Thursday, December 10, 2015

What...where do you keep your coffee grounds?

Good afternoon!

Well, it's really starting to look like the holidays around here.  We have our Christmas lights up, as do two other houses on our side of the block:  The mean hoarders, who don't actually put lights up on the outside of the house, but do have four table top Christmas trees well lit in their front window, and ramp guy down the street who must own shares in twinkle lights because he has lights and inflatable decorations and all sorts of greatness on his yard for all the holidays.  We do have a new comer, ramp guy's neighbors, who have taken a stab at decorating, and I give them props for that.  As for the rest of our side of the street for half a mile in either direction...putting a single light bulb in your window does NOT constitute holiday lights.  

Anyway....

Those of you who know me know a couple things:  1) I do enjoy more than my fair share of coffee and 2) I am not graceful most of the time and I'm a complete disaster early in the morning.  Those of you who don't know me...now you know that.

Hubby and I have developed a bit of a morning ritual the last couple weeks. I get up, jump into my workout clothes, which I have lying on the bathroom floor so that I can get dressed without having to look for anything, and then I wait for him to get ready...one of us is really concerned about combing his hair and brushing his teeth and being all perky looking and what not.  The other one is me...sitting there, saying, "Let's go. If my body realizes I'm up and moving at this hour it's going to revolt."

I thought I'd try and help Hubby trim his prep time for the gym by making the coffee and getting that going so that there would be the aroma of hot, steamy bliss when we got back from our work out at Xperience Fitness.  

Tuesday I emptied the coffee maker from the day before and cleaned it. I found the liner and filled the water.  Then I looked for the coffee itself.  

We. Were. Out.

Before you panic, no, we weren't actually OUT out of coffee...we were just out of ground coffee. Hubby likes to grind his own beans (that's a funny think to say) from time to time, so there were several bags of whole beans there.  I've never operated the coffee grinder. Here's a tip:  The time to start is NOT before 6:30 AM on a Tuesday.

I assembled the grinder and plugged it in.  Then I put the beams in the grinder. Then I poured half the beans back into the bag because I'd put way too many in the grinder. Then I pushed down there the arrow pointed. Nothing.

I tried again. Nothing.

Now, I've operated small kitchen appliances before. No, really, I have.  I was not about to let this thing get in the way of my coffee.  And besides, Hubby was still combing his hair for the gym.  (If you saw how short his hair is, you'd sort of wonder why it was taking more than four seconds.  Ad then you'd wonder whom he was trying to impress at the gym.  I've seen those people, It's all old men and women who look a lot like me.)  Anyway, I jiggled things around a bit and wonder of wonders, I was GRINDING coffee beans!

Ah, the aroma!  Ah, the feeling of dominating yet another machine!

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I opened the top of the grinder, my morning clumsiness took over and I exerted far too much force on the top of the grinder.  The lid fell off onto the counter and the freshly pulverized grounds were free to fly about the room.  Most of them decided to fly into my open gym bag, located on the kitchen floor.  

I won't tell you what I said.  I will tell you most of the words that fell out of my face at that point were blue and had four letters.

So there I was, holding the bottom half of the grinder, the air full of the smell of freshly ground coffee, staring at my gym bag which was now home to two-thirds' cup of black and tan coffee.

And there was no coffee brewing.

Exhausted from all the swearing, but undaunted, I picked up the pieces and ground more beans. This time I was able to get them safely to the coffee maker.  As I turned the button to "brew" hubby came down the hall, really to go to the gym.  "What happened here?" he asked, watching me dump black dust out of my gym bag.

"I was doing something NICE!"  I growled.

We got into the car and went to the gym.  Because it's winter now, we have to have a change of shoes with us to use on the equipment. I carry mine indoor shoes in my gym bag.  Do you see where this is going?

Yes, as I sat on the bench, attempting to stay out of the puddles left by the early morning swimmers, I realized I had a goodly amount of dry coffee in my workout shoes.  I couldn't dump them on the floor, I didn't want to walk across the room to the garbage can and dump them out (I mean, I was at the gym...I had a work out to get to. I couldn't spend time WALKING) so I dumped what I could into my bag and put on my shoes.

That was Tuesday.

Funny thing about sand/gravel/coffee in your shoes: you never really, truly get that out. If you wear your shoes to the beach you know you're going to have sand in them forever.  The same is true, apparently, in this case. It's Thursday.  I've been to the gym twice since Tuesday morning and I still have coffee in my shoe.  And each morning I leave a little coffee on the floor of the locker room.  I don't know of the nice lady who cleans the locker rooms wonders where the coffee comes from, or if she doesn't even notice.

I like to think I've given her something to ponder during the day.

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