Coffee Crazy Cranky

My coffee maker stopped working this morning in the way I’ve depended on it for years. Nooooooooooooooooooo! It made those wonderful brewing sounds for the appropriate amount of time and produced only two cups of melt-your-spoon-in-it coffee. The machine was still chugging away like The Little Engine that Could, but it couldn’t.

If my coffee machine cared, it would be fearful of my threatening stares that pierce its reservoir to the very heart of its heating coil and plumbing. It just sits on my counter still mostly filled with water, housing soggy grounds in its basket. Can a coffee maker be passive-aggressive?

I want to cry. Here I sit sucking on my huge mug of instant coffee. I’m desperate and so glad I had this jar of coffee crystals that was sitting all alone, ignored for years. It will do as a stopgap. I want my freshly-brewed coffee!

I already moused through several online reviews of coffee makers that made me crazy and ran the gamut of “best little machine ever” to “grounds in my cup and no one likes crunchy coffee.” I began to wonder who invented this usual bright spot of my morning.

Apparently, humans have loved the coffee bean and things coffee since the sixth-century. Ingenious people have taken up the challenge to improve the delectable beverage since then. In 1908, Melitta Bentz pioneered drip coffee by utilizing blotter paper as a filter. I’m guessing many modern-day coffee drinkers have heard of the Melitta coffee maker. In 1972, the Mr. Coffee machine invented by Vincent Marotta, Sr. appeared on the scene. I was a proud owner of one of those early editions.

Take a look at this article at Encyclopedia.com for the love of coffee. Whether you just enjoy the aroma or savor the whole package, I think you’ll like it. Here’s an entertaining slide show from Good Housekeeping.com too.

I must go now and heat another mug of water (sniffle) so I can return to my quest.

Happy Writing!