Less Hustle More Coffee

Thank God for Saturdays! But how hard is it to make a cup of coffee? I’ve made coffee now for 40 years and only a very few mornings did it malfunction. George and I are 0 for 3 this morning!

1. For whatever reason, I failed to put water in this morning. I know that coffee takes water. So it is Alzheimers? Did the cat distract me? Was I just so excited about having a weekend with no responsibilities so I could get my life together? Am I just too worried about quarter end? Or is it the excitement over the coming snow? Whatever the reason, I failed to put water in and just added coffee, hit the button, and began doing laundry.
2. George comes in and says “what’s up with the coffee?”. I say “whaddya mean”? He says “it’s cold from yesterday”. Baffled, I realized I had put the coffee in but didn’t put water in so it was huffing and spitting and nothing was squeezing out. So George puts in water, hits the ON button and goes to the back of the house.
3. I come out of the laundry room with clothes and discover coffee on the counter EVERYWHERE and shout “oh no” and throw the clothes over a chair and race for towels as the coffee reaches the edge. The coffee is squirting horizontally out of the top like someone shooting a water gun filled with coffee instead of going down into the pot! I hit the OFF button to stop the spraying. I realize that George had not put the pot in the proper position so coffee was squirting sideways. George races in and says “Oh good, it’s just the coffee, the cat didn’t poop in the house, so that is good!” We reposition the coffee pot and finish the clean up and each resume our tasks at hand as we await the wonderful hot morning brew. I murmer something about being 0 for 2.
4. About 10 minutes passes, I’m changing the sheets on the bed when George comes in with a small white cup of coffee for each of us about half filled. He says, “well, I think we are 0 for 3” because we forgot to turn the coffee pot back ON so nothing else brewed. But this much had managed to get in the bottom of the pot from the squirting. So we are enjoying our little cup now. I suppose we will let the restaurant make the next cup when we do brunch today out, lol. Perhaps they will have a better hand at making it today.

All I can say is Wow. We manage to do so much in life. We have 4 degrees between us, have professional positions, have raised a wonderful daughter, consider ourselves to have fairly good noggins most of the time and have accomplished much in our lifetime, but between the two of us have proven today that it is a challenge for us to simply make a cup of coffee.

George’s Reading List

You asked for it and I’m providing! Someone wanted to know what all George is reading. So here is a list of recent books that he has read in the past few weeks OR is reading currently. I’m amazed he could list them off the top of his head. I would have to go look at my stack. However, I don’t have all the authors on these, but shouldn’t be hard to find or google if interested. I believe you will be amused at his eclectic interests. He often has 5 or 6 that he reads at once so that he picks the one that suits his mood.

• Biography of Jerry West – about a basketball player
• Talking Guitar
• The Drinkable Globe (an alcohol book, lol)
• Amazing Spiderman Omnibus (comic book)
• Louis Grizzard’s “I haven’t understood Anything Since 1962”
• A Stephen Coontz spy thriller – sorry no title – it’s in his car and he couldn’t remember

And drum roll…..the best saved for last:

• “Who Cut the Cheese?: A Cultural History of Farts”

Aren’t you glad you asked? George is. He is thrilled you all wanted to know and doubly thrilled that he happened to be reading the “fart book” at the time!

Forecast Changes

So the forecast has now changed from 5-8 inches to 1-3 inches. lol. I have hauled half my office home to work for Monday. I was going to go ahead and set up the office and be ready to go for Monday. Right now I think I’ll just wait and see. I’d rather go in if I can, to work, because work is easier from there. It’s pain in the butt usually from home and everything takes twice as long. Mainly because I can’t print and partly because a lot of my files are at work.

This morning we are going to take neighbors for brunch and we are looking forward to that. Despite the coffee antics this morning, I have at least changed sheets and rebooted laundry, however, we have created even more laundry now, so coffee soaked towels are next on the laundry queue.

Excitement

Do you know how excited I am to have this day. I know that everyone that claws at my time would love to have a piece of my weekend, but everyone is going to have to be patient while I pull my life back together from the past month of __________________(fill in the blank here: FT work 9-10 hours a day plus commute, 2 travel trips, 3 sets of family in town, fun, shopping for/preparing for/and hosting Christmas, some surprise virus/flu like illness for both of us :-O, running Mom errands, New Year holiday, burying a family pet (that was so sad for all), work stress, time stress, “drama with ya mama stress”, and five family birthdays). I am sure I could go on, but that’ll do it. So YES, I NEED this mental health weekend. I’ll be able to come on strong, come Monday. When you feel OWNED by the world, it’s time to take a step back because YOU are NO good for NO one if you are not in a good spot yourself.

I don’t think that even our own family realizes the time pressures and stresses we have been under – even though we have had some fun times we have really been moving at lightning speed not getting time to do much more than sleep, eat, and do it all again. I know a lot of people go through this at the holidays. But it seemed to be on steroids this year. We did make it fun but it has been a busy wild ride of a month. We got through it. Not through Quarter End/Year End yet. Still undetermined how that will play out as next week have like zero time to work on it, so some weekend work for me next week. I’m just not set up at all for success next week. I’m busting my butt but even with weekends not quite sure how it will all play out. I will die trying. The January trip thing is just not a good month for me to travel. This job is never good for me to be off but January makes it very hard. We are shooting for Thanksgiving week again this year. It seemed to be perfect the time before. The lesser of evils.

Alright, so I’m off to get some things done in my life: Organization, going through mail, putting up things, cleaning things and getting things back to normal. Doing all these things that have been calling my name as I see them in my house. What a gift of time the Lord has given us in this weekend. Thank you Lord for this little hibernation weekend! Thank you again and again!