Tag: coffee

An unexpected vice

April 21st, 2015

I like coffee too much. I am dependent on it. I consider it a vice because I crave it and feel like life would just not be as pleasant without it. It’s part of my daily rituals: coffee in the morning, coffee in the afternoon. On special occasions, when my husband and I are on a date, one of my favorite treats, one of my favorite indulgences, is having a cup of coffee with dessert. It’s a small thing, but is the perfect end to a fine meal, and is the part that is most special to me. It’s the one thing about an evening meal that I don’t do in my normal life.

My husband doesn’t think coffee is a vice. He does not drink coffee, which may or may not be relevant. But he considers a vice to be something harmful. I’m sure he is right, and I’m sure coffee has some disadvantages or health risks, but I certainly wouldn’t call it a danger.

Feeling dependent on something though – even something harmless like coffee – makes it feel like a vice to me. Maybe I consider a vice to be something I do that feels like it is out of my control. Which really is probably more the definition of addiction: being powerless over a substance. Like I am with coffee.

I’ve tried switching to tea by it’s not hearty enough. It’s not thick enough. It’s not dark or potent enough. When I tried to switch to tea I ended up drinking a cup of tea and then drinking a cup of coffee. Or sometimes I’d drink multiple cups of tea, hoping the caffeine would take care of the coffee craving, but it didn’t. I could jitter across a room jacked up on the caffeine from a whole pot of tea, and I’d still want coffee. It’s not just the drug in it, it’s the everything: the flavor, the richness, the ritual, the strength. I am powerless over it. I succumb.

vice n. 1. an immoral or evil habit or practice… 5. a fault, defect, or shortcoming 6. a bad habit, as in a horse.

Note: Given these definitions, I agree with my husband: coffee is not a vice.

Photo credit: Colombian Coffee by McKay Savage

For the month of April, I will be publishing a 10-minute free write each day, initiated by a prompt from my prompt box. Minimal editing. No story. Just trying to get back into the writing habit. Thank you to Lori Carlson for the prompt “An unexpected vice.”
We rearranged our furniture and a new ritual was born

October 21st, 2013

We rearranged our furniture. Now my writing desk is downstairs, in our den, away from the stove and my French press. The first morning I woke to write, it was 20 minutes before I got to my keyboard after filling the tea kettle, grinding beans, waiting for water to boil, then waiting for coffee to steep, then doctoring it up to ready it for drinking, then carrying my steaming mug downstairs to the basement where I finally pushed the space bar and my blank screen blinked to life.

Half my writing time was gone before it even began.

It used to be, when the computer was around the corner from the kettle, that I could write between the waiting. Now, I needed a new routine or the new furniture pattern would not work. That evening, I surveyed my new writing space – a carpeted, wood-panelled, finished-basement room with a futon, a TV cabinet, a sliding glass door, and two book shelves – for a solution to my coffee problem. Under a window, behind our kids’ short legged craft table, was an electrical outlet. I pulled my mini coffee pot off the storage shelf in the laundry room and placed it on the table, seven steps from my writing chair.

Now, every evening, after we’ve eaten and washed dishes, while our children brush their teeth and don their pajamas, I grind coffee for the following morning. I love the ritual of it, of measuring and grinding in our clean kitchen at bedtime, my mind at rest after a full day of family living. The only light is from the bulb over the stove, and there’s a serenity in the tidy, well-used, put-to-bed kitchen.

In the warm half-light of the stove bulb, I think about tomorrow’s practice as I fill the coffee carafe to the 2-cup mark, collect the lid from the coffee grinder, which now contains fresh grinds from two scoops of beans, and walk the carafe and the beans downstairs to the basement. Upstairs, our children lay snuggled under comforters, with their bedside lamps on, reading. I place a filter in the basket, pour the pre-measured water into the reservoir, the pre-measured grounds into the the white paper filter, and set the carafe on the warming plate. I close the lid, check that the machine is plugged in, and resist the urge to press the “On” button. I then turn off the light, and climb the stairs to kiss our children good night.

Sometimes I think this new ritual of pre-making my coffee, of closing out my day with preparation for a new one, of granting myself this happy moment of “what will I write tomorrow?”, is as satisfying as the writing itself. The rituals are part of the package. Part of what make me love what I do. One of my favorite parts of the writing life.
RIP Perfect Green Mug

July 9th, 2013

I sat down at the keyboard today with my afternoon coffee, and when I brought the mug to my mouth, my tongue felt an odd texture right on the lip of the cup. I pulled the cup away to investigate, thinking there would be a clump of cemented – what? There was nothing that could have cemented to my mug since I used it this morning. I’ve worked with blueberries today, and flour, hummus, and pen and ink. Any of those would leave a clump of mush, not of concrete. What could be caked on my coffee mug?

And then I saw it. Right there. Right at my sipping spot, where my lips wrap around the rim when I hold the mug’s perfect shape in my right hand, and my tongue pushes against green glazed ceramic to ramp warm coffee into my mouth, there is a chip. A jagged, 3mm, sharp-edged, indented oval of white ceramic where there should be smooth pine green glaze.

A Facebook friend suggested I hold the mug in my other hand to drink, and I tried that. I did. But it’s just not the same. The mug goes at the upper left of my keyboard, with the swooping handle facing right. When I need a sip, my right hand automatically goes for the handle’s hand-crafted curve – two fingers wrap around the sweeping green ribbon, two fingers lever under its downward slope, and my thumb rests on top. I bring the cup to my lips, and – my tongue hits that chip.

Big deal, you say. Use one of the other gorgeous, hand glazed mugs in your cupboard. Or that graceful white porcelain one. But the white one is too delicate – I can’t hold it by its body without burning myself. The blue one’s belly is too cavernous – my coffee gets cold. The dragonfly is too rough. The striped one is too small. The white marshmallowy one is great for hot cocoa, but I don’t know. It’s a lazy, your-work-is-done, lie around and sip a hot drink with Baileys kind of mug.

My green mug, though – the one my husband bought from a potter in Sarasota to replace a different earthenware mug I had dropped – it is perfect in every way. I can hold it by its body or its handle, depending on whether I want to warm my hands. Its vessel is a straight column – no pot bellies that let heat escape – of just the right height and diameter to hold the contents of my French press plus two tablespoons of cream and keep it warm for the amount of time it takes me to drink its volume. I can grab the mug’s wide ribbon handle with my whole hand, holding it tight in my right fist while my left hand cups the body for warmth, or I can grasp it more gently, minimizing contact with the heat as I do when I lift it from its place by my keyboard.

Sigh. It’s going to take me a while to find the mug to replace this one. A mug that is beautiful, and the right size and shape, that fits my hand and my aesthetic, and inspires me when I write both in the morning and the afternoon. Until I find that perfect one, I think I’m feeling this one from Lenny Mud:

Hemingway Writer’s mug from Lenny Mud

As Rebecca Schinsky wrote in her Book Riot roundup of the best coffee mugs for book lovers, “This mug will hold your morning coffee and your afternoon whiskey.”

Or your afternoon coffee plus whiskey, which is the combination I need on this sad day. RIP, perfect green mug.
Sunday coffee

January 27th, 2013

You know what I love about Sundays? I don’t exercise first thing, or make breakfast, or pack lunches. The first thing I do after peeing and brushing my teeth is to go down to the basement and get my 5-cup coffee pot, stick a filter in, and bring it up to the kitchen. Because on Sundays, instead of making one cup of coffee in my French press, I make a whole pot.

During the week, coffee is a reward. I’ve learned not to make it until after I’ve packed lunches and bundled children and kissed my husband goodbye. Nothing starts the day worse than making coffee too early and having to drink it, standing up, while I’m rushing to comb hair, or make sandwiches, or clean up spilled orange juice. Morning coffee should be drunk sitting down, with the paper, or good company, with a journal, or alone, staring out a window.

During the week, there isn’t time to lounge around all morning drinking coffee this way. I drink one cup in the morning, and one cup in the afternoon, both at the end of work that had to be done that day. Both with a small side of words – a newspaper, a book, a blank computer screen waiting to be filled.

But on Sunday, our rest day, the thing I look forward to most is that full pot of coffee. I love the ritual that is different from my French press ritual, the satisfaction of knowing that once I fill the basket, and pour the water, and press the on button, I can keep filling my cup til the pot is gone. That I can drink my coffee with leisure, sitting in a comfy chair instead of at the kitchen table, feet propped up on the ottoman, reading the Dear Annie letters in the paper, watching squirrels out the window, writing about Sunday coffee.

Tag: coffee

An unexpected vice

We rearranged our furniture and a new ritual was born

RIP Perfect Green Mug

Sunday coffee