Read the story and find inspiration if you need it.

Hi.  I’m your cup.
Unfortunately, like Rodney Dangerfield.  I get no respect.
But that could be changing.
Miss America’s talent was singing while she played cups.
Seriously.
And Anna Kendrick, a Tony-winner and Oscar nominee, brought the house/restaurant down with her a cappella cup version of “When I’m Gone” in the box office hit, “Pitch Perfect.”
So you think playing cups is a recent phenomenon?
Think again.
The British act Lulu and the Lampshades played cups to “When I’m Gone” back in 2009.  Which inspired Anna Burden’s performance which went viral and inspired Anna Kendrick to learn to play cups.
And Anna’s awesome performance in the movie when she imagines a restaurant full of people playing cups.
Hey, don’t just sit there.  Give it a try.  
Take out your smart phone.  Watch Anna perform cups on Letterman.  Give me a few taps as you clap.

Create a flash mob performance.  Right here.  Right now.
This is going to be fun!

I’m an avoidant.  One of those quizzes told me so.  Not the ones you take online where you find out what type of sponge you are.  This is from a book.  One of those recommended by a friend during a late night drunken discussion where you talk about what you really want to talk about. For me it was sex, and why I wasn’t having any; for her it was why she wasn’t in a relationship. 
It seems it all starts with your parents.  Not ones to coo over a baby, especially one born to teenage parents, mine married for the sake of the child.  They probably hoped I would crawl away and fall done some stairs and that would be the end of that.  But they fed me and bathed me and clothed me and baby #2 was born.  A boy.  And he was rewarded for having the sense to show up the proper gender.
So the eldest distanced herself from the little love triangle and learned to soothe herself and suppress any need for praise and recognition.  She grew up independent.
Coping they call it.  Surviving they call it.  Alone they call it.

She cupped the cup, breathing in the steam. He watched her from the other side of the table, his hands shaking a bit. He wouldn’t show her. He waited. She spoke.

“This ain’t as hot as it used to be,” she murmured, taking a deep sip.

He wondered if she meant the coffee or them. As always, she spoke in cyclical rhythms. It was the life of a poet. Or the curse of one in love with a poet. He merely nodded, his hands shaking again. It wasn’t just that it was cold. It was her. Always her.

Now, she closed her eyes, leaning back in the chair. He stared at her face, in love again with the thoughts behind the mask. She was just so deep. Unfathomable. A true poet.

“Don’t you think?” she asked suddenly, and his hands began to tremble. There was no way for him to answer her without giving away the fact that he did not know what she was talking about.

“Eh,” he began, hoping the muse would take over his side of the table for a second.

It didn’t.

It’s amazing really – there you are sitting in a red Naugahyde booth in a vintage DS106 diner somewhere on the gritty upper west side of Your Fair City reading a paper cup made out of the last of the old-growth Doug Firs we’re fighting to protect out here in the great Northwest like you couldn’t bring your own go-cup.
While you’re waiting for your DS106 Little Taste of India Soup to arrive, you’re reading about how when Peter and I drove up to our house after Thanksgiving, we got out under this huge Doug Fir in our front yard, and the sky was black with a couple hundred yelling screaming crows. 
They were diving in and out of the tree – the noise! The collective for crows should be a Cacophony of Crows.
Our abrupt arrival directly under their manic maelstrom made them never no mind– they were all deep inside their own reality. It didn’t take a crow translator to understand the thousand rowdy shades of “Trouble, Will Robinson!”
I wanted to see what was in the tree that had so many crows so vociferously upset. I craned my neck, to use a bird verb, then started backing up and backing up until finally I could see right through a hole in the branches about 20 feet up.
Huddled next to the trunk was one very put-upon looking Redtailed Hawk. He had mottled brown and white feather patterns, telling me he was this year’s juvenile. Poor bastard. Many times larger than a crow, he been mobbed down out of the sky to take refuge in our tree, which is why they actually call it an Unkindness of Crows.
I started screaming for Peter to come look, and the crows seem to like that, but for the hawk, it was too much, and he launched himself desperately out into the air and made for the river on heavy wingbeats.
The crows followed, divebombing, yelling, circling, laughing, the whole mob moving away from our house tree by tree toward the water.
On Halloween once, standing in the same place on the drive, looking up into the sky over the river, I saw five bald eagles passing through headed for the Klamath Marsh. In the winter, we have juncos, and nuthatches, which feed crawling down the tree, and brown creepers that feed crawling up the tree, or is it the other way around?

“There she goes”, she said to her self.

“Look at those preposterous high heels, how could he ever leave me for her!”

The rain came down in buckets as she stood in the dark alley overlooking the street in front of his house.

Her hands clinched the knife in her coat’s pocket.

“I’ve had it!” were her words as she stepped out of the alley into the street.