still life with coffee

Filed under: 2nd cup of the day, bodum, coffee, cup, follow-up cup, coffee

snapshot of the moment

1. tiny napping lammy on the couch with me
2. raining
3. deep boredom
4. pajamas
5. empty coffee cup and saucer
6. spent bodum
7. green bottle of water
8. silver lunch box with beads and beading materials
9. force/sense that cannot be named preventing enjoyment of this snapshot such that it must be terminated
10. thoughts about whether more coffee might help
11. thoughts + dread feeling about leaving house in 1 hour

Filed under: bodum, coffee, lammy, coffee, lists

coffee + temporary disability

here is the thing.

i can’t carry my bodum from the kitchen to the room where i do most of my hanging out. this is because i am using crutches. when you use crutches, you are not supposed to lean on them so that they hold you up under your armpit. according to one of the nurses who attended to me after my recent foot surgery, that is a sure way to get badass nerve damage.

no, it’s all in the hands and arms. so you get a good workout whenever you crutch.

but that means that hands cannot be used to carry things. with one exception as follows.

where you grab onto the bar you can hold a handle. as in, a bag handle. a shopping bag, for example. nothing to clunky because it bangs into the crutches which sucks.

my idea is to make more coffee and put it into a thermos which will, itself, but placed into such a handled bag. yeah.

here is a great example of what crutchers have to go through. it is entitled “day 7.1 crutch coffee”.

Filed under: bodum, crutch, cup, coffee

regret

i regret that i did not have time to make a bodum of coffee today at work. i will not make the same mistake tomorrow.

Filed under: 2nd cup of the day, bodum, coffee, regret, coffee

3x

today i drank 3 bodums of coffee.  half decaf, half regular. the last bodumful was freshly ground and so good that i am considering notching up my daily coffee requirements to include freshly ground.

my heart is pounding and i am wishing i could keep going. do i dare?

rationalization: it’s really like drinking 1.5 cups of regular coffee and 1.5 cups decaf.  not so much.

often when i drink multiple bodums of coffee, the second is inferior and i think, i didn’t really need this. but this time, the enjoyment is escalating. i am truly tempted to form another bodum and stir up the muddy goodness with a chopstick and wait for it to ripen.

some spontaneous coffee poetry:

you are the coffee flower of my heart
you, glass thing of wonder
i stir you gently and wait and wait and ask my partner susan, do you think the coffee is ready? what is the temperature going to be today?
now all that remains is the late afternoon sun, steelish sky and cup with a layer of sadness on the bottom
sad because i want it and, at the same time, know it is full of grounds. which i don’t want.

Filed under: 2nd cup of the day, bodum, coffee, cup, decaf, decaffeinated beverage, enjoyment, first cup of the day, coffee

coffee conflict

i’ve already had two bodumfuls of glorious halfcaf. for the second cup, i made scalded milk and whipped it up into a froth with my beautiful aerolatte wand, then proceeded to ignore it and drink cup number two black. i ignored the milk despite my efforts to present it in a gray russel wright creamer. so now the question is…do i make even more coffee?

i think the answer is obvious. soon it will be sundown. there will be no coffee drinking tomorrow morning, as it is the day of atonement, or reframed for my current purposes, the day of no coffee. in preparation, i should drink and enjoy as much as i like.

the only remaining obstacle is that i am on the couch and nobody else is home at the moment.

Filed under: 2nd cup of the day, aerolatte, bodum, coffee, cup, enjoyment, first cup of the day, milk, yom kippur, coffee

begging for coffee

this morning i was positioned on the couch. time was passing. my palm centro was resting, with its battery removed, in a bowl of short-grain basmati rice. i had not yet had any coffee.

earlier, i had requested coffee, which is wrong. coffee is automatically provided with love on most days but especially on saturdays. on this day, however, the provider (i.e. my beloved) was busy cultivating her internet addiction. so, my first cup was requested and preparations did ensue.

i continued my couch positioning in earnest. no coffee appeared. i applied similisan allergy eye relief drops and waited. then i imitated our cat’s way of asking for what he wants. that is, i begin to lightly rattle the park slope food co op newsletter that was laid out on our coffee table, making a sweet yet annoying ‘thwap’ sound. it was instantly recognized as my wish for coffee.

i have drunk all of the coffee. which raises another important issue.

the two-cup bodum is inadequate for my weekend coffee-drinking needs.

Filed under: beloved, bodum, cat, coffee, cup, first cup of the day, longing, mobile phone, park slope food co op, shabbat, wish, coffee

barista correction

recently, i decided that i deserve a latte.

i almost never buy them anymore. in fact, i almost never buy coffee from any coffee brewing establishment anymore. this is because i bring my own freshly ground coffee to work and brew a small bodumful on a daily basis. at times i wonder whether it would be ok to bring other accessories such as a grinder, but i already spend more time on the task of coffee making than most and would be sure to inspire unpleasant feelings and possibly words from the director if i were to actually grind the beans on site. so i don’t. and on weekends, i love nothing more than to wake up and enjoy coffee! in my own home.

please note that coffee! now includes an exclamation point. coffee: a beverage that bends language to its ever changing needs.

please note, also, that i drink coffee in my own home in the morning prior to work. then i go to work and make more coffee but often don’t have the opportunity to drink it until later in the day. the only time i might buy a cup of coffee from someone is during the week when i attend therapy but, as previously noted, i have revisited my choice of subway train which means i no longer pass oren’s. so.

for a special moment in time, i decided to want a latte. it was given to me by my love. the latte was had from starbucks, but there were words. you see, the barista saw fit to correct my beloved in her use of coffee-related terminology. i instructed my darling to request, on my behalf, a double short half caf latte. instead, she asked for a double short half decaf latte. the barista took her to task.

the following is an approximate re-enactment

the barista said, “you mean half caf.”

my love said, “no, i mean half decaf.”

and so on.

my love was informed that what she really wanted was a double short half caf. while the barista may have been correct technically, he was incorrect in the universe of customer service. i doubt that “correcting customer coffee beverage terminology” was part of barista training camp.

in order to obtain understanding, i encouraged my darling to explore this further. i found that she had been thinking incorrectly about coffee and caffeine. she had been using the words interchangeably. they are not interchangeable. she feels that in respect to caffeination, the default, her request for the beverage to be made of half decaf was correct. i explained that using her own logic where caffeination is the default and the standard, that indicating something should have only half as much of the standard would be half-standard. half-caf. because she is not distinguishing caffeine from coffee, to ask for something that has half caffeinated coffee and half decaffeinated coffee requires specifying that it should be half decaffeinated but it’s still coffee – all of it. it’s like this: she is thinking: “regular coffee” is “caffeine” so if she wants to indicate that she does not want the regular thing, she has to define the beverage by what is IN it, not by what is NOT in it. half decaf, not half caf. what is in it is coffee. half of it is caffeinated. that means that the other half has to be decaffeinated.

meanwhile, anybody who has been around new york for a while knows that “regular” coffee used to mean, and in some parts of the city still means, that you want coffee that has milk and sugar in it. this is why people ask for “black” coffee because the assumption is that it should come with milk.

Filed under: annoying, barista, bodum, coffee, decaf, decaffeinated beverage, enjoyment, morning, regular, starbucks, coffee

coffee dilemma

so i made a cup of coffee at work this morning. by afternoon, it was tepid. i must confess that i enjoy coffee at any temperature and have over the past few months come to appreciate room temperature coffee. that being said, i was also aware of the jar of milk in the refrigerator. i brought it in with me. it is local farmer’s milk from cows that are fed grass and are treated well. as i drank the coffee into the afternoon, i kept feeling that i should be heating up the milk and combining it with the coffee. but i didn’t. i didn’t have time and i was digging on the black coffee thing. is that so wrong?

when coffee is as good as this coffee was today, it is hard for me to include milk even though the milk i have is special and good. perhaps i should just accept that this is where i am. it’s too much pressure otherwise.

Filed under: accept, bodum, coffee, combination, cup, enjoyment, milk, pressure, coffee

small green machine

many years ago, my mother bought me a small, green coffee making machine. a drip machine, possibly braun or krups. i don’t know where she got it — maybe williams sonoma. anyway, it has been in and out of use since that time. i am guessing it was about 1991. one day the carafe broke. i bought a replacement, but the color of the plastic rim didn’t match. it was white, and the machine is green. so, ok. in the last decade or so, this coffee maker has been stored somewhere in case there is company and i need to make an alternative coffee. a pot of decaf. in those days i was drinking caf all the time, any time. now – no way. i use a beautiful glass bodum given to me by my beloved. it creates about two cups, not official 8-oz cups, but two proper coffee cups. it’s enough. i drink it in the morning, and that’s it, usually.

we put on a thanksgiving feast this year, and i took out the green machine to entertain. things have changed! only two and a half takers for decaf; the rest herbal tea or black tea that has been “de-caffed.” it was necessary to buy paper cone filters, which i am enjoying. long ago there was a gold filter, but i got rid of it. it seems rude and inauthentic, but i can’t prove this.

so, the green machine is still out. i have been using it. but it makes too much coffee. it lasts all day long in my poor, dented llbean thermos. it is dented because one day in a stupor i thought i could use it as a hammer to hammer something. it is dented, and i am miserable about it. i can’t find any on ebay. i think i’m going to put the green machine away tonight or tomorrow.

i’ll take it when i next entertain, maybe. i think my mother is coming for dinner soon. she might want some decaf.

Filed under: bodum, coffee, enjoyment, mother, thermos, coffee