A Lament for the Mocha Cookie Crumble

There are three key things to note before reading this post that will help it make more sense:

1.     I love chocolate

2.     I’m a Taurus and thus resistant to change

3.     I have mad issues about my birthday

Back in 2012 Starbucks revealed one of their new seasonal drinks: the Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino. At the end of the summer the drink was discontinued, to the dismay of many. Chocolate lovers rejoiced when it came back the next year just in time for Frappuccino happy hour!! When the same rigmarole happened for the third time in 2014 I made the silly mistake of assuming that the Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappuccino would always return in early May.

But this year, Starbucks decided to ruin my world and debut a new Frappuccino instead.

To be fair, I haven’t yet tried the new S’mores Frappuccino. Friends have sung its praises but I’ve been slow to convert. I like S’mores, so in theory it should be good, but I suspect it will never replace the Mocha Cookie Crumble in my heart.

Before you write me off as simply being stubborn, let’s talk about the role the Mocha Cookie Crumble has played in my life. This all goes back to my thing about my birthday.

I do not like my birthday. Deep inside of me is a Lily Aldrin wanting to make it a grand holiday to be recognized and respected by all my friends, but the years have convinced me that instead I’m more Penny of Happy Endings, and that my birthday is cursed. I tried celebrating with small groups of friends, I tried vacations, I tried escaping all people I know… it doesn’t really matter what I do. The birthday curse will find a way to ruin the day.

When the Mocha Cookie Crumble appeared in 2012, I had recently moved to a new city and had no one in the area that actually knew it was my birthday. On the eve of, I drank a lot at a book club happy hour, and then woke up feeling not exactly wonderful early in the morning to fly to Houston for work. Work that day involved my least favorite meeting possible. My flight back got delayed because of thunderstorms, so I ended up coming home very late, very tired, and overall done with the day.

But in general I believe in finding the bright side of life, and that day, it was the Mocha Cookie Crumble. I got one the minute I left the airport in Houston, and you know what? It was amazing. It was chocolatey and delicious, and it helped me make it through an otherwise awful meeting.

That was 2012. In 2013, I decided ahead of time to take work off on my birthday so I wasn’t facing the same situation. My birthday that year was a Friday, and it just so happened I was spending that week in the middle of nowhere New Mexico for work. That was possibly one of the worst work trips of my life. I flew in Monday night, got in late since my flight was delayed, again, then drove 2-3 hours to get to where I needed to be. I was feeling worse and worse during the drive, so as soon as I got to my (not very nice) hotel, I went to sleep. I woke up a few hours later and spent the rest of the night horribly ill.

I sucked it up the next day and went to my onsite, feeling weak and dizzy. This was the first of three days of a cranky, obnoxious group of people that complained that I was too pale (I was sick, also I don’t understand why that’s relevant) and my voice sounded bad (again, sick, but this is a large part of why I now have a complex about my voice) and that also blamed me for the fact that the room we were in had no A/C (seriously, how the f*ck was that my fault?!).

Thursday night I drove back to the airport but it was too late for a flight, so I was spending my birthday, my day off, waking up ungodly early to fly back home. All week though, I looked forward to that flight, because I had a layover in Dallas and while there, I got my first Mocha Cookie Crumble of the year and it was AMAZING, as always. The end of the day ended up much better than I expected.

Even last year, despite suffering through the worst of my knee problems at that point and putting up with idiots who think the best way to celebrate your birthday is to be the designated driver (yes guys, I’m still bitter), I had not one but several Mocha Cookie Crumbles that week, and they kept me sane and happy, and also helped me resist the Diet Pepsi temptation a bit longer.

It wasn’t just birthdays either. Every time I had to drive back and forth to Houston for work stuff that killed my spirit, I made sure to at least plan out where exactly on the drive I was getting my Mocha Cookie Crumble. It got me through the random weeks when I wasn’t sleeping. It made the times where I was working two roles with not enough hours in the day bearable.

So when I started stressing out about my birthday and other things even earlier than usual this year, I kept consoling myself that at least the Mocha Cookie Crumble was coming soon. I asked several Starbucks employees when it was officially coming. No one would answer. Well, this week I figured out why when I stopped at Starbucks for iced tea, saw a sign announcing Frappuccino happy hour to start on Friday, and saw NO MENTION of the Mocha Cookie Crumble. Quick internet research proved that the S’mores had replaced it for the year.

I suppose it’s stupid to care so much about something like a particular coffee drink. Sometimes though I need to care about something stupid, so I can downplay the real problems of the moment. I’m not going to lie – after learning there was no Mocha Cookie Crumble this year I spent all week indulging myself with as much Diet Pepsi as I wanted.

But maybe, just maybe, the S’mores Frappuccino is even better. Maybe I’ll try it and it’ll be angels in my mouth. And maybe it won’t, but it won’t matter because something else random will come along and lift my spirits. I like to believe in the possibilities.   

Neek Pride Day

Today is Nerd or Geek Pride Day, which I have also converted into Neek Pride Day. Happy Pride Day to all my dear nerds, geeks, and neeks!

To celebrate, I’m going to visit my brother, a fellow neek if there ever was one. It’s always interesting when I visit my brother. Sometimes we stay in and do totally awesome neek things like have an anime marathon & drinking game, or play magic cards. Sometimes we go out and party, or go be active and play something like ultimate Frisbee (which I fail at). I’m not sure what we’re doing this time. He promised we’d go play laser tag though, so I’m pretty psyched about that.

On the other hand, I am not at all excited about my layover in Chicago. It seems like my flights ALWAYS go through Chicago. I’m getting sick of their food options. And really, how do they not have a Starbucks in the airport?? Don’t get me wrong I normally appreciate local coffee places, but right now I am desperately craving a mocha cookie crumble frappuccino. How dare you deny me, Chicago!! I don’t want to get one after finally landing… that’ll be way too late in the afternoon. I don’t process caffeine the same way I used to. Curse you, Chicago Midway!

That was a rather large digression. I apologize, those cookie crumble frapps are just sooooo good.

Today I actually want to talk more about pride. I’m very happy there is a holiday devoted to nerd/geek/neek pride. Interestingly enough, I used to think I wasn’t the type of person that had a lot of pride.

I’m not sure why really. I certainly wasn’t the opposite either; it’s not like I was ashamed of myself or anything. Pride just wasn’t a word I really connected with myself.

When I was in college, I took a class where we converted a medieval play into a more modern version. Everyone in the class had different jobs to get it set up, and then most of us also acted in the play. I was part of the crew that actually wrote it. Our medieval play was the Castle of Perseverance, which we turned into Fast Times at Morality High. It was pretty awesome, if I do say so myself.

Honestly no idea what I'm doing in this shot.

The Virtues became cheerleaders at the school. The Vices became a gang. I was cast as a Vice, Pride. My friends and I thought it was a bit odd, because again, I don’t identify myself as particularly prideful, but I figured I didn’t really match any of the other roles either. Plus I had a lot of fun with it. We were doing it 80s style, so I threw my hair into crazy curls and got some jellies. I went looking for pictures of us Vices in our full 80s glory, and stumbled upon the website we created for the play. Too bad we don’t have the full video up! You’d be in for a treat.

It really wasn’t until this week that I started to rethink my stance on what it means to have pride. I was reading Divergent (which is super awesome and gets 2 thumbs up from me) and the main character was talking about how she had too much pride. She identified it as the weakness for a group, as their pride kept them acting tough and doing crazy, dangerous things just so they wouldn’t lose face.

Seriously, it was like a light bulb moment. Unbeknownst to myself, I have always been INSANELY prideful. It just blends in so well with some of my other more obvious traits (stubbornness, defiance), that I never realized it was part of the problem.

Take for instance, one of my mother’s favorite examples of an early childhood moment that confirmed I would be a handful. My mother had surgery on her foot, so my grandmother was staying with us for a few weeks to help out. Now I already had my mother trained on how to dress me for kindergarten, but apparently my grandmother missed the memo because she tried to make me wear pants. So what if it was the winter?? I wore fluffy dresses. Everyone wore fluffy dresses. I absolutely refused to put on the pants, and would not go to school in anything except one of my dresses.

Don’t worry, I won the argument. I always thought this situation was just because I wanted to wear a dress, but in reconsidering, the whole reason I wore fluffy dresses (besides liking them) was because I was proud. It was a status symbol in our class. Sure, no one would really care if I went one day without a dress, but I had faaaaaaaaaar too much pride to hold myself to the lower standards of people who dressed according to the weather. I was one of the few girls that sat at the top of the jungle gym damnit, and by God I would not lose face be being relegated to the lower half with the pants wearers!

And this was when I was in kindergarten. Imagine how much worse that pride has been getting without me realizing it.

But pride is not a negative thing. Sometimes it might lead to some extreme reactions, but in general I think it’s important to have pride in yourself.

Now that I think about it, there are several areas where I’ve always had a lot of pride. I’m a proud Steelers fan. I’m proud of my Scottish heritage. And we all know how proud I am of my epic reading abilities.

So let’s all celebrate the fact that what were formerly belittling traits are now cause for pride. Celebrate your neekness! And while you’re at it, celebrate and be proud of all the other things that make you, well, YOU!

I’ll finish with good news as well! I just realized I’m flying through DALLAS on my way there, not Chicago. That’s on the way back. Now as long as Dallas airport has a Starbucks I will be one happy neek!