Aliya S. King

Good morning my Dear Readers!

On Monday, I posted about my quest to find a place where everybody knows your name. And I talked about Omar’s, the Cuban restaurant that I want to be my special place.

I have an update. I was thinking maybe I should wait until my weekly wrap-up post. But I can’t. Must share now.

Woke up today to a blizzard. Ugh. Praying TheOtherGirl’s daycare would still be open. (TheOtherGirl is too long to type. She will forever henceforth be known as Tog. Her big sister will be TG. Please make a note of it).

Anyway, I had to drive two miles an hour to work, stopped twice to clean ice of my windshield. Suffice it to say, when I pulled up to Omar’s, I wasn’t thinking about what he may or may not say to me. I just wanted my coffee. Actually, I had decided I was going to have a cappucino instead. I saw him make one for a customer yesterday and it looked awesome. He grated cinnamon on top. By hand. With a grater. Take that Starbucks!

So I go in, walk up to the counter. Omar has his back to me. He turns around and says:

“Coffee?”

I looked around like, oh snap? Is he talking to me?

“Um, no. Cappucino today.”

“Cappucino?”

“Yes.”

He turned around, started making my cappucino. I’m all giddy with excitement. Omar spoke to me! Yay! I’m a regular. That’s right. I’m here, at Omar’s, like I am every day. Chillin’ with the locals.

Then, tragedy strikes.

Omar reaches inside his mini-fridge and takes out a container of whip cream and starts to shake it.

Dear readers, whipped cream is not my friend. I love the taste. Who doesn’t love whipped cream? But it is way too fattening. Take a look at the difference in calories and fat between a Starbucks coffee with whip and without. Here’s my favorite starbucks drink with milk and whipped cream:

Thirteen grams of fat! I could have a cookie for that! Three hundred and thirty calories? That’s my caloric budget for lunch!

But if I have soy milk and no whip…

Much better. Only one problem. Omar’s ain’t Starbucks. And he doesn’t care that I’m trying to keep my weight in check.

How could I possibly interrupt Omar while he was preparing my drink. How could I possibly say, “um, no whip on that.” This is NOT Starbucks. This is NOT how I would endear myself to Omar! He would hate me forever. I’d be outed as one of those people. Not someone who belongs at Omar’s.

“‘Scuse me,” I said. “No whipped cream please.”

Omar looked at me with serious attitude, holding the container upside down in the air. The he rolled his eyes just the tiniest bit and threw it back in the refrigerator.

“Cinnamon?” he asked. I know he was thinking: or is that too fattening you little gringa…

“Yes, please.”

Omar shook on cinnamon, put on that flat top lid that I despise. And that was it.

I’ve ruined my chances with Omar. I just know it. I’ve been exposed for the Buppy I really am. Wait til he finds out that I have to chew five Lactaid pills every morning before I drink his coffee because I’m lactose intolerant and I know he doesn’t have soy milk up in there. Wait til he finds out that I fantasize about bringing him a container of soy milk each Monday so he doesn’t have to use whole milk. Wait til he finds out that I once looked closely at the container of milk he uses and was horrified to see that A. It wasn’t organic milk. B. It wasn’t 2% milk and C. I did not recognize the brand name.

Sigh.

Maybe I’ll just go back to Starbucks.

Dear Readers, I’ll be back with my real post in an hour. So check back. Just wanted to give an Omar update…

This entry was posted on January 28, 2009 at 9:39 am and is filed under Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.