Coffee Crisis

I've had the same coffee maker for 12 years now.  I splurged when I bought it way back when, and it has served me well all these years.  I had a system, a good system that brought me much peace....where I would prepare my coffee the night before and set the timer to come on.  Sometimes I would actually get excited at that point about going to sleep because I knew what would be waiting for me the next morning.  I went to bed seriously looking forward to waking up to my coffee brewing.  A lot like Christmas every day.   I clearly need some more excitement in my life but that's not what this is about.  It's about coffee.  And my current crisis.

See, about two months ago I noticed that there was a puddle of water around my coffee pot in the mornings.  Now, for someone like myself, this was a minor inconvenience that in no way changed my system.  I just put a dish towel down that I squeezed out the next morning.   But others in this house, who are more of the detail persuasion and with more meticulous leanings, just couldn't deal.  Could.  Not.  Deal.  So imagine my horror when I went to prepare my coffee one night only to find what looked like an autopsy being performed on my Cuisinart.  Its innards were scattered all over the kitchen.  No worries, I was told....looked like a part could be ordered.  But in the meantime, I was promised I'd have freshly ground and pressed coffee the next morning.  

Andy bought a hand grinder and coffee aerator a few weeks ago and was taking great pride each morning in preparing the perfect cup of coffee.   Which I thought was really super awesome!  So long as I still had my own whole pot which is my perfect cup.    His one perfect cup at a time was great as long as it was IN ADDITION TO.  Not in lieu of.  But after the dismemberment, I was seriously at his mercy.  For a few mornings it was fine.  Really it was.  He brought me my coffee in bed even.  And would bring me a second or third cup if I asked.  But then one morning he had to do something so much less important, like go to work or something, and I had to prepare my own coffee.  Y'all.  I had to HAND GRIND the beans.  And it takes like 4, 5, maybe 20 minutes.  Then you have to slowly and carefully PRESS IT OUT.  I normally don't have the energy to fluff my pillow enough to sit up and sip it, much less work up a sweat to get my brew.  And to make matters worse....it doesn't even make a full cup.  

I do realize this is a superficial, self-centered, first world problem but things are getting desperate.  I am also fearing where this is going because (a) my coffee pot is still in the morgue and (b) I think I heard him say something about roasting his own beans.  

ROASTING beans!  I just don't.... I think I don't even know what to say about that.

Update:  This morning I had barely opened my eyes when I remembered that my coffee maker had still not risen from the dead.  I managed to get hold of my phone and asked Siri to tell Andy to go make me some coffee.  So she sent him a text.  He was still asleep next to me.  I kept hitting send until he got up and returned with a perfect cup of coffee.

At this very moment he is trying to breathe life into my Cuisinart.

Update update:  Mr. Coffee just corrected me.  It's an Aeropress.  Not an aerator.  Not that the difference means anything to me but it's important to be correct and all.  

Me again

I started this blog in 2006 when I left my job at a law firm to stay home with two babies.  My first post was entitled "What they don't teach you in law school."  You can find it here.  I can't believe anyone ever read this blog again after that post.  But for some reason they did.  So I kept blogging, because it made me happy.  But then I stopped.  It's not that I ran out of stuff to say, I just think I started saying it on Facebook instead.  Facebook completed me.  Which is quite sad, really.

In the eight years since that first blog post I had another baby, went back to work, came back home, moved three times across the entire southeast, and learned a few more things they didn't teach me in law school. Like cooking, homeschooling, and photography.  So now I'm back, imparting my wisdom and knowledge to both of the readers I have left.

When I first started blogging, I had two babies.  Then the third.  I was drowning in all things baby, toddler, and preschool.  A friend who has three littles, the same age difference as mine, asked me not long ago how I survived.  I started to answer but the words caught in my throat and my eyes glazed over as I vaguely recall scenes like hiding in the bathroom with the door locked while I sat in the cold, hard bathtub to nurse the baby while the other two banged on the door and stuck their little fingers and hands as far under the door as they could reach.  Like a Lifetime movie trailer.  Hiding from terrorists....but instead of a knife I had a newborn.   Then there was the time Andy came home to find me curled up in the corner of the kitchen, rocking back and forth, chanting over and over I'm bigger and smarter...I'm bigger and smarter....I'm bigger....and smarter.  I'm fairly certain that's the day he hid the scissors and removed all my shoelaces

Kidding!  Mostly.   But I did survive.  And for some crazy reason I actually thought once I got everyone potty trained and sleeping in their own beds through the night it would be smoooooooth sailing.  Ha.   Here's what you don't realize as you move from one stage to the next....

it's all the same kind of different.

And each stage is wonderful, heartbreaking, frustrating, amusing, and hysterical all at the same time.

It's a crazy world.  Someone ought to sell tickets.

Sure, I'd buy one.  

(Raising Arizona)