It occurred to me that we may have a bit of a Starbucks addiction.

Now, anyone who knows me is saying “This is just occurring to you now?!?” but what I mean is that the addiction might be a bit worse than I originally thought. I know I don’t talk much about the ‘bucks here, but if you follow me on Twitter, you will know that my Chai Latte and I are good friends. Very good friends. In fact, the only disagreement we have is that it doesn’t come in a size larger than Venti.

Well, that and the somewhat lacking service that we get sometimes. And I’m kind of a stickler for service. Treat me poorly as a customer, and I will walk. We cancelled our tv service because of poor customer service. I switched ISPs because of poor customer service (and then switched again when we cancelled our TV as they were also our ISP). I’ve blacklisted restaurants (for years in come cases) over poor customer service. The entire Tim Horton’s chain was blacklisted after a few too many mistakes.

But Starbucks seems to have a pass, even though they routinely mess up our orders. And we are routinely coming up with ways to “help” them help us. I have actually even considered, ever so briefly, changing my order to make it easier for them. My latest idea: go in with pre-marked sleeves that I can just hand to them so that they just need to fill the cup accordingly. No fuss, no muss. No water in my Chai.

Perhaps I am just actually embracing our year of Zen?

How do you put a value on a person?

My value as a blogger? Probably not high given my frequency (which as we know is infrequent).

My value as a maid is definitely zilch. I’m pretty good at making messes, not so good at cleaning them up, particularly when baking – I’m a catastrophe then. Cooking is only marginally better. Luckily we have a housekeeper who comes in every two weeks to set our house in order.

Facebook tells me that I have 96 friends, so I guess 96 people value me as a friend, or at least want to use me to pad their friends list.

This site sets my Twitter value at $24. That’ll buy you about four Venti Chai Lattes and two lemon loafs, with a bit of change to spare. Or one very nice skein of yarn.

Some people might set my value by how much money I make, but right now I make no money. Actually now all I do is spend money (groceries, bills, baby), so does that assign me a negative value? On Judgement Day, will I be handed a bill showing my balance owing?

How about my value as a mother? As a wife? As a daughter, sister, sister-in-law? As a friend? There are so many ways you can compartmentalize your value and come up seemingly lacking by looking at only one segment.

There is a quote by Michel de Montaigne: “The value of life is not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them; a man may live long yet very little.”

I like that way best.