Second Thoughts @Second6Thoughts

You have to intentionally seek joy every day or the pressure of being an adult will suck the life out of you.

Our manager's big idea was a Sunday hash brown bar. The sneeze guard he ordered showed up with a sticker on it, and I was the one who assembled it. First customer through, a man in a seed cap, walked up and bent over the home fries with his whole face. He took a long breath in like he was sampling wine and said "just checking they're fresh." Then he stood up into the glass and bonked his forehead on it. I wiped that print off 11 times before we closed. I was loud about it too. The health inspector came Tuesday for something unrelated, and I made her listen. She told me the guard wasn't really invented for sneezes. A man named Johnny Garneau ran a smorgasbord in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, and filed his patent on March 10, 1959. He was a germaphobe who couldn't stand watching customers lean in to smell the food. So I had it backwards. I figured nobody sneezes on potatoes at 8 in the morning, so the guard was just a prop. But the glass had been designed around where people put their faces. It sits where the face goes, and its height and distance come from how tall customers are and how close they lean. Mine had sat 3 inches too far back until the man's forehead showed me. The "sneeze" in the name is the part that sounds polite. The real job is stopping grown adults from inhaling the buffet. I moved the panel forward that night. The forehead smear sits at about 5'10" on the glass, and I still haven't cleaned it all the way off.

My future self better appreciate all these late nights.

Milkshake machine's dead again, so I'm in no mood to hear that books are the only place somebody explains why a person did what they did, and real life leaves you guessing. Fine. Here's the coffee. When I was 17 and new, a man took booth 6 every Thursday at 7. He ordered eggs over medium and 2 coffees. The second cup sat across from him with cream and 2 sugars in it, and he never touched it. I decided he was strange. Then I decided he was cheap, because he tipped $2 on a $9 check and made us burn a whole cup. I told the cook about him like I knew things. One Thursday I got slammed, and I reached over to clear the cold cup. He caught my wrist. Not hard. He said, "She's not done." I apologized so fast I knocked the creamer over. A few weeks later it was dead between lunch and dinner, and I was refilling ketchups when he said, out of nowhere, that his wife took 45 minutes on her first cup every morning for 40 years. He never once finished before her. So he sits the same length of time, and the coffee keeps her place. Nobody had explained that to me. I'd written 3 different versions of that man in my head, and every one of them was mean and every one of them was wrong. He stopped coming in March. I still glance at booth 6 at 7 on Thursdays, and I still don't know her name.

i think the reason some of us read this much is that a book is the only place where somebody finally explains what a person was thinking and why they did it. real life never does that. you just have to guess forever

The milkshake machine was down again and I was 11 hours into a double when a girl in booth 6 held her phone up to film her boyfriend feeding her a bite of pancake. "Cute couple," she told the camera. They did 3 takes. The syrup went cold. I topped off their coffee twice and neither of them looked at me, or at each other, just the screen. Down at the counter sat the old pair who come Tuesdays at 7:40. He gets 2 eggs over medium. She gets rye toast, and the kitchen always sends it with the crusts on, because the kitchen is not me. She hates crusts. He never says a word about it. He just slides her plate over without looking up from the paper, tears the crusts off one strip at a time, eats them himself, and slides the plate back. She keeps right on telling me about her tomatoes. I stood there with the coffee pot and a face on me, and it hit me that I'd watched him do this maybe 30 Tuesdays and never once filed it under cute. Nobody was filming. He wasn't doing it for anybody. I don't think he knew it was something you could do on purpose. Booth 6 left $2 on a $31 check. The old man left his usual, and the napkin was folded over a little pile of crusts, like I might want them.

The new owner wants a chalkboard by the register that says "Cutest Couple of the Month." Cute. I ran a griddle for 40 years, and I can tell you what cute costs. Booth 4, Sundays after church, a pair in their 70s. Walt and Dolores. Short stack, and an extra plate every week. I figured it was thrift. One Sunday I came out with the syrup he'd forgotten. He was cutting her half of the stack into squares, small as dice. Then he slid his plate in front of her while she watched the trucks pull out of the lot, like it was a card trick. Her hands had quit on her. She knew he knew. She said "thank you, Walt" to the window, never to him, and he said "don't mention it" like he'd passed her a napkin. That was when it turned over for me. I'd been calling it cute for two years, and cute was only the part that showed. The real work was those squares, every Sunday, done fast enough that she'd never have to watch him do it. He came in alone the week after the first hard frost. Sat in booth 4 and ordered a short stack and two plates. I didn't ask. I cut her half into squares at the pass before I sent it out, which is not in any cook's job description. I never rang up the second plate. The owner can put that on his chalkboard.

everything feels better when it’s just us..

Drove 90 miles with a trailer of cull cows, hit town at 6, and stood in a shop called The Daily Grind paying $5.75 for a coffee I could make at home for a dime. I had something ugly ready to say about it. The girl behind the counter was maybe 22. Before I got a word out, she pulled a shot, tasted it, made a face, and dumped it. I asked what time she got in. She said 4:15, and she'd already thrown out 6 shots. Seems the grinder drifts. Weather changes, the beans change, and by the time the oil field crews line up at 5:30 she's got to have it dialed back in by hand, by taste, every morning, or the whole day's coffee runs sour or weak. Nobody in line sees it. They just see a number on the screen. That stopped me, because it's exactly what I do every morning walking a pasture fence line before anybody's up. Nobody pays you for the 40 mornings it holds. They only notice the one it doesn't. So yeah, the name is accurate. A grind is what you call the part that's the same thing every day, and the part that keeps everything else good enough to sell. I put a five in her jar on top of the $5.75. The cows brought 8 cents under what I'd figured that afternoon, and hers was the only job I watched all day that came out right.

Earth @earthcurated

4 hours ago

There’s something painfully accurate about a coffee shop called “The Daily Grind”.

4 18 177 10K 9

Coffee's weak and my knees say snow's coming, but sure, nobody's a horseman till he's been thrown. Mine was a loaded trailer on black ice, down a grade in southern West Virginia, my 2nd winter driving. 2 in the morning, doing maybe 30, and I saw the glitter on the road and did what every nerve in me wanted. I stood on the brake pedal. The trailer swung up past my mirror like a gate closing, and I watched my own taillights through the side window. Then came a long, quiet second. Engine ticking, my foot flat to the floor, and the whole rig sliding sideways down the mountain like it had all night. An old driver somewhere behind me came over the CB, calm as a man ordering pie. "Get your foot off it, son. Let her roll." I lifted. The tires caught, and that trailer swung in behind the tractor like a dog called to heel. I coasted into a gravel pull-off and sat there until my hands quit shaking. Locked wheels don't grip and they don't steer. They just slide. Letting off gives the rubber something to hold. I'd read that in the manual, and the manual never got my foot to do it. My foot learned it because it had been wrong in the dark with 40,000 pounds behind it. I've ridden with young drivers since who never once slid. Neat logbooks, careful, only ever dry pavement. I worry about them more than the ones with a bent-fender story. I still check my hands on the wheel every first frost, and they still remember before I do.

Bear Grylls OBE @BearGrylls

11 hours ago

You can't become a horseman until you've fallen off a horse.

31 36 422 31K 22

the economy is so bad you might as well follow your dreams and see what happens

There’s something about walking through fallen leaves that makes adults briefly forget they’re supposed to be adults.

Fall in Montreal Canada 🇨🇦

keyboard_arrow_left Previous keyboard_arrow_right Next

Sailor sat in my chair once holding his 7-month-old like a carton of eggs. I thought of him reading that the Lincoln came home after a record 265 days at sea, with new dads meeting their babies. It was the morning after his ship got in. He wanted a trim before dinner with the in-laws. My shoulder was barking, I was short with him, and I said so. He didn't care. The baby screamed every time he moved his arm. "He looks at me like I'm the mailman," he said. He'd watched the kid learn to sit up on a phone that dropped out halfway through. He'd missed the rolling over entirely. I put the cape on, baby and all, and started working up lather in the mug. The brush went round and round, and the kid stopped screaming. He watched that foam like it was television. Then he laughed, and the father laughed, and I kept stirring way past the point where the soap was ready. That's when I understood what 265 days is. Nobody comes home to a baby. He comes home to a stranger with his own face, and the two of them have to start from nothing. The AP says the Lincoln families got occasional email and rare WhatsApp calls. That's not much to build a father on. The first thing those two ever shared was my shaving mug. I still have it on the shelf, and the shoulder still hurts.

Kalshi @Kalshi

10 hours ago

JUST IN: 67 sailors came home to new babies as USS Abraham Lincoln returns to San Diego after 265 days

250 253 8K 793K 514

Second Avenue, 3 a.m., a Tuesday in the late 90s. I hear wet noises from the back seat, tilt the mirror up and bark, "This is a cab, not a motel." I was 14 hours into a double. A produce truck had sat in the middle of 23rd for 20 minutes with its hazards on, like that fixes anything. I had no patience left and I spent it on the first people who gave me an excuse. The man in back was maybe 75, in a suit that had been bought for a bigger man. He didn't even look embarrassed. He said, "Señora, forgive us. Friday they told us she wasn't leaving that building." Then I really looked. She had a coat over hospital pajamas and a plastic bracelet still on her wrist. A paper bag with her shoes in it sat on her lap. She was holding his face with both hands like she was checking a melon for bruises. I had spent 30 seconds being offended by two people who had just gotten each other back. I put the mirror down. I didn't say sorry, I'm not built for it. I took Second all the way up and caught every green from 34th to 60th. That does not happen, I have driven that street for decades. I left the radio off. The fare was $14. He handed me a 20 and a peppermint from his jacket pocket, and told me to keep both. The wrapper is still tucked in my visor.

The workout was scheduled for 6:00 p.m., right there on the calendar between “pick up dry cleaning” and “call Mom.” At 5:47, the sink was full. The kid needed help finding a library book. Somebody had sent an email marked URGENT, which usually meant it could have waited until Tuesday. The gym bag sat by the door like a small black accusation. By 6:12, the hour was gone. That’s how people quit. Not because they’re lazy. Because they made a deal with time, and time is a crooked little landlord. It takes the rent, raises it anyway, then leaves a note saying you should’ve planned better. The old idea was that exercise had to happen in one respectable block: sneakers on, water bottle filled, forty-five clean minutes with no interruptions. Anything less felt like cheating. Three trips up the stairs? Doesn’t count. A ten-minute walk around the building after lunch? Nice try. Squats while the coffee reheats? Please. But the body is not a courtroom. It doesn’t bang a gavel because you only had seven minutes. The current guidance is simpler than the guilt machine makes it sound: move more, sit less, and let the minutes add up. A brisk walk to the mailbox. Taking the far parking space even when it’s raining. Five minutes of stairs while the pasta water boils. Two songs in the kitchen, dancing badly enough that the dog leaves the room. None of it looks impressive from across the street. That may be the point. Big workouts are fine if you love them and your life makes room. But for plenty of people, the perfect daily hour is like a clean white shirt you keep saving for the right occasion. It stays in the closet while you go out wearing whatever fits. Small movement has a better chance of surviving the actual day: the meetings, the buses, the tired knees, the bills on the counter, the strange little emergencies that multiply after 4 p.m. It asks less permission. It doesn’t need a special identity or a fresh Monday. So leave the shoes by the door if that helps. But don’t let them become a pair of tiny judges. Walk around the block. Do wall pushups while the microwave hums. Carry the groceries in two trips instead of one, unless you’re trying to prove something to your lower back. At night, the calendar may still show that blank square at 6:00 p.m. Let it. The day has other places to keep score: the stairs, the sidewalk, the kitchen floor, your breathing settling down while the coffee goes cold.

I must say I expected an even better result 😋 If you wanna check yours:

The treadmill my doctor talked me into lasted 11 days before it became a coat rack. He wanted 30 straight minutes, every day. I have a shoulder that complains at 6 a.m. and a patience that quits by 6:05. My niece found this hilarious. She's the type who counts things. Last spring she strapped a tracker on my wrist for two weeks, mostly so she could tell me I was a slug. She came back with the chart on her phone and sat at my kitchen table with that look. I braced for it. Instead she turned the screen around. All day long there were little spikes. Me hauling the laundry basket up the cellar stairs. Me trotting after the dog when he got into the Hendersons' trash. Me dragging the barrel down the driveway before the truck came. "Uncle Gus, you're not sitting around," she said. I told her that was housework, not exercise. She said the heart doesn't know the difference. Turns out some people with actual degrees looked at this. They put trackers on about 25,000 people in Britain who swore they never exercised. The ones who got 3 bursts a day of hard moving, 1 or 2 minutes each, had roughly 38% to 40% lower risk of dying over the following 7 years or so. It's observational, so nobody's promising miracles. But it was the first time anybody had told me the short stuff counted. Forty-four years I never once had a free half hour at 6 a.m. I had a floor to sweep, a door to get, and a 9-year-old on a booster board who wouldn't hold still. Nobody ever called that a workout. The treadmill's still in the spare room. The coats seem happy with it.

A kid sat down in my chair with a paperback of Moby-Dick and a face like a wet Tuesday. Summer reading. He said everybody calls it a classic, so if he can't stand it, he figures he's the problem. My shoulder was acting up. The chain place by the highway had also taken two of my Saturday regulars with a coupon. I was in no mood to defend literature. I took the book out of his hands anyway. The bookmark sat at page 88. I told him I bought the same edition in 1978 because a fella at the VFW said a man isn't educated without it. I quit at page 90 and kept it on the shelf over the sink for 40 years so customers would think I was deep. The kid laughed for the first time all haircut. "So it's not just me." "It's you and a lot of men with nice shelves," I said. Then it clicked, standing there with the comb. Nobody had ever told me I was allowed to put it down. A book gets called a classic, people hand it down because it's the safe thing to say, and every year some teacher assigns it. After that, not liking it feels like a flaw in the reader. Forty years I'd been quietly lying to guys who were probably lying right back. His mother picked him up at 4:15. He had a Louis L'Amour I'd lent him under his arm, and he read all of it by Thursday. I took mine down off the shelf that night. It props up the short leg on the waiting chair now, and it's done honest work there ever since.

Lois Not Louise✨ @Loi_cee

a day ago

Because a book is a classic doesn't make it a great book. And no, not everyone will automatically enjoy reading it.

9 2 22 719 0