Coffee Noise

When I am at Stately Wayne Manor, my father usually wakes me when he makes coffee. It is an ornate ritual, that I want no part of . . . and it is LOUD. There is measuring and bean grinding and sighing. And I lie in the bed of no comfort (God, I hate that bed) upstairs and wonder what ungodly time in the morning it is . . .

(As an aside, my father and I are currently watching a biography about Billie Jean King . . . and her favorite place to go to lunch, according to her lover with the cute accent, is Costco with her parents . . . Awwww.)

So I pulled the 6 a.m. straw for ice duty. My father is hooked up to this weird water cooler thing, involving ice water and a pump, and you have to change the slush every three hours and check the temp on the thing. Catman decided to start swearing at the top of this lungs at 5:15 a.m. about no one being up and hand feeding him chicken liver or whatever smelly things he eats, so I was already up. But after the ice, I was given the 54 steps for making coffee.

There are pieces to the coffee maker that you have to find, because Mom has hid them. There is special water to filter. There is measuring and leveling and piecing things together. It would have helped to have a manual. There is a carafe that you have to lovingly pre-heat. It was just as noisy . . . my mother rolled over and audibly swore . . . and the coffee . . . well, it's very "German" . . . or French, but then again what I'm thinking of in France was the stuff we drank after dinner and I think that was espresso. Anyhow, it's strong coffee.

And the news is exactly the same as the news at 11 p.m.. And the Today show . . . sucks. And I have to stop eating here. My mother has a master's degree in Food Science. She could be a liscensed nutritionist. And therefore, we have the worst family eating habits in America. I suppose it's better than my sister's nutritionist friend who only eats peas, but so far I've had McDonalds (first time in three months) and Chinese food. Breakfast is slated to be McDonalds again. Ugh. Just add it to the pile of bacon that I visualize following me while I run.

So there is no way to make coffee in this house without noise and someone needs to mail in (or sneak in) some green vegetables. Or some fresh fruit. Or at least some vitamins . . . bring some vitamins if you come.

And Mr. Crabbypants is hooked up to his slurpee pump and has pants on . . . progress.