Bright Spark
Prompt :
Your coffee grinder goes on the blink at 7:00 AM, the stores only open at 8:30 AM and you have to be at work by 8:15 AM. What do you do to get your essential morning hit? Tell us a story!
Have you ever just had one of "those" days? You know those anything-that-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong, Murphy day’s. Guess you have, otherwise you wouldn’t be laughing right now (and you are aren’t you?). Well, anyway, a few weeks ago I woke up to one of those "unkind" days. Disaster trailed me like a ticking bomb. It all started with the dishwasher flooding out the kitchen. What more could go wrong at seven in the morning on a workday?
Well…
I waded my way through toe-deep water to my coffee station. Desperately, I reached for all my coffee parahanellia. I knew that all I needed to do was get the coffee started; everything else would then "come to me" like a waft of goodwill on the swirl of aroma in the air (I know, I know, but insanity runs in the family)
I’m a bean person. I like my coffee freshly ground. There are other types of people in the world, but you can’t worry about all the crazies, now can you? I pulled my grinder into a sweet embrace, and the bottom (you know that sort of tray "thingy" at its base) just literally fell away into the foamy water that was doing a vigorous rising act all by itself around my bare feet.
Woe!
Most people know that electricity and water don’t mix. Hell, even I know that they don’t, but on that particular nutty Monday, I could only think about a steaming cup of "compensation." I swished about and retrieved the blender from its cozy cupboard and set it up to "blend" my beans. Good idea, hey? No, I’d put my hand into the foamy water to balance myself while fetching the blender (it was in the lowest cupboard. close to the floor). bad idea!
Sparks flew, wires sizzled, and the blender puffed, huffed, and died! Geez, it was a close call. I looked at the poor thing and realized that coffee was a long way off. However, I’m an innovative type of woman, and there’s nothing quite like being denied to get me going.
Rolling pin? I’ve seen women use rolling pins on YouTube to all kinds of good and valuable effects. I settled on the rolling pin.
At first, it was just me and the pin up against the beans, but I quickly realized that beans disintegrate when smacked with a rolling pin. sprinkle like fairy dust on all surfaces except the surface required.
Double woe!
But, as I’ve said, I’m an inspired coffee addict, and very little can prevent an addict from being inanely obtuse.
I found a plastic bag! (You know? You’ve seen those videos on YouTube, too.)
I put the beans in the bag. I captured them. Hehe!
I rolled that pin over the bag like my life depended on it (and it probably did).
Let me tell you a wicked, sad tale. Let me tell you a horror story...
The beans were ground alright; they were all in one place. Everything seemed un-Murphy-like. Except...except, when I tried to free the beans into the press so that I could just add water and be done with it, tiny molecules of plastic had taken up residence alongside the bean grounds.
Look, it’s okay, you know? I learned my lesson - I took a course on dishwasher repair and copied the neighbor’s cell phone number to my contacts.
He’s a coffee addict, too!
(You know?)