I dreamed last night that I produced a biopic on Stephen Hawking starring Richard Kind. In the closing scene, Hawking got out of his wheelchair, crawled across the floor to a cardboard box, and sorted diapers in the box with his mother.

I really need this cup of coffee.

This cup is to my left. To my right is my woman lounging with me on the couch as we watch the year end.

The last cup of 2010. It just may be the best cup of the year.

This cup has a big job, and I’m not sure it is up to the task. This cup has to help me get motivated to walk to work today. Since I live 1.5 miles from work, I have no good excuse to drive there. Also, since I am about twenty pounds heavier than I’d like to be, I have no good excuse not to exercise. Yet I drive most every day like a schmuck. So I decided last night that I will walk to work this morning, and it’s up to that cup of coffee to get me awake and motivated.

When I grabbed my hoodie to leave the house Cooper asked, “Are you going to work, Daddy?” It is 6:15 PM, and I think Cooper thinks that’s what time I go to “work.” He’s not entirely wrong–I get some of my best writing done at Starbucks after dinner.

A sentence may sound great in the mind, but fails on paper. So it gets edited and re-worked until it begins to move. The following sentence captures its momentum and pushes the thought further. Soon, an entire paragraph starts to form organically on the page. And that’s when my body decides it needs a cup of coffee.

The Plaza is across the street from the hotel my parents stay at when they visit. It’s usually where we meet for breakfast the day they head back to Atlanta so that they can get on the road in the morning.

I intended to drink this cup with Anne Marie at the Starbucks on Main and Westchester, but there was no place to sit. As we walked in, though, a woman who was walking out at the same time told Anne Marie, “If that’s your man, you ought to slap him.” Apparently, Anne Marie held the door open for that woman, but I just walked in with callous disregard for the other woman. I thought Anne Marie was holding the door open for me, since I was carrying my laptop and my iPad. Apparently, the crime for walking into Starbucks with a laptop and an iPad and an unawareness that someone wanted to walk out of the store as I walked in is a physical altercation. But whatever.

This cup serves two purposes, as do most of the cups I drink at work. The first is to put something in my stomach. I’m feeling a little hungry, but I don’t want to eat a full meal right now since I am planning to eat lunch with my parents and kid in about an hour.

The second is to give me a little break from my writing. I’ve been synthesizing fundamentalist-inspired film reviews for the past hour, and it was time to stretch and refresh. I can only write about how inerrant reads of the Bible inform content-centered reads of films for so long.

Anne Marie has a staff meeting on Wednesday mornings. So Wednesdays are my “early” days when I watch Cooper while she is out. As I drink today’s first cup, I’m watching Cooper play with the packing material that came with his Christmas gifts.

My parents will come to the house later this morning, and then I’ll leave to finish the first draft of the first section of the chapter I’ve been working on. That’s the plan, anyway.

This cup rests next to my laptop, which is open and ready for typing on. It is after 3:30, and I have not yet begun to write today.

I’ve spent much of the day watching Cooper decide he doesn’t need to mind his grandparents or me. It seems every effort to get Cooper to do something normal–like put on his shoes, or sit still–has been a battle. I’m about Cooper-ed out for the day. I’m Coop-pooped. Time to sit, sip on my skinny hazelnut latte, and write.