Morning Coffee In The Nuthouse

When I married a man 11 years younger than me I assumed he would still be mentally fit when I started losing my marbles, and that in fact he might help me keep some of them for a longer time. Sadly, it has not turned out that way.

This morning, having awakened at 3:45 and realized that sleep was no longer a possibility, I was in the living room reading when I heard my husband come down the stairs and enter the kitchen and start making coffee. The sound of the coffee grinder was not right. Instead of the usual low, electrical purr, it was an angry clacking sound. It grew louder, and I was surprised that Mitch felt it appropriate to keep going. However, after about one minute the clacking subsided and the grinding continued normally.

Next, Mitch started making noises like "Harrumph" and "Hmmm," which made me, sequestered two rooms away, wonder just what the heck was going on. Finally he found me and reported that the wide blue rubber band that had been wrapped around the bag of coffee beans was missing. He posited that it was the reason for the clacking sound and that it had been ground up with the beans.

I found that laughable. No way! How could the coffee grinder continue to work with a big fat rubber band in its blades? (I also mentioned that if that were truly the case he was mental and needed help.) Assuming he had simply dropped it somewhere, I began sweeping the kitchen floor. Meanwhile, a pot of coffee was brewing. Undaunted, Mitch opened the top of the coffee maker and inspected the grounds. Soon enough he found what looked like a small piece of a rubber band buried in the wet mess.

Refusing to drink the now freshly-brewed coffee, saying we could surely die if we drank ground-up latex, I thought of David O'Lenick, the other man I could have married. (My high-school beau who was my age, I wondered if he was still alive.)

To settle things, Mitch asked Claude, his A.I. companion, the following: "If I grind up a rubber band along with coffee beans in my coffee grinder, and then brew coffee with the mixture of ground beans and ground rubber band, would that be toxic?  Also, would you think that the person who did this has a mental illness?"

Claude said DO NOT DRINK IT! -- it could cause all sorts of problems, digestive and otherwise, even leading to death. (He did not weigh in on the sanity question.) And that's what's happening in our house this morning.