I’ve become so accustomed to seeing the same faces over and over again at work and in my tiny little town that I found myself buzzing from the energy of seeing so many different people come and go from the coffee shop today. I stopped into Sarah Carmody Photography to pick up an art print I won at the Maplewood Arts Walk a few months ago, where I had a good conversation about photography and music. My trip to the gallery was followed by a St. Louis Wine Club wine tasting at St. Louis Wine Cellars with Angela Ortmann of StL Wine Girl.

So much civilization in one day! I feel like the kid in The Nutcracker who falls asleep to exaggerated dreams of the big holiday party  hosted by her family that night…I’m sitting here in my eerily quiet house in the middle of the snowy woods of rural Missouri. My mind is slow, yawns bring sleepy tears to my eyes, and the day spent in “the city” seems no more real than dancing toy soldiers or life-sized rat kings.

The coffee shop is lovely, with refreshingly happy and down to earth staff (no snobbish yuppy baristas here). There is a quirky turquoise mural of a tree with white flowers blossoming on the wall, and mismatched (but coordinated) upholstery covers high-backed chairs.

The pear and brie sandwich I had for lunch was lovely (fair warning though – it was onion heavy, though the onions were raw and easily removable). The iced mocha wasn’t bad either. Foundation Grounds gets brownie points for using biodegradable plastic cups, made from corn.

In the cold case, I found Kambucha, organic juices, Honest Tea, and Stonyfield Farm yogurt – a fairly forward-thinking collection of foods and drinks for this part of the country.

To top off my visit to Foundation Grounds, I overheard someone speaking Mandarin Chinese, and turned to find a husband and wife speaking Chinese to one another. The husband, a St. Louis-born acupuncturist and his wife had just moved back to St. Louis three days ago from years in Seattle and Asia.

His Chinese was far more fluent than my own (embarrassingly rusty) Chinese is, but it was so uplifting to meet another person who has moved back “home” to this part of the country after seeing the world in hopes of contributing something to the communities we grew up in.

Today’s coffee shop encounter is a reminder that when things happen (like servers crashing), there’s often something better in store. It’s been a rough last week for me, but with my hope and optimism restored, I’m looking forward to what the rest of this week holds.