All Good Things...

...must come to an end. For example, Star Trek: TNG, Christmas (at least that comes around once a year), high school (actually, I'm glad that's over), final exams, a great scuba dive, and our coffeemaker. A Hamilton Beach Brew Station, to be exact, made its final cup of coffee this past Saturday. Devastation and chaos insued. You see, I was never a coffee drinker. All through childhood and my teens, I was a morning milk drinker (still am). Milk, moo-juice, white goodness in a glass, that was me, gettin' my calcium on. Throughout my 20s, I discovered hot tea. Let's see, there's Earl Grey, Irish Breakfast, Iron Goddess of Mercy, and a really weird PG Tips addiction around 2001. Then, I discovered the joy of coffee.

Five years ago, we had friends Michael and Kristi over for breakfast. We knew they were (and still are) hardcore coffee drinkers. So Ty-man and I dusted off the coffee machine (seven-year-old wedding present that had never been used) and brewed a pot. It wasn't bad for a first-timer. I even drank a mug of the stuff. Now, let me explain something. I'm a serious "cream and sugar with my coffee" kind of girl. Some mornings it's more, "Would you like coffee with your cream and sugar?" than anything else. Over the years I've had to replace cream and sugar with dried milk and Splenda. Hey, I need as much calcium as I can get and who wants to add cold milk to their coffee? That just makes your coffee lukewarm. No thanks! I guess you could add the milk and then nuke your coffee or nuke the milk before adding it to the coffee, but that just adds an extra step that I'm not ready to even attempt in the morning. But, I digress. I like my sweetened, creamy coffee, thank you very much. My beloved father-in-law is proud of his "one packet of Splenda in the entire pot" recipe. Yeah, Chuck, you can keep it 'cause I need the sweet as much as I need the caffeine!

OK, serious going off the track here. Anyway, I brewed that first pot of coffee about five years ago, at the age of 30. I called my mom and told her that it was official, I was an adult, because I was drinking coffee that I had brewed in my home. After that, I was a sometimes drinker, but when pregnant with the twins and suffering from evil morning progesterone-induced headaches, the coffee machine was cranked up every morning so that the caffeine would alleviate the pain. We went from a traditional glass carafe machine to the Brew Station because I'm a klutz. Show me a glass coffee carafe and I'll show you fifty ways to break or crack it in five minutes or less. I invested in a bean grinder and began keeping my beans in the fridge, that way I'm able to get the freshest mug possible. My coffee has become my morning lifeline. I'm a 2-mugger. Well, when I'm not breastfeeding, that is. I hate needles, but if I could get an insulin-pump-type coffee injection system, believe me when I say I'd be the first to sign up for it.

Well, this past Saturday, the Brew Station died a glorious death by leaking eight cups of coffee all over the counter (many applications of bleach later and the stain is almost gone). Tragedy! Agony! Oh, the horror! No time to get a new one! So, for the past two days, we've resorted to the local Starbucks and Chick-fil-A (not my favorite, but cheaper than Starbucks). Today, Ty-man came home with a new Brew Station. Woo hoo! I'll be able to get my legal addictive stimulant fix once again, fixed my way (strong enough to stand the spoon up and sweet enough to make you pucker), and fill my favorite mug to the brim. And what, you may ask is my favorite mug? Why, the one you see above, of course. Purchased at a Target three years ago, it's a Halloween mug that pretty much describes my state of being each and every morning.

Happy Java-ing!