Coffee Wars

We don't own a microwave. Haven't for eleven years of marriage. I can't stand the smell when you open them. I've been told that it's fine if you keep them clean, but no thanks.

I like really, really hot coffee. I'm not even sure I like the taste of coffee. What I like, adore, need, in the morning, is a scorching cup to wrap my hands around and steam wafting into my face and an occasional sip of hot liquid burning the chill out of my head and throat and stomach.

These two things are tragically related in my house. Bear with me here.

No microwave. A woman who nourishes and adores four small children as her current life's work and likes only the first few sips of coffee in a full mug. After those first sips, I hold it and love it until the cup goes cold and then I want a new cup. Or the same cup, I don't care as long as it is thermonuclear hot again.

So. Here's what I do, once Matt leaves for work and the coffee is mine all mine, I spend about two hours every morning dumping my coffee back into the pot and reheating it to scalding goodness and repouring it into my cup for two sips and ten minutes of hot enoughness and then dump, reheat.

This saves coffee. I know it's kind of gross, but it's my cup and I'm drinking it and I wash the coffee pot afterward, sostopjudgingmewhocares. It saves coffee. If I dumped each cup after it got too cold for me, I'd need approximately 25 cups of coffee to get through a morning. Wasteful. Think of the coffee growers and pickers, not to mention the water and my effort. Clearly, no.

I am an environmentalist is what I'm telling you. A coffee bean preserver. Plus, I'm endlessly lazy and I don't want to brew new pots of coffee when I have a perfectly good cup of coffee that is a smidgen or 100 degrees or so too cold.

What's the problem? You ask. I don't care if you have disgusting coffee habits as long as you confine them to the nastiness of your own home.

MATT. Matt is the problem. Damn the man. Matt and his new shift which puts him in MY house, and yes, from 8 - 6 this is my house, until 11 a.m. every morning. That's a long time. And it's coffee drinking and reheating and drinking time. Used to be, in the good old 8-6 days, he would fill his big to-go mug and leave, leaving me the end of the pot to sully at will.

NOW. NOW! He's here until eleven. It's endless, that three hours. (Also, frustratingly productive. Handyman Matt can accomplish more in the three hours before work than I accomplish in an entire week. It's like he deserves hot, non-slobbered-in coffee or something. To top it off, he does fantastically annoying things that are my fault and that I've asked him to do. Like, for example, last week, after I intentionally ordered a bench and a hanging wall thingy in cream, even though I knew all the trim and built-ins in the newly finished mudroom were painted white, because, well because PB didn't sell them in white and I loved them and, and ... ? He spent a week re-painting every stitch of trim in the mudroom cream. And the doors. And the built-ins.) He's basically a saint, except that he's an irritating saint that likes hot coffee and gets all grumpy when I use the entire pot of coffee as my personal cup.

The gall. The cold coffee.

I'm going to need a bigger chai budget. Or a second coffee pot.

I hope that you're having a fabulous long weekend with all the scalding hot coffee you can drink and steam in your face and a few tears in your eyes for all of the incredibly brave people who have lost their lives in service to our country in the last 233 years.