Cold Pressed Coffee Morning: A Story of Woe

Kristine stumbled out of bed, her eyes half-closed from a  perfect night of slumber, cuddled up to her favorite husband - me.  In a daze, she tripped over my pants, stubbed her toe on a shoe I had tossed aside while falling into our Select Comfort bed the night before, and finally stepping squarely onto a G.I. Joe figure, the fake gun digging into the soft flesh of her perfect foot.

Cursing into the crisp morning air, she walked off the pain, stomping down the two flights of stairs.  Arriving in the kitchen, she surveyed the coffee grinder and noticed that it was empty.  Opening the cupboard where we keep the Dunn Bros beans in an air-tight container, she was horror-struck. It was empty.

No coffee!!!  

Then she remembered that a few days back, she had purchased a liter of their black as night Infinite Black cold-pressed brew.  It was in a bottle in the mini-fridge behind her, as she squatted in her white robe, a sight for anyone to behold.

Spinning around on the balls of her feet, she opened the fridge and grabbed the bottle of black, thick liquid and stood up.  Grabbing a glass, she dumped in a generous quantity of the liquid gold, capped the bottle, and returned it to the fridge.  Then she walked over to the General Electric, stainless steel, side-by-side refrigerator, opened the door with a jerk, and grabbed the creamer.  As she is known to do, she poured enough creamer into the cold-pressed coffee to turn it white, mixed it with a smooth-handled spoon from Ikea, returned the creamer to the side-by-side fridge, and lifted the glass to her beautiful lips.

Imagine a woman, standing there, looking into the glass as she tips it upward so the liquid can pour into her parted lips and tasting the...

SPLAT!  Kristine leaned over the sink and spit every last drop down the drain, stared into the glass and wondered how cold pressed coffee could taste so...rancid.

Sadly, she wasted my perfectly good oatmeal stout from The Moose Jaw in Wisconsin Dells.  I arrived home later to find my growler nearly empty.

I might have to label it more clearly next time.

Something different: What makes you happy?

Answer the following question in the comments below:

"At the end of the day, I still have..."

My answer is simple: 

Kristine (my bride of 12 years), my health, no E.D. (knock on...er...wood), Pearson Salted Nut Rolls, Schwan's strawberry ice cream, and Rwandan coffee.

Always an Obstructionist

I had to go into work today to complete an emergency project. Kristine was working, as well, so I drew the short straw to get all the kids.  As we were driving to the office, the kids begged for tunes.  I knew they wanted me to turn on a hit music station, but I didn't feel like it.  I elected for Classical Minnesota Public Radio, 99.5 FM.  As a score played, the following conversation ensued:

Felicity (6): "Hey guys!  This song is real."

Frederic (8), without skipping a beat: "No it's not!!!!"

Me (33): "Um...what does "this song is real" mean and why would you say "no it's not"?

I pestered the two with this question in several different ways because it seemed to confuse them quite thoroughly that they were being asked to explain themselves.

Felicity: "Um...I don't know.  I actually forgot."

Me: "Fred.  What does "real" mean and why did you disagree?  Felicity doesn't even know what it means."

Fred: "I don't know."

Just as I thought.  It didn't matter what Felicity said.  All that mattered, to Fred, was that there had to be a clear opposing position to any statement that she made.  He was ready, at a moment's notice, to disagree.

The boy has a job in politics.  I should start grooming him now.  

Yesterday, Kristine Left Me

At noon yesterday, my wife left me.  The love of my life, Kristine, walked out of my life.

In her hand, was a smartphone.  I looked at her face, but saw only the top of her head, the face buried in the screen.  I spoke at her for hours, her finger flicking up and down, up and down.  She had to do this, then that, then that other thing.  The flashlight was hard to find.  The alarm clock, nonexistent.

See, we hadn't moved into the 21st century yet, stuck in the past, with phones that barely knew how to text, let alone lead you, GPS style, into a muddy, rutted, cow pasture.

Years ago, I even fought the idea of cell phones at all.  I enjoyed those long car trips where nobody could reach you.  Sure, you might have run your car into a ditch in the middle of nowhere.  But at least you got to have a nice twenty mile stroll with your bride on a subzero Minnesota winter day.  There was nothing like getting home and running to the answering machine for all the surprise messages left while you were gone - only to be greeted by a flashing red zero.

Yes, Kristine is gone.

As far as she is now concerned, I should have always been 4.8" by 2.5", with a flat, glass front, a shiny white back, and fully insured, with small monthly payments of $6.99.  I even failed at navigation before the smartphone - the Galaxy S3.  Now, it tells her where to go.

We were laying in bed last night and she decided to check the navigation.  She put "home" into the search and some nice lady began to speak, "Your destination is on the left."

I was on the left side of the bed.  I turned to her and said, "That's right baby.  Your destination is on the left.  Now take me."

I love her phone.

My First Kiss: A Disgusting, Sloppy Mess

I dated exactly one woman in my life.  Her name was Kristine and she is now my wife of almost eleven years.  Everything about her is 100% kosher and I mean everything.  Psychologists speak of the unhealthy nature of codependency yet I proudly thumb my nose at their drivel and count myself as a codependent card carrier.

Every time I kiss my bride, I get butterflies in my stomach and my toes tingle a little, crackling the yellowing nails and causing the ever-present athlete's foot between my toes to itch.  Even a small peck has this effect on me, except that I don't go in for a peck too often - something that is irritating to Kristine, at times.  I'm all about the five minute long, passionate kiss.

I'll kiss Kristine in the middle of a diaper change, around the shower curtain while shampoo is running into her eyes, at the Gatorade booth mid-marathon, between trombone puffs while she is playing Ludwig van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony in C Minor, whilst she is pulling a shirt over her head, between loud curses while she is struggling over a calculus problem, and even at the 30-second mark of swishing Listerine Mint Mouthwash.  And the kiss will always be the best kiss ever, until the next one.

But it wasn't always that way.

Kristine and I began our dating relationship in a uniquely fundamentalist way - we decided we wouldn't kiss until our wedding day.  Not more than a few hours after meeting her, I kissed her above her top lip and said, "that wasn't a kiss because I didn't kiss you on the lips."  We played this game for about a week until one night, I couldn't take it anymore.

We were passing through the small town of New Ulm, Minnesota, on our way to somewhere from the place we started from, when I veered off the road into a K-Mart parking lot.  Being that it was K-Mart and 7:00PM, there was only a car or two in the lot.  I threw the car in park, unfastened my seat belt, and twisted my body around so that I was on my knees on the passenger side, between her knees, staring straight into her eyes.

I went in for the kiss.

I hit her with an open mouth and saliva started pouring out.  I had no clue how to handle a woman's lips and she valiantly tried to come up for air, drowning in the thick and bubbly fluid.  We giggled our way through it, trying many a move for about 45 minutes.  Then, I gave her a long, passionate hug for another fifteen minutes, twisted back into my seat, and drove away.

Kristine was silent for a mile or two.

"Was that good?", I asked.

"No...," she said, matter of factly, ending with one of her adorably sexy, deep-throated giggles that began in her lower chest.

And from that moment, I purposed to improve.  I have to say, these days, the final kiss in Princess Bride has nothing on us.

Just don't ask Kristine.

Bested by My Own Son

The couch felt warm and comfortable with the air conditioning blowing straight over my toes, cooling the air around my glass of Jim Beam, Coke, and ice, and a tall brown can of Monster Kona Coffee energy drink.  I had never had an energy drink before.  Something about a study that concluded your blood after downing an energy drink mirrored that of blood after a heart-attack pretty much scared me away - until now.  This didn't even taste like taurine...and I got in on sale!

Truthfully, though, I was building up energy for yard work.  That was what I claimed on the record but, subconsciously, I might have been attempting to end it all rather than pick up the bush trimmer and go to work.

Right.  The bush trimmer.  A few weeks ago, I was on one of my spending whims and decided we needed a bush trimmer for the two bushes at the end of our front sidewalk.  It was only $69.99 at The Home Depot.  Or was it $49.99?  Who cares!  It went onto a credit card at zero percent for 18 months.   At least I get to play with a toy a few times a year.  So we took it home.

(I must inform my readers, at this point, that I'm onto Kristine.  I know she bides her time, spending little to no money, until I hit my above famous spending sprees.  Then, giddily, she jumps at the chance and we blow our money together.  Who am I kidding?  I love it.  Those are some of our happiest times.  Heck, she got a new grill out of the last one.)

The trimmer sat in the garage, waiting for me to work up the motivation to remove it from the box and try as hard as I could to clip my fingers off at the second knuckle.  Now, with a concoction of ginseng, caffeine, caramel color, and whiskey, I was ready.  I burst out of the house in a dead run, headed for the detached garage, dodging tools, bike wheels and handles and bolts and nuts and...um...wow...Kristine was out there fixing all of our bikes, readying them for summer biking trips.

I shrugged, knowing she's better at that "man's" work anyway.  She has singlehandedly re-claimed auto repair and welding into the female column of society.  I'm not exactly the best ambassador to the male persuasion.  Stack me up against her and I lose in a black belt fight every day and twice on Sunday.

But I have a bush trimmer!

Entering the garage, I leapt a stack of firewood and landed in a group of mud pies with a stuffed animal's tail sticking out of one of them.  Shaking the goo off my slippers, I opened a cupboard and pulled out the coolest utility knife known to man.  Then, I sliced open the trimmer box and pulled the slice of heaven out.

The trimmer was in two pieces.  The trimmer and then some sort of yellow something or other with a stamp on it that said it helped swipe away debris while you trimmed.  By this time, I had an audience of six lively children.  I took the yellow thingy in my right hand, and the trimmer in my left and looked at the set for a minute.  Then, I attempted to slide it onto the blade, where I thought it went.

"No Daddy!  Not like that."

The voice came from Frederic (7). 

"Oh?  But, it looks like it's supposed to slide on like this," I said as I tried to slide the yellow plastic cheap thingy on, ending up bouncing the ball of my right hand off the blade as the yellow plastic slid off of the nonexistent slot I was searching for.

"No Daddy!  Here..."

And with one swift motion, Frederic grabbed the trimmer and the plastic piece out of my hands and slid it together.  It was now obvious what needed to have been done - and I was incredulous.  All I could do was laugh.

Frederic's chest visibly doubled in size and his lips burst into one of his beautiful smiles.  I giggled some more.

"How the heck did you know how to do that?!," I asked.

"The picture on the box!"

Of course.

I Miss My Wife

She has only been gone for four days.  Sure, she's flying in tonight from her whirlwind gallivant across the western United States, but I still miss her terribly.

I miss her mere presence in the evening when it's just her and I.  I miss her smile and her non-cell phone garbled laughter.  I miss the feeling I get when she sits beside me on the couch.  I missed watching America's Got Talent and the Bachelorette on Monday night while irritating her, flipping back to the Twins game every few minutes.  I miss her cooking.  I cannot see her eyes roll back into her head at everything I say while talking to her on the phone - not to mention Verizon lies when they say you get good service everywhere.

I just miss my wife.

I hope I don't crush her at the airport when I give her a "welcome back" hug and a passionate kiss.

I'll catch y'all later while I make lunch for the kiddos and call the florist.

Cheers,

I. C.