Coffee, clean, repeat.

Sipping mediocre coffee on a Sunday morning from a mug my cousin unexpectedly gave me for my birthday. The mug reads, "Uff Da!", a favorite phrase among Midwesterners that simultaneously embodies humor and foreboding with its use.

"The cows got out of the pastures again? Uff da! That's the third time this summer."

We watch the dogs wrestle around. And I'll begin cleaning when I finish writing.

These mundane times together are some of my favorites. Perhaps they are not the entire meat of what constitutes a life, but stacked together after years they could be. To this day, every time someone opens a Diet Coke, I think of my mother who poured herself a can over ice every Saturday as she prepared her Rainbow-brand vaccum for cleaning the old wooden floors.

Not so different, she and I.

There is something to be found in these quiet, routine mornings, a peaceful monotony I can draw from when life envelopes me like a rickety wooden roller coaster.