The Cleaning Ninja: Episode 1,986

I cleaned the kettle.

Holy hell I can't believe we drink from that thing.

I bet the coffee will taste horrible now.

*sigh*

Did not wear the nice gloves to clean the kettle; now I have steel wool splinters in three of my fingers.

The Cleaning Ninja: Episode 1,986

The Great Tragedy.

The one I looked forward to seeing first thing in the morning, that always guaranteed to wake me up and warm my soul has lost its handle.



Twenty-three years is a pretty good record for a coffee mug.

Sure, with all the problems in the world, an out-of-season reindeer and bunny mug that was probably coated in lead paint seems small and unimportant, but that was my mug, and that mug fueled most of what I've done since 1984. I remember the Christmas it was given to me, I'd made a load of Pillsbury sugar cookies and for some reason I had the song Free Nelson Mandela running through my head all day. At that point I wanted to be some sort of 5th grade crime-fighting Martha Stewart karaoke champion, and the fact that this mug came with its own coaster that doubled as a lid turned me on.

You know I glued it back together. But I have no faith in the Krazy Glue, and not wanting to get completely intimate with a cup of boiling hot coffee, my reindeer mug now sits on top of my computer, but now the something hot and black it contains is a little plush cat.

I shall never love another mug the way I loved this one. No really, it's...not healthy.

The cake pictured was what my mother came up with for my birthday this year. It was a slice of white cake, lemon pie filling, strawberries, Cool Whip, sprinkles, and pure pain for anyone with their own teeth. I had said I liked all of those things, and I have to admit they did not taste entirely bad together.

The Great Tragedy.

My blood is stomach acid, my stomach acid has been replaced by Folger's crystals.

I started drinking coffee around the age of 8. You know the story, you want to fit in, but you throw up when you drink the harder stuff like tea with milk in it, next thing you have a three-cup-a-day habit heading into its 25th year, and you start to wonder where it all went wrong.

I drank my grandfather's decaffeinated Sanka for a long time, because he was the coolest person I knew, and he didn't go into coffee-fueled rages and take the closets apart looking for a pair of shoes. Oddly enough, I still took the closets apart. I never did find that last Crystal Barbie shoe. In my teens, I switched to that fancy International cappuchino, and I don't remember much of that time. I think I called someone "bitch" because she didn't like my hat.

Black coffee has no calories, so at the height of my retention problems, I switched to the drink I compare to my cats--hot, black, and easy. I drink Folger's instant coffee as that's what we have in the house and I have no interest in trying other coffees after the Eight O'Clock cup of feet episode, plus my sense of adventure can only manage getting me out of bed each day before it gives up and goes back to reading Highlights.

Today, my 37,894th cup of coffee was unlike any other. The Puppy was walking around on the table stealing napkins and playing Godzilla as she likes to do when she noticed my cup of coffee. I reached for the cup, but warm Corelle and cold vinyl placemats create fusion, so picking up the coffee while The Puppy's foot was on the placemat was not as easy as one would expect.

I am happy and rather grateful to report that the flavor of coffee does not change after having a dog's snout submerged in it.

My blood is stomach acid, my stomach acid has been replaced by Folger's crystals.