Girl coffee. That’s what I like at night. Carmel Macchiato, Peppermint Latte, Pumpkin Spice creamer, a shot of Almond flavoring with skim milk and a pink pack of sweetener. Girl coffee. As opposed to boy coffee which is what I drink in the morning. At work. The kind that makes the tendons in your neck stretch out and one eye to close when you have the first sip. Gives you an aftertaste like you licked a shoe. Dark black with a hint of a rainbow oil slick on top of it. In a Styrofoam cup. How very cosmopolitan.

The problem with the coffee at work is no one knows how to make it. I mean we all can dump coffee in the filter and push the button but not everyone knows how much coffee to put in. Shoot, I even bring in the pre-measured foil pouches that are intended for one pot and I find empty wrappers and partially full opened ones on the counter. Uh….do the instructions say “Tear open 2 bags and add all of 1 and 1/3 of the other”? If they wanted you to do that they would have just made the bag quantity 1/3 more than they did. We are in even bigger trouble when we have the standard Can O’ Coffee. Then we just use an 8 ounce styro cup and dip out maybe ¾ of a cup full. And then another ¼ cup. Then a pinch more. Someone, I am not exactly sure who, takes about a ½ cup of fresh coffee and adds it to the used grounds to get another pot out of it. When you drink that coffee it feels like you got hair on your teeth when finished. We run out of coffee a lot. And cups. But never filters. We buy the Industrial 1500 filter pack. Kind of because we don’t want to run out but mostly because we sometimes use the filters for paper plates to heat stuff up and eat off of. With a plastic knife as a utensil. Spaghetti is not too difficult but soup can be tough.

I fix coffee at home on weekends and in the evenings. I got a new Krups coffee maker. It is a Coffee / Espresso / Cappuccino Machine. I even got the little Espresso cups. With the dinky, square saucers. Looks like I am having a tea party with myself. It makes good coffee. The Espresso / Cappuccino feature is a pain in the butt. I do like the little stainless steel foaming pitcher. It looks official. I have made good Cappuccino’s but they are totally not worth the 47 minute clean-up afterwards. Sometimes I use Starbuck’s Coffee out of the foil sealed bag. I carefully freshly grind the beans and pour them in the weird filter, adding clear, clean bottled water (why do they tell you to use cold water?) and wait impatiently as it drips slowly into the pot. Actually it is called a carafe but I feel like Sigfried or Roy when I say that so I never do. I add a sweetener pack (the cancer scare is over) and glub-glub in some skim milk and head to my chair. Ahhhhhh……..

I have had some interesting coffee experiences in my travels. In China they do not drink much coffee. Hence, they do not understand my love of it. They give you one small cup. One. Even in the morning, not understanding the “warm my cup up” mentality. There is 4 ounces of coffee. Bottoms up. In Honduras they have good coffee. Really strong and really sweet. Pre-sweetened. Coma inducing sweet. And incredibly hot. Sensationally hot. Unbelievably hot. A woman will make coffee and then hike with the pot up a mountain like 3.7 miles taking maybe 53 minutes. She then will serve you a tiny cup that will melt the insides of your mouth the moment you get the cup within 4 inches of your teeth. It is so hot that a dollop of molten lava would cool it down some. Oh yeah, it is also so strong that your eyeballs rotate in your head like a slot machine when you drink it. Maybe that is why the use the miniscule cups. I had to make my own coffee in La Moskitia and in Africa. In a French Press. Like a gentleman adventurer. In Africa they don’t drink coffee. Tea is the caffeine gateway of choice there. Once I was invited to drink afternoon tea in Ojague with my new buddies the Tanda Tribe. They brew these roots into an aromatic dark tea. Then the tea is poured back and forth until frothy and served in a tiny shot glass looking vessel. I should have been suspicious when I was the only one handed a serving and everyone stood around smiling like I was going to get punk’d. I slammed it back and immediately I went into a Jimi Hendrix style purple haze. Everyone started moving in slow motion and talking like Charlie Brown’s Teacher. I did not want to puke because I knew if I did I would fall in it. The good thing is this lasted only about 30 seconds and then I was back to my normal gullible self. They serve this tea in 3 rounds and the second round was not quite as psychedelic and lasted only about 23 seconds. The third and final round was smooth sailing and went down like warm honey with no hitch. The only lasting effect was that I had a right eye tick and kept thinking I saw a Talking Spider Monkey who was trying to get me into network marketing for about 3 hours afterwards. Made me want a cup of coffee.

So I need a fix. A Mug Of Java. Cup O Joe. The bean. I prefer Starbuck’s. Straight up. Strong and vibrant. Unless it is at night. Or a Saturday morning. Or I am in an airport. Then I want a Kona blend, double espresso shot, ½ decaf ½ Latte, double cupped with an ice cube in it. And leave room for the cream. Half and half with a splash of skim milk and a dash of cinnamon. And while you’re at it put your right foot in and take your right foot out. Then shake it all about. Cause that’s what it’s all about.

Latte Love. Peace.