of 200 annually.  Pet adoptions reached shelter clearing levels as people looked for companionship while staying home.  Personally, along with all the different ways I’ve connected to old friends and made a lot of new friends, I’ve gotten myself on to the most regulated schedule in ages, including having coffee phone dates with my dad and weekly zoom or phone meetings with friends.  The new normal, as everyone totes, has given me an appreciation for one’s ability to adapt.  Some just want to go back to exactly what they were doing in 2019.  I haven’t had a cold or flu in over a year and I had all of Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend off.  I could learn to love the new normal for it’s positives and I’m thinking I may not go back to the old boilerplate.  

[Note: Undergrounds has since moved location to across the street from when I visited in March 2020]

The outdoor dining area was huge and had a firepit.

There is additional seating to the left of this area shown.