Alphabetical Dates: The Letter "C"

Welllllllllllll, here is one date that certainly saw more modifications than I intended! Just to catch you up real quickly, in case you're new here - we're mixing up our married dating life this year by going on alphabetically themed dates. You can read about the "A" date here and the "B" date here, and this week, I was bound and determined that despite the chaos of our week, we were GETTING the "C" date. And it turned out to be one of the most beautiful and welcomed parts of the week. That's for sure!

My friend Odie said we needed to go on a CRUISE for the C date, and we definitely agreed, but alas. We just bought a gallbladder eviction, so we lacked the funds to buy a cruise.

So the next best thing? A "coffee shop crawl." How fun is that? It's like a pub crawl, but we don't drink, so we went from coffee shop to coffee shop instead. Or at least we tried. It was a brilliant plan on paper. I spread the date over the course of three days, because I felt we could enjoy the coffee much more if we weren't trying to do allllllllllllll the coffee shops in one day. I mean, that is a lot of caffeine and sugar - even for us.

I found three coffee shops in Kokomo we hadn't yet visited, and I spent time researching when they were open and arranged the dates accordingly. (Can I just say that is my only complaint about Kokomo coffee shops? None of them stay open very late at all.)

So the plan was that Thursday morning, we would get up extra early and a little after seven, we would go to The Bind Cafe, which is a coffee shop downtown that I didn't even know existed until a few weeks ago when I saw it on a list of must-visit coffee shops in the state of Indiana. Their Facebook page said they opened at seven, so I thought I'd give them a couple of minutes to settle, but go early enough that we would still have time to enjoy coffee and breakfast before Ryan had to work.

We arrived at 7:10 to this.

Closed up tight. Not closed, but lights on and people milling about, just running behind. Closed, closed, closed. Dark inside, no cars outside, CLOSED.

I don't think I need to explain how disappointing that is for two coffee addicts who have already survived a significant chunk of their morning without coffee, waiting for this glorious moment.

Baffled and befuddled, I checked their Facebook page again to see if I had somehow misread it. Nope. It said right there in bright green: "OPEN." And yet clearly, not so much. So we drove away with much sadness, and headed instead to Big Ben Coffee, which is our favorite local shop.

Ryan got fresh brew and I got the same with a scone on the side. (He was having breakfast at work, so he didn't need food.) We thoroughly enjoyed watching the sunrise and talking together. A lovely, leisurely morning, and even though it was Plan B, it was wonderful. And we took some goofy photos.

Friday night, after the lonnnnnnnnnnnnnng week was finally behind us, we went to our second destination. There's a place in town called Coffee Junkiez that has several locations. Most are drive-thru only, but they have one full-sized restaurant that is both Coffee Junkiez and Pizza Junkiez. So we went for dinner and coffee.

The thunderstorms that rolled through central Indiana showed up while we were eating dinner, so it was nice to be inside where it was comfy and dry. It was actually quite a nice little place to eat. Quiet, calming music, lots of space, DELICIOUS pizza.

Ryan would like to point out that we got the Carnivore pizza, because it also starts with C. After we ate, we ordered lattes. Andes Mint for Ryan and Raspberry Delight for me, and we just kicked back, talked for a while, and watched the rain while we enjoyed our coffee. Delicious.

A keeper of a night, a keeper of a coffee joint, and the ONLY date that went as planned.

Saturday morning, we had plans to go to Main Street Cafe, because we had a gift card we'd been saving to use. It's hard to go to this place, because they have NO evening hours at all, and that makes it tough when you have a day job. (Plus, Ryan only gets 1/2 hour for lunch on weekdays, so eating out is not an option.)

I'd been there on a Saturday morning before, with one of my friends, so Ryan and I got up early on the only day we could sleep in, got ready, and drove in the snow to Main Street Cafe: Closed. Apparently they're not open on Saturdays. Not sure how they were open the day I went, but they were definitely not participating for our date day. Womp, womp.

So we drove to another part of downtown to a little cafe called Gabetta's, and ordered breakfast and fresh brew. It wasn't a true coffee shop, but desperate times call for desperate measures, right?

When we went to pay the bill, we discovered it's owned by Coffee Junkiez, too, so SCORE! It counts as a coffee shop!

So the winning part of our C date was that we had three opportunities to enjoy quality time together in the middle of a week that was totally chaotic and exhausting. Love that. And that's what really counts. The losing part of our C date was that 2/3 of our destinations were complete busts. Sadness indeed.