My Dread Dark Master

For the last six months, my wife has been unable to follow her carreer much. With Bear absolutely refusing to take a bottle (believe me, we tried everything) it was pretty much impossible for her to leave him with me or anyone else for longer than an hour or two. Now, this has had an impact upon the family, in addition to the huge stressors that it has put on her. Combine the loss of her income with the new house, the renovations to that house, the increased bills associated with that house, the new baby needs... you get the idea. The recession may not have hit us personally, but we hit our own little financial crises at the ole homestead.

So we did what everyone does (or at least those who don't invent pyramid schemes to become rich) - we tightened our belts. No more lunches out for us. No more renting movies (though we managed to "find" a few on this wacky internet thing), no more dinners, cutting back on cell phone bills and changing the grocery shopping and meal making habits. Its this last one that hit the hardest.

My wife and I love coffee. Love may not be a strong enough term. If I had to chose between a life without sex and one without coffee, I would need a few minutes to think it over. But we are coffee snobs. We grind out own beans. Our coffee maker was partly chosen based on the temperature of water it uses. You get the idea. I even have a supply of green (unroasted) coffee beans so that we can make our own roasts.

But the weather had been too cold to roast the coffee outside, and my wife hates the smell and smoke of doing it inside. So we bought cheap coffee. Usually we get the fantastic Just Us coffee blends. But Superstore's "Arabica" was almost 1/3 the price. We bought a bag.

Damn.

I've had to add vanilla, cinamon, nutmeg, you name it, just to make this stuff palatable. And to make matters worse, I couldn't rationalize just throwing it out. We suffered. We wept. We drank it all.

But this weekend, a miraculous thing occurred. The sun came out, and the temperature hit the +9 mark. Moments after getting home from work on Friday, I was on the deck, popcorn maker in one hand, bag of organic green beans from Mexico in the other.

Sunday morning was the best morning in a very, very long time. The smell of the fantastic coffee wafted through the air like incence to the gods. The taste - nectar.

Coffee, don't ever leave me again. I'm not sure I can make it.