Coffee (No Coffee) Adventure

I don't have a lot today, but I didn't want to go too long without spinning a yarn or chewing the fat with my blogroll friends, so I'm going to extract a story I told in an email yesterday and share it with the whole world.

By some miracle, everyone in my house actually slept in until 9:30 or so yesterday morning (as contrasted with the 6-something usual awakening time and the 4AM alarm that was necessary one day last week.)  I had so many dreams during this brief respite from sleep deprivation that I thought I would never return to my right mind.  Then I stumbled into the kitchen to be the household hero and pour the coffee and therefore, start the day.  Then Coffeemaker Disaster ensued.

The first problem encountered was that I put the water but not the coffee in it Friday night (I always set it up the night before.) So I awoke to a nice pot of hot water (better than waking up to one drip of coffee due to forgetting the water.  And better than awakening to a thin sheen of coffee coating the counter and some of the floor.  Both of those have happened before.)  No big deal; I fixed this, but it just hissed and shut off.  My poor husband was going to have to be hospitalized due to no coffee; he was about to have a mental breakdown.  10AM on Saturday and no coffee?  I got ready to go out and buy a new one.  The dog was nearly crying, seeing me put my shoes on (he has separation anxiety.) But then I tried it one last time...

I don't know what happened but what it boils down to (pun intended) is that it has a stupid on/off switch that lights up, but who can see it glow in the daytime?  Everyone in the house agreed that they, also, could not tell which side is off and which is on.  So while I thought it was broken and was ready to go out and buy a new one, I had merely and misguidedly flipped the switch to "off," when I thought it was "on."  They agreed that it's an understandable mistake and that I am not senile or crazy.  Yay!  Coffee for everyone!  (Well,  just me and the mister.  The kids don't drink coffee, although we keep offering it to them.)

A suggestion from one of the kids has become reality; we now have Sharpie-scribbled words on the coffeemaker:  "On" and "Off."

Oh, but time for a minor postscript:

No coffee essay is complete without the recycled story of legend in which I bought a big can of ground coffee from Sam's Club, just the same as every other can I always bought (or so I thought.  This is the foreshadowing, here.  "So I thought.")

Sometime during the next week the headaches became recurrent and unbearable.  I remember taking two ibuprofen and it didn't even touch the pain.  I could only stand still and stare at fixed points on the floor.  No movement, no talking, no lying down.  The ride to the urgent care center was rough, to say the least (I could not drive; I had to be driven.)  Two shots in the hip later, I was sleeping peacefully on the exam room table.

The diagnosis?  I had bought decaf coffee without realizing it.  Same can, same words, same color... just one little word that I missed.  I wonder who else was victimized by this deceptive marketing, this mislabeling of daily maintenance drug?

Does anyone else have any interesting coffee stories?  No?  I didn't think anyone could top those (well, the second one is impressive; the first is merely pathetic.)   Send 'em in, though, if you've got 'em!