Wednesday, May 09, 2007

eight o'clock

No, it isn't eight o'clock right now. It's actually almost ten, in the AM, and I've been up for nearly an hour. That might sound crazy to you, and it sounds a little crazy to me. I try like hell never to be up this early.

Lately, I have been trying to wake earlier. I feel I mostly just need to get in the habit. I'm of two minds about this. If I sleep too much then I awake tired, groggy and often prone to bouts of depression. I'm not sure why that is, but I've learned over time that it's true. If I awake too early, I start the day angry, almost excited about the prospect of shouting at someone. It goes away fairly quickly if I'm left alone, but that's a bit much to ask, and it's more than a bit presumptuous to expect with the boys around.

Of course, my being a bitch if I don't get the proper amount of sleep is not the point of this post. I'm a bitch in more ways than one, regardless of time awake or amount of sleep had.

I've discussed in recent posts Momma and I driving recently to Indianapolis. The night before we left we celebrated our anniversary with a fairly high priced meal followed by some high priced drinks. We also paid a number of bills on top of the three tanks of gas we used in driving to and from and around Indianapolis as well as eating out there. That's left a huge gap in our budget for which we've paid the last couple of weeks.

Some of the budget issues involved buying lesser products, and most of these were ignorable. We've been drinking Miller High Life for most of two weeks rather than indulge our usual beer snobbery. We even bought the cheap eggs when we ran out of the good kind. But the lowest blow by far came only a couple of nights ago. We needed coffee, and while we could have spent only slightly more, Momma decided to go with the Eight O'Clock brand. I could almost make up a god and curse his name that such a travesty exists. It's soooo disgusting, even to look at, the beans a uniform poo brown and also uniformly stale. This coffee was likely roasted weeks before it was packaged and then sat for another week or so in a warehouse. It almost makes me want to cry. It even smells bad.

We usually have our pick of coffees. Our local food co-op, home to overpriced items of all sorts, has a delightful assortment of coffees. The beans are, for the most part, roasted locally and are also very fresh. They still retain a lovely luster and sheen regardless of the amount of roasting. We prefer a dark roast, and the sale coffee at the co-op lately has been a perfect example of a great coffee.

Momma gets paid Friday, and the first thing I plan to do is pack a bag full of Yirgacheffe, fly home as fast as the ol' Honda will take me, throw straight to hell whatever unfortunate beans remain from the Eight O'Clock, and grind myself a good cup. Until then I will damn the crap coffee and lament our misfortune that overspending has heaped on our heads.

1 comment:

Ren Allen said...

Ok, if you all have budget constraints in the future (and I'm not at the time) I will happily send you some fair trade, non-stale coffee beans.

Cheap beer is one thing, but bad coffee is a crime! ack.