don't ever forget the coffee

Don't you hate it when you go to the grocery store and walk out without the one thing you really needed?

This happened to me on Sunday. Yes, I got milk and cream, ground beef and frozen peas {for the tater tot casserole I was planning to make}, fruits and vegetables for snacks.

All those things are fine and dandy and are certainly making packing my lunch bag easier.

But I walked out of the store without coffee.

I didn't realize this until I was home again and had stepped into the laziness vortex that inevitably exists on summer Sunday afternoons—centralized, I think, on my balcony with the Sunday paper and/or a good book.

How could I possibly leave then? How would I ever make it back to the car and all the way to the store? It sounded more like a journey for Ulysses, the original guy or James Joyce's guy who lives through the longest day ever {at least it seems like the longest day ever to an English major trying to understand the book}.

I couldn't possibly make it, and then I remembered this other time that I ran out of coffee. That time, I used instant coffee and proclaimed it not "that bad."

As a caveat, I was also recovering from the plague the last time I had instant coffee: I was still coughing in that way that makes people edge away from you, and if you're coughing that much, how much should you trust your taste buds? They are covered in germs and mucus, and are most likely looking a bit harried after being assaulted so much by the loud hacking.

Not "that bad"?!? Yesterday, when I tried my instant coffee trick again, I had a sitcom worthy reaction. Where are the cameras when you need them? Obviously, not in my apartment at 4:30am. Thank heavens.

One sip and I spit it out in the sink. Not that bad?!?

I felt regret for the energy I had used heating up the water to make that sludge. Sorry, Earth, for adding to your demise by using electricity to make something that never should've been made in the first place. To make up for it, I will sit in the dark for the next three nights. {Oh, right, like that's going to happen. Did you hear that I just got the Internet? And with the Internet and my fancy TV, I can stream TV show like that quirky British series Outnumbered? Me, sit in the dark not consuming energy? Give me some time to get over the wonder that is the Internet right in your very own home.}

Let's assume the obvious here: My tastes have been refined over the last two years, and I now accept nothing but the best coffee. You know, the kind you can get for $5 at Trader Joe's.

Or let's assume that I make really poor judgment calls about taste when recovering from illness. Yeah, that one is probably a better assumption here.

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In case you're concerned, I did buy coffee after work yesterday. And flowers. And cheese. And this quince paste to eat with the cheese. And ciabatta for the cheese and the quince paste. And olive oil.

And that, my friends, is why you always remember to buy the most important thing on your list when you're at the grocery store: because if you forget it, when you go back for it, you'll be suckered into buying many other things that you might need, as if you're trying to reassure that one item that you didn't really forget it in the first place. See, look at all these other things I bought, coffee! Don't be mad at me for forgetting about you! I wanted to give you more time to hang out on your shelf.

The fact that I attempted to reassure my coffee's emotions by buying more stuff should tell you that really, I should never go a day without coffee again. It might be the thing that's holding in my apparent urge to give emotions to inanimate objects.