Continuing on the theme of freelance cliche: I am working on my laptop in a coffee shop. Yes, I am one of the annoying Mac users with hipster glasses making my mobile lifestyle work for me. (However, I am not at a chain. Yay, independents! And if it makes you feel better, I just dropped off my car and am using my science articles to deaden the fear that I need a new clutch.) Usually I adore working in coffee shops, as long as no one annoying is sitting near me. And today, I have the young man beside me and there is good music playing.
So what’s my problem?
1. The two-year-old at the next table is playing peek-a-boo with me and I can’t get a goddamned thing done. She’s really cute.
2. I can’t read phrases such as “whole mount in situ hybridization” out loud to check its hyphenation (or lack thereof).
3. This strange feeling of well-being makes me forget to curse a lot, and then you guys are going to get bored and read some other miserable motherfucker’s blog.
Where do you work?
Fangs and Clause 
I’ve only ever written at home. I do envy the hipsters and aspire to become one someday. The problem I have is my hatred for all things coffee—taste, smell, giant menu of drinks I can’t understand. I’d be better in a bar but we all know how that would turn out.
Wait, I’m sorry, you’re living in Europe and you don’t drink coffee?? I’m shaking my head in utter, utter disgust.
I’ve done some good writing waiting for friends at a bar, but once the friends show up, all bets are off.
I too have hipster glasses and drive a Mac. Also, I got my hair cut short and I’m working sort of a bedhead thing with bangs in my eyes, and I’ve taken to wearing a cotton scarf to keep my neck warm. The scarf is secondhand.
Please, sister, fist bump for the freelance cliche.
Well, you are in Portland after all! Living the good life. I have my requisite canvas bag from an independent bookstore with me too.
I like to work at home, but only if the husband isn’t here. He likes to chat, and watch sports, and ask me about the sprinklers and why they aren’t working, etc… I like the library, the silent room, so long as the rest of the public realizes this room is NOT, as it appears to be, built to hold 6 people. It’s Mine Mine Mine! And I like a coffee shop in the early afternoon hours only. Early mornings there are all those bastards with a job, crowding the place and loud-talking on their phones, and late mornings are too many skinny mothers in LuLu gear with strollers and adorable children that I can’t ignore.
I sometimes think I would write best in jail. I’m not even kidding.
I’m not sure what LuLu gear is, but once a year I venture into my local coffeeshop between the hours of 10 and 2, and am confronted with Mommy Hour, where the kids run unchecked and Mommies compare their organic too too lifestyles. This is why I go to the coffeeshop one town over. Too many goths and hippies weed out most of the Sherpa-bag-toting Mommies.
You just need a Room of Her Own. Mine is 1m30 X 2m (that’s probably 4’5″ X 6′ at a guess). Or is that a closet?
I do have a room of her own. And I have killed the Angel in the House. But sometimes you just need coffee out and a good bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich.
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