Coffee

Coffee plays an inordinately large role in my life. 

My friends and family have learned that, until I have ingested two cups of coffee in the morning, they should disregard anything I do or say.  I once asked my wife if she had put the cat out and she responded “Dear, we have never owned a cat.”  She wasn’t startled.  She knew that this question was formulated before I had consumed any caffeine.  No psychiatric evaluation required.  He hasn’t had his drug yet. 

I really enjoy two fine cups of coffee in the morning.  I love the aroma.  I love the taste.    Perhaps the finest part of my day is the first few sips of a freshly brewed cup of coffee as I settle in front of the TV to find out if the world exploded while I was sleeping.  If there is no bad news, this is a spectacular start to a new day.  I can literally feel the fog lifting from my mental faculties as I consume my first two cups in the morning.  The wheels start rolling with the first half cup.  I’m semi functional after the first cup.  All systems are go after cup number two.  Fortunately, we are early risers and I can’t talk with either my stockbroker or bookie at 5:30 in the morning before I have had my coffee.

At any point in time, I have three different types of caffeinated coffee and two different decafs in the cupboard.  I try to follow the Mayo Clinic guidelines that say you can have four cups of regular coffee a day.  After that, I will occasionally brew up a pot of decaf just to enjoy the flavor and aroma.

Like most addictions, over time, my dependence on the drug has become more problematic.  My ability to function without the two cups is dwindling.  The first thing I do each morning is stumble to the kitchen and put on the coffee.  It is becoming increasingly more difficult to accomplish this task.  The steps involved are selecting the coffee for today, grinding the beans, emptying the filter basket and installing a new filter, transferring the coffee from the grinder to the new filter basket, dumping the dregs of yesterday’s coffee and rinsing out the pot, putting the pot back into the coffee maker, getting a precise measure of water for today’s brew, pouring it in the Bunn, and closing the lid.  These are a lot of steps for someone who is nearly comatose and lately I have not been doing them very well. 

In the last six months I have had a number of miscues.  Yesterday, I did everything correctly except inserting the coffee pot back into the coffee maker.  It can take hours to clean up a half pot of hot freshly brewed coffee that has been flowing across the kitchen counter tops and seeping into the cupboards.  On other occasions, I have added the water twice.  My fine Bunn coffee maker will let me do that and pour two full pots of coffee into a single pot.  Same result for the counter and cupboards.  I have closed the lid and started the water flowing without inserting the filter basket.  A mess but warm water is a little easier to clean up than hot coffee.  Another major blunder occurred one morning when I mistakenly brewed a decaf instead of the fully loaded Columbia Supremo.  After two hours my wife asked me a question and my response was “Nice day!  Don’t you?”   “Oh, Oh.  I think your drinking decaf.”  She responded.     

Sadly, I have degenerated to the point where I can’t competently make coffee until after I have consumed two cups of coffee.  As my mother, the consummate coffee drinker, would say, “It’s a catch 24”.  

In the latter stages of caffeine addiction she fractured metaphors, clichés, and common words.  For example, for mom the word condominium was condomonium.  The short form was not condo.  It was condom.  “They sold their house and downsized to a condom”.  “Mom, it’s not condom.”  “Okay, they sold their house and bought a condomonium.”  Fifty years of caffeine addiction had reduced a brilliant woman to this.  I have been using the drug for at least forty eight years so I know where this is going. 

So far my verbal and written skills (after two cups of coffee) are still pretty good.  However, I don’t want to take anything for granite.