Ha. Yesterday. It started out fine, normal morning at home with the boys, puttering around and pretending to be Ironman (them) and trying not to make eye contact so I don't have to be, like, The Hulk or whatever (me) and then I got it into my head that I needed a Keurig coffee maker, like, RANOW. I was cleaning the Mr. Coffee and it flaked some paint off its warming tray (as it is wont to do, naughty Mr. Coffee) and I was all, you know what, Mr. Coffee? No. No. No is what, Mr. Coffee. I banish thee to the basement. You were meant to be a temporary measure when my beloved Grind 'n' Brew kicked the bucket by repeatedly vomiting grounds all over the kitchen, and you have overstayed your plastic, average welcome. I will keep you for emergencies but, let's be honest, will there be an emergency that the French press cannot handle? We shall see. Be gone.*
(*SPOILER ALERT I got a Keurig and WHOA I HAVE HAD THREE CUPS OF COFFEE SO FAR TODAY SAMPLER PACK WOOOO So much information and conversations with appliances to impart, OMG sit back and enjoy.)
So I wake the younger one from his "nap" (today instead of just the more mundane sleep, he went with a small amount of that plus a garnish of making a new and interesting smell and tearing down the curtains (curtain rods straight out of the wall, no halfway measures!) in his room "because of his rocket boots") we eat lunch and then pile into the car and head to school. Children delivered, I clutch my 20% off coupons and drive straight to Bed, Bath, and Beyond. I arrive and... it's not there. Oh. That used to be a Linens-N-Things and it's been closed for AT LEAST two years AND I went to the closing sale. And my gym that I only just quit going to this year is next door to it so I've parked here probably 100+ times since it closed. Huh. Okay. It's a good thing I've only lived here for 4 years so I don't have even more history to get confused by, because this happens to me all the time. If I still lived where I grew up, I'd be like, "Let's go to Caldor! Or Zayre's!" So I've got no idea where the closest Bed Bath and Bodyworks and Beyond is. I go to places like that approximately never. Since my phone is circa 90210 and practically comes with a giant carrying case with a long curly cord that I have to plug into my cigarette lighter (and I absolutely never remember to charge it and/ or bring it with me) I head home to use the interwebs for location sourcing.
And I get barely a mile before the guy in front of me rams into a gorgeous full grown lady deer crossing the road. It was sad stuff, but somehow my once totally porous heart is hardened (I cried once because I saw a horse laying down in a field and would it be okay? WOULD IT BE OKAY? But since I had kids and got past the postpartum it's seriously like I have absolutely no room for any extraneous suffering and my brain just doesn't compute it. It's not like I go around all Clockwork Orange, or like I didn't pull over and make sure someone called animal control and the police, but while pulled over I didn't dry heave or cry hysterically for 45 minutes and then take a nap in the backseat.)
So, no coffee maker and one maimed deer later, I get home and check the internet, which knows everything. Alas! There is one nearby, right over the border in New Hampshire! I head there immediately. Coffee! You will be mine!
I arrive and it's even right there, near the door, which is surely a sign. I heft it straight onto the checkout counter and hand over my coupon and credit card and think about sending Mr. Coffee to the basement where he belongs, in the Land of Misfit Appliances. But what's this? My card is declined. Please try again, I request. Declined again! And again! The cashier calls the manager over and they both look at me suspiciously. Am I the cause of the economic collapse? Am I an identity thiever? Blast! I am neither and also I would like coffee immediately. But I have no choice but to admit defeat (FOR NOW) and go home and iron this out.
I get home! And, indeed, there is a message from the Fraud Protection Services (protecting NO ONE but themselves, since the consumer's liability is limited -- you do not fool me, Chase) saying they'd like me to call back and confirm my recent purchases. So I call and do just that, and according to the robot who answered, the problem seems to be that I've made several purchases out of state. (This has happened to us before.) Hey, robot, do you have a map? I can casually run over the state line and back. I shop over state lines all the time. I wonder how people who live near the Four Corners feel. Their cards probably get shut off once a week, minimum.
But! My card is back on! I call my husband to check in, and while we're gleefully bashing Chase, call waiting beeps. Oh. It is the school. This is NEVER good. The last time the school called it was a cheerful, Hello! Please come collect your child and take him directly to the ER to have the washer cut off his finger! So I answer, flinching because that helps. And, indeed, it's below average information: My youngest wacked another kid in the face and could I please come collect him. Erf. Awful. SO I head to the school, collect the angelic looking and even seeming (oh, but I know) child in question and cart him out to the car. And drag his other child hitting self over state lines to buy a coffee maker!
Make sure to get the same clerk and brandish my legitimate card and she cares not even the tiniest bit, ha. But! None of this matters because I have SWEET MERCIFUL COFFEE and it is in my hands. Home we go!
Then we make a card for the kid he hit (which turns out to be one of the sweetest, calmest little girls in class, and the child of a good friend of mine, which is both better and worse depending on how my brain twists this information around) and go to deliver the note and pick up his older brother.
But, really, the moral of the story is that I have a Keurig now. It's fancy and makes the rest of my kitchen look like war years deprivation in the UK in comparison. Also, so far, the coffee is meh, and I need to do some K-cup research to find what works for us. However! This solves the problem of how to make drinkable coffee while my husband is traveling, because I sincerely cannot make palatable coffee no matter how hard I try. I swear I even ruin it a little bit when he sets it all up and I do nothing but hit the brew switch. You can tell it was me because it's just that tiny bit less delicious. It is my flaw. Or one of them, at least.
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