Clankety Clack!

Who would have thought that a cup of coffee could drive a person insane? Listen up. I'll tell you how it most certainly can.

I have never drank an entire cup of coffee in my life. I have tasted it on a couple of occasions, but I just don't like the taste of it . . . so no coffee for me. None. Ever. No coffee. I stick to my morning orange juice for my pick-me-up.

Sometimes Mom #2 will drink a cup of coffee or two during the winter, if she's working outside, as we Texans require adequate warmth from the inside out if the temperature ever dares to dip below 40 degrees. This doesn't happen too often and I don't like the way her breath smells after she drinks coffee, so she usually just sticks to her delicious homemade Mexican hot chocolate. That's a whole different post, so enough about that.

For the most part though, during the decade or so that we've been together, there's been no coffee in this house.

Enter my Mom.

She loves coffee. She usually drinks about 10 cups a day. Due to her new prescription cocktail, she's been put on decaff, but she's making up for that by just having 40,000 cups a day. I'm sure it's terrible for her, but it keeps her from harassing me all day long somewhat sane, so we're just letting her drink herself into oblivion have as many as she likes.

It's not the actual drinking of the coffee that bothers me. It's the coffee preparation ritual. She is so LOUD! Here's the rundown:

• She makes a big pot of coffee three or four times a day and then microwaves single cups all day long. . . so she slams the microwave door shut and yanks it open a hundred thousand times a day.
  

• She has become addicted to one specific coffee mug, so she has to rinse it out not to mention waste gallons and gallons of water a million kajillion times a day.

• She has to measure her cream and sugar just so, so she has to drag out, open, close and shove back the ceramic canisters across my counter tops fifty-eleven times a day.

• Don't forget the stirring. She has to use a metal teaspoon against a glass mug and stir stir stir a bazillion stirs for each of her cups of coffee (I think we've already addressed how many that is.)

• And finally . . . and I know you knew this was coming . . . the slurping! Yes the slurping! OH THE SLURPING! All day long and all night strong: slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp-slurp! If it's that darn good, JUST DRINK IT! She has about a hundred million gazillion slurps per cup.

Did I forget to mention that my bedroom is directly outside of the kitchen?

My Mom keeps extremely odd hours. So several times a night, after I've fallen deep into sleep, I am awakened by this coffee-preparation ritual. That's actually fine. It gives me a chance to go to the bathroom a few gagillion times a night so that I never have to worry about stretching out my bladder ever again in this lifetime.

What really gets my goat is that she has to get up and do this same clankety-clack ritual at about 6:30, 7:00 and 7:30 every morning. I hate being awakened by noise. I like to wake up peacefully and quietly at 8:00 every morning. I know that's not early to a lot of you, but it's early enough for me. And it's quiet. It's the specific time of day in this house when no one else is doing anything. I require peace and quiet or I wake up and instantly become mean as heck and proceed to take it out on my entire family all the live-long day. So everyone except my super self centered Mother usually goes out of their way to keep the morning routine quiet and drama free.

So if you wonder why I've been so sporadic in my blogging lately, it's because I've been in an extremely bad mood for 10 or 12 weeks.

But there is light at the end of the tunnel. I'm not quite counting my chickens before they hatch . . . but . . . it has been rumored that someone may be moving out in about 30 days. I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm keeping quiet until I have more details, but I will go ahead and take those good vibes now. In case my point is being lost in my subtlety, I said NOW!



Until next time . . .