The one vital thing in life is coffee. OK, also air. And water.
The three vital things in life are: coffee, air, water.
In that order.
We are out of coffee. That is, we are out of senseo pods. We have a bit of actual ground coffee and we have regular cofee makers somewhere, packed away in a box. We also have this kettle-looking thing that brews coffee and steams milk all at the same time on the stove.
Since I hadn’t had any coffee this morning, I was obviously phsyically unable to garner the energy to go the store, and P. was off at the gym so I couldn’t make him go get some for me.
I tried using the stove-top device. I poured the water in the bottom, and put in the filter and added the coffee and screwed on the top and added the milk and locked in the little stopper, all the while thinking that whoever manufactured this was insane to think anyone could do this properly without already having drunk a large amount of coffee.
Every time I make coffee in this thing, I get a little nervous. If I put too much liquid in, it starts boiling out the spout once things get going and then it’s just a mess, plus I’ve gone through all that work for nothing as my coffee is all over the stove rather than in my cup. I was ready for it this time.
I watched it carefully. I peeked into the top part to make sure that nothing was foaming over. I could hear the coffee perking up, but nothing seemed quite ready yet.
Suddenly, I heard an explosion and the coffee started shooting STRAIGHT UP at the ceiling. It was a fountain of hot, boiling coffee, bursting from the kettle and into the sky, drenching everything around it and falling back to the open flame, which was now dancing, eager to leap away from the confines of the burner and onto the rest of the house. My first instinct was to get out of the way of the boiling liquid, shooting up all around me. It was like a Vegas fountain show only with coffee, which was hot, and in my kitchen, which had very recently been clean. I looked back at the burner and realized I had to find a way to turn off the stove. So, I crept in, under the coffee geyser, and turned off the heat.
Everything stopped. All I heard in the silence was the slow dripping of a thousand coffee drips. All over the walls. And the vent hood. And the stove. And inside the stove. And on the floor. And the mixer. And the salt and pepper grinders. And the kitchen scale. And behind the counters in those little cracks you can never quite clean out.
And all I could think as I surveyed my coffee-soaked kitchen was that nothing was left to drink.