This morning my coffeemaker broke. It is (was?) a black Mr. Coffee 12-cup Programmable coffee maker. I set it to go on at 6:20 this morning so I could wake up to warm (albeit old — I made like 8 cups yesterday and still had 4 in there, so I figured I could just heat them up for today. I understand coffee snobs and health freaks will think this is gross and disgusting but I don’t mind it and it seems cost-efficient) coffee this morning. GRANTED I did not get out of bed til well after 8:30 despite several alarms, text messages, and the coffee-maker noise (click … click …. click ….). NOTE, however, that there was no coffee-maker smell — and that’s generally the magic ticket (this actually explains everything, i.e. my not getting up early enough to get work done the last two days). Note also that while I love caffeine and swear by it, I’m not addicted to it in a strict-habit way, where I drink it at the same time every day and if that doesn’t happen the world is over. It’s more like I just kind of keep a running intake of it, however random and unscheduled, however replaced with Coke Zeros and Chai lattes and/or Bailey’s when needed/desired. Anyways I freak out, check the hot plate (not hot), check the plug (plugged in — plus the light’s on). I empty the pot and filter and do a test run on a new pot and nope — not happening. No water pumping through anything and nothing steaming or getting hot. Once coffeemaker brokenness is verified, emotional trauma ensues.

First order of business: complain to roommates. Wail in hailways. Mope around the kitchen. Etcetera. Still don’t feel better, coffeemaker still glaring at me, broken, from across the room. Meanwhile emotional frustration is snowballing inside. I can feel it. Plus it’s all wrapped up in “I feel stupid that this is all about a coffeemaker,” even though I actually can feel that it’s about more than a coffeemaker, I just haven’t gotten there, yet. Tyranny of the urgent, immediate, etc.

Next step in this: text everyone I know best. The people I can complain about this to with them taking me equal amounts of totally seriously and totally not seriously at all. This includes boyfriend, Dad, Mom, brother 1, brother 2, old roommate, best friend 1, best friend 2, Chloe, and Juliet.

First response: Dad. “This is an opportunity to rise above coffee. There is no need to succumb to false rush of caffine . Explore your mind in an unaltered state.”

..sigh. Dad is always right.

Anyways. Next, boyfriend texts: “Did you just send that as a mass text?”

Then old roommate: “Nooooooooo”.  She understands.

Then Mom calls. “Here’s what you should do. You should go to Starbucks and treat yourself to a really good coffee.” Mom is brilliant except I tell her Dad just said the opposite. How are they married/that’s why they are married. She laughs and says well maybe I should switch to tea. We chit chat for a few minutes and go our separate ways, i.e., hang up the phone.

Then brother 2 calls (birth order, ok? not value statement or narrative chronology). “Do you want to talk about it?” I just kind of grumble, wahwahwah. “Do you want to sort through the emotions?” He laughs and his tone is absolutely mocking me but I also kind of do want to talk about it, kind of do want to sort through the emotions. So we do. I tell him about how it’s just so disheartening that I’m this little consumer white girl who just buys coffee makers and has no idea how or where they’re made or how they work and so when something goes wrong I have no idea where to even start to figure out how to fix it. I tell him about how I already looked online and figured out it’s an issue with the thermal fuse, but that it’ll cost more money to find and buy and ship one of those than to actually go buy a new one, and I whine whine whine about how that’s what I’m probably gonna do and that’s what I always do and that’s what we always do as a culture, just like to whine and tell our whiny stories and then just buy new stuff when our stuff breaks, and what happened to hard work in this country and manual labor and actually doing things with your hands, and this is why Wall.E is a scary movie is because it’s actually gonna happen, we’re actually gonna be forced off the planet or die or something because our trash will just get so much so quick that we can’t handle it and it overtakes everything.

“So the problem here is not my coffee intake or not but globalization,” I summarize.

“The problem here is globalization.” He laughs. “So guess how many miles I ran today?”

“Six,” I say.

“How’d you know?” He says.

I don’t know. You get things right sometimes.

 

Neither Derek, best friend 1, best friend 2, Chloe, or Juliet get back to me. That’s fine, I’m sure they have class or sleep or something good to be doing. I say that not sarcastically at all. A 50% response rate is fantastic when everyone responding makes you feel like 100%.

Plus I have a couple options here:

1. Decaf entirely

2. Let Zach (co-worker, tells me “I can take a look at it. I used to fix coffee makers w my dad”) or Eduardo (roomate’s boyfriend — roommate says “Call Eduardo! He can fix anything!”) try to fix the beast

3. Switch to French press or drip coffee

4. Replace the thing (probably not… “Buy one better than that,” boyfriend texts me later. “Don’t be scared to spend some money, is what I’m saying.”)

5. Upgrade a little

6. Upgrade a LOT

7. Either way, whichever way — BE THANKFUL FOR EVERYTHING