The
Exploding Coffee Pot
In a split second the entire kitchen was covered with
coffee grounds. I am not exaggerating the significance of
the spray here. Every surface from the stovetop to the
windows to the floor was covered. The walls, with the
exception of a cartoon cutout in the vague shape of my
torso and head were black. I felt hot grit hit my back with
a bang. What I could not understand was how so little
coffee could impact so many surfaces.
In our effort to get set up with a regular routine in life,
and all of our worldly belongings back in our apartment in
the States, we bought one of those hexagon shaped coffee
pots that absolutely everyone uses here called a Moka. John
tried to use it one day and it just oozed coffee from the
base. We set it aside to return to the store, but hungry
for coffee this morning, I decided that John probably
didn’t use it properly and decided to try again.
I had just checked the pot by lifting the lid to see that
coffee was burbling up as it should, in fact I was in the
process of gloating to myself as I was walking away when
the bomb went off. After I realized I was having a Lucy
moment, I started to laugh and immediately ached for my
mother, probably the only other human being whom this would
strike as insanely funny.
Unfortunately, it was John and not my mother who was here
to witness the aftermath of the debacle. “It’s
even inside the light fixture”, which made his Virgo
skin crawl. I knew that every time he entered the kitchen,
no matter how much I cleaned, he would feel the coffee
grounds under his feet. To his credit he bit back the
obvious “I told you so” and asked if I was
okay.
I learn new things every day here and today I learned there
are differences in paint. Somehow the paint I am used to
lets you wipe if off most things. There is another kind of
paint that comes off with a hard scrub and does not forgive
a hard blast of hot coffee. Fortunately, this type of paint
does take touch ups well, so after scrounging around in the
basement, John found the leftover paint and the evidence of
my fiasco is pretty much all gone. Aside from the faint
smell of coffee whenever you enter the room, which is not
altogether unpleasant.