need

need coffee. so far, bad day.

Filed under: coffee, longing, regret, morning, wish, lame!, customer service, follow-up cup, stupid things, coffee

a rainy sick day list: originally hand-crafted 2.23.10 @ 8:08pm

1. wake up at 3 am feeling quite ill
2. wake up again at 8 feeling illish
3. coffee
4. boiled egg
5. mochi
6. call in sick
7. coffee
8. make list
9. unload dishwasher
10. put clean dishes away
11. load dirty dishes into dishwasher
12. renew rx
13. arrange delivery of same
14. snack, details of which unimportant
15. make necessary phone call
16. connect with old friend on west coast
17. discuss aromatherapy-related concepts and plans with same
18. adjust fb settings to reflect current reality of friend configurations in present as well as in past
19. clean litter box with bon ami, lavender all-purpose cleaning gel
20. perform neti with home-made essential oil infused sea salt and ghee
21. create rosewater from dried rosebuds gotten at co op
22. re-fold and put away laundry as necessary
23. view premier and second episodes of jersey shore
24. explain to fb person “y” i am doing #23 above
25. receive fone call from beloved requesting (confirming, in her mind) dinner preparation
26. select musical accompaniment for prepping
27. prepare dinner

Filed under: 2nd cup of the day, beloved, coffee, cup, first cup of the day, jersey shore, lists, morning, lists

i think about coffee a lot.

this cup is trying to look like my fancy brown cup and saucer

it’s 10pm and i’m thinking about my first cup of coffee tomorrow morning. wishing it were shabbat so i could be drinking it out of the brown cup and saucer in a leisurely manner. wait, i take that back. not all saturdays are like that. some, like last saturday, were not leisurely despite the fact i was wearing my very comfortable blue brooks brothers cotton pajamas with a drawstring and drinking delicious coffee from my sexy brown cup and saucer. i don’t think i want to stress in this blog so i won’t go any further into detail. i will just say that on the one hand, i want coffee all the time. on the other hand, nothing compares to my first cup. usually. so the thing i’m thinking about is the feeling of yum in that first cup. that is what inspired my coffee cup tattoo. if you have to know.

Filed under: coffee, cup, first cup of the day, morning, coffee

my fabulous day

1. inside
2. air conditioner @ 70 degrees
3. baguette
4. cheese
5. coffee
6. expensive, pecan granola which i keep telling my beloved to buy “more” of so i can make it last through the week, so i should not be scarfing it down the way i am today
7. raw sunflower seeds
8. more coffee
9. chatting with old friend re (a) 50s items we love, (b) eating, (c) drugs we took together in the past, (d) dancing
10. unsalted corn chips
11. unsweetened lemonade

Filed under: cheese, coffee, enjoyment, first cup of the day, follow-up cup, lists, morning, water, coffee, lists

is it really too early for coffee?

one of the things i hate about waking up too early is that i am never sure whether it is time to start drinking coffee. for example, the cat woke me up at almost 5. it was too early then, because it was not clear whether i was going to be staying awake. i was not committed. now it’s almost six and i’m realizing that the rain has stopped and i have no legitimate reason to not go to the fabulous eight a.m. saturday morning yoga class. should i sleep more? the birds are chirping and i am tempted but the kitchen is not organized and it would be somewhat unpleasant to prepare my coffee amid the chaos of the kitchen. it is not time for chamomile tea, for that time has passed. it is time for coffee, or nothing. it is really never too early to hydrate but the water is in the other room and i am here, so hydration is being delayed.

Filed under: coffee, cup, first cup of the day, longing, morning, 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 minus

in the morning when i am having my coffee, i sometimes feel sad. this is because i have to rush. like, for example, now. i am enjoying my first cup of coffee while knowing that there is work to be done. there is less enjoyment today because i have to make lunch, get dressed, think of what to do about my hair, ambulate to work. i cannot devote the proper amount of time and thought to this moment. hence the minus. coffee minus. it would be coffee, if not for the minus.

the one consoling fact is that when i get to work, i can make more coffee. but stress is involved. this is because i do not have a sink in my office. rather, i have to bring all of the related parephernalia into the kitchen. this includes: dirty coffee cup, dirty bodum, bag of decaf, bag of regular, coffee scoop. all of these things i have to somehow gather up in my arms without getting dirty. then i go into the kitchen area and hope that nobody will want to interact with me and say such things as, “how are you?” “anything good planned for the weekend?” and the most annoying, “what’s the good word?”

there is no good word. the good word is silence. silence and coffee.

please honor the noble silence

in

Filed under: annoying, coffee, cup, decaf, enjoyment, first cup of the day, morning, coffee

today i used the brown cup and saucer

have i mentioned that i have a shabbat cup and saucer? it is a brown russel wright cup and saucer and it is only used on saturdays.  i don’t know how this started or why, but it is my custom to have my coffee in this cup and saucer on the day we are commanded to set aside. 

my coffee enjoyment was not ruined, but was certainly not heightened, by some wispy strings that appeared in my toasted cornbread this morning.  at first i feared the worst:  that my cornbread had been invaded by spiders small enough to deposit themselves inside the cornbread and quietly walk around dropping their creepy, ethereal ropes behind them all day and all night. while rationally i know this cannot be true given the pattern i saw, the part of my mind that is not ruled by logic tormented me on and off for many hours.

another theory that is much more likely is this. when i baked this last batch, i thought i might not have let one of them (i made 2) cook all the way. so it is possible that the properties did not change in quite the way they should have. perhaps they are protein strands from the eggs that are present.  there was something odd about the eggs i put into this recipe anyway, but i can’t go into it because i am very invested in repressing the images. so, something happened.

another thing is that usually i cut the cornbread up and place it in an airtight container, removing pieces on an ad hoc basis. i did not do this, this time. i left the thing in the baking pan covered loosely with aluminum foil.

so there are many reasons for this. but i could not get past the strings that looked like they were spun by silk worms. i threw it out. but the first bite i took corrupted the first, second and third sips of coffee i took irrevocably.

still, the aroma of my coffee was very rich and the visual was stunning. that is, the sight of the coffee grounds mixing with the hot water as i stirred them in the bodum with a wooden chopstick. in our home, chopsticks are for stirring coffee. there is a creamy looking foam that starts to form when the hot water and grounds mingle that makes me very happy.

Filed under: coffee, cornbread, cup, enjoyment, first cup of the day, morning, coffee

things i should be doing in the morning

1. meditation
2. yoga
3. swimming
4. leaving for work promptly at 8 a.m. or at the very latest 8:15 a.m.
5. doing physical therapy exercises which strengthen my right foot so that i do not experience the nagging pain and annoyance associated with other parts of my body including my leg and ass
6. preparing lunch before doing anything else
7. dressing as soon as possible instead of moments before departure time
8. _not_ expressing self on internet blogs
9. _not_ engaging in loaded political discourse with beloved
10. _not_ entering into mental discussions or arguments with people in my life, especially clients

Filed under: beloved, lists, meditation, morning, lists