old coffee

I woke up yesterday at about 12:30 pm after a very long and restful sleep, broken only a couple of times for long slurps of water from the bathroom tap so as not to rouse myself any more than necessary by going up and down the stairs. As is my custom if I don't have to be anyplace right after I wake up, I went downstairs and brewed a pot of coffee with the last of my precious beans. (Random fact: In the 15 and 1600s, if a Turkish man could not keep enough coffee in his household, his wife would have cause to divorce him.) Drinking three large cups, I promptly forgot about the remaining brew as I went about the business of my day.

Fast-forward to about 4:30 this morning. Still awake, and resigned to the fact that I will be awake for quite a while, I decide upon a late-night snack and make my way down to the fridge. Lo and behold, the coffeepot is still on. I turn it off, carve out a slice of gigantic, greasy pizza, and return to my room to read.

A few hours later, I have finished reading "Magical Thinking," a memoir I devoured like a pint of Ben and Jerry's after a long night of smoking weed. The book was written by Augusten Burroughs, whom I now love and admire with all my heart. (Obligatory blog link here.) Needless to say, it was a fantastic book, spurring me onward to either read or borrow the remaining two books of his that I have not read. I also suddenly feel compelled to finish reading the collected works of David Sedaris.

My task complete, and the sun now risen, I feel like I should pretend that it is a new day, and I had plenty of rejuvenating sleep instead of fascinating bookreading. I trod downstairs and microwave the last bit of super-dense coffee, adding a bit of water to replace the liquid that evaporated over the 16 hours the coffee was resting, waiting for a drinker.

I've lived in a couple of places for short enough periods of time to never really get acquainted with the neighborhood. I don't want to let that happen here; for one, I hope to stay in this house for a good while, and for two, this neighborhood is much too pleasant to remain a stranger. So, I took one of our newly-acquired lawn chairs and sat in our backyard as the sun warmed my face, sipping my super-coffee, listening to the birds, and admiring all our little trees.

The coffee cup I purchased in SF is missing. One of my roommates has apparently used it and not returned it to the cupboard yet; I am mildly disappointed, as I was hoping it would become MY COFFEE CUP. I even got my mother a matching one from this awful little tourist trap by the bay called "After the Quake Shopping Zone." As I understood it, the quake in '89 left the nearby freeway in pancake form atop another section of freeway, causing massive damage. So, if the only thing left After the Quake is rubble, what exactly am I buying? Why would you name your store that? And why would it be so successful? Regardless, I am drinking coffee from one of the big black mugs plentiful in our kitchen, and the coffee is so thick it looks like the cup has a false bottom that slips further and further away the more that I drink. As I reach the final sip, the thought, the feeling, and the retching all combine into one certain truth: this coffee is shockingly, startlingly awful.