April Fools Day | Strictly Autobiographical

Happy April Fools Day everybody. I got up this morning kind of on the later side. But it wasn’t like I woke up and said, “Shit, it’s eleven and I just woke up.” No, this was more of a, “Wow, I can’t believe it’s eight o’clock and I’m already awake,” kind of day, so I celebrated, I rolled over and grabbed my phone and started surfing the Internet. And then the next thing I knew, it was actually eleven. So I don’t really know how I feel about that, like is it better to willfully waste the better part of a morning? Or would I have been more OK had I just naturally overslept?

And when I finally got out of bed, I was at once crushed with all of the little things I’d have to do in order to kick my day up to the next level. I’d have to drink coffee, eat breakfast, take my dog out, put on a pair of pants, brush my teeth … and not even in that order, it was like, OK, I know all of this stuff shouldn’t take me too long, but all of these competing commands from my brain to me, I can’t untangle them all, why can’t they just present themselves to me in a linear fashion? “OK Rob, first, put on pants. Great job! Now, brush your teeth …”

I didn’t untangle the order of operations flawlessly, but I did manage to get pants on and go downstairs. That was something. I wasn’t in my bed anymore, I wasn’t still wearing pajamas. My instincts next led me to the kitchen. My normal routine involves me getting the coffee ready, pressing the “brew” button, and then taking my dog for a walk while the hot water drips into the pot. If I time everything just perfectly, and this doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it’s like I know that my day is totally set up for success. If the walk is just right, I’ll come back inside the house after letting my dog take care of his business, and the “beep, beep, beep,” of the Mr. Coffee machine will signify to me that, it was perfect timing, that I’m exactly in the right spot to enjoy the freshest cup of coffee.

Only, and this is another kind of kink in my programming here, but sometime around two weeks ago, my coffee machine stopped working. It was kind of acting up a few months ago, like the machine would clearly be on, and you could hear it really trying to suck up water to then pump down over the grinds, but it wasn’t happening. There must have been some sort of hole somewhere in the little tube that sucks up all the water.

So I did what I always do when my appliances start to malfunction: I opened it up and started poking at things aggressively, flicking this part, jabbing that spot with a knife. It worked. My coffee machine was better than ever. Until two weeks ago, that is. It was the same problem as before, only this time, when I gave that tube over there a yank, it snapped out, that little piece of broken plastic almost looked like a face, like it was smiling at me.

Whatever, it was a stupid coffee machine anyway, only like thirty bucks at Costco. I’ll just get a new one. Eventually. I keep forgetting to do it. Every day I wake up and my muscle memory leads me to the now lifeless piece of machinery still sitting on the counter, maybe I’ll even fill up the pot before I remember, oh wait, I need a new coffee machine, I’ll go today. Or tomorrow.

Luckily, my mom gave me this French press for Christmas. I busted it out after my machine broke, and it works. I have to like boil water though, and then wait for it to steep, and then I have to press this handle down, and then I have to clean it out afterward. So it’s a lot of steps involved, and I hate to think that my body might be adapting, like sometimes I go downstairs in the morning and my hands start to automatically get everything ready for this ten-step manual coffee making process. I get scared, because once I get too comfortable, all chances of me buying a new Mr. Coffee maker are out the window, because I’m a creature of comfort, of routine. Once I’m set in my ways, it takes an outside act to make me adjust accordingly.

The worst part is, this French press only makes two cups. And it’s such a long process, that I’m not going through it twice in one day. No way. So my caffeine levels for the past couple of weeks have been at an all time low. I’m getting less done. I feel less energized. I’m going to sleep earlier, which you might think would be a good thing, but once I fall asleep, I’m in there, it’s a deep sleep, I’ll sleep all the way until eleven. Or even like today, I got up early, probably because I was so under-caffeinated, and I couldn’t muster the energy to get out of bed.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at right now. It’s a little past lunch time, but I just ate three English muffins, so I’ll probably be OK until three, when I’ll get really hungry, and I’ll debate, should I eat something now? Or wait until dinner. I’ll decide to wait it out. Maybe I’ll go to the store and buy groceries, plan on making a big meal. But then like an hour before dinnertime I’ll cave, I’ll eat a whole bag of pretzels and half a block of cheese. And then I won’t really be super hungry for dinner, but I’ll eat it anyway, and I’ll just feel really, really full.

Happy April Fools Day.

This morning I got up and I went down to the kitchen. Normally I have a pretty set morning routine. Unless I’m running late for whatever reason, like unless I overslept or spent too much time laying awake in bed but not moving, just kind of staring at the ceiling, thinking about funny scenes from random episodes of Seinfeld or The Simpsons, I’ll go downstairs, I’ll make a pot of coffee.

While the coffee brews, I always take my dog Steve for a walk. And that’s exactly what I did this morning, just like every other regular morning. And I have everything timed just so, or, I should say that it’s not me actively doing the timing, but things just happened to be timed in such a way that by the time I come back in the house with Steve, I can hear the coffee machine, its three beeps: “beep, beep, beep” telling me that the coffee’s done.

And so it’s coffee, it’s breakfast. Ninety percent of the time I’ll have a bowl of cereal. I love cereal. But I also love making use of all of my groceries. And so today as I reached to grab that box of cereal, I happened to look down at the counter, at this plastic bag with two sandwich rolls inside. I had bought them three days ago, thinking I’d make, you guessed it: a sandwich. But I don’t know what happened, I got distracted, I forgot about the bread, maybe I ate some leftovers.

Whatever may have or may not have been the case, I was looking at these rolls. They were from the deli section, so it’s not the type of bread that I can just keep in the kitchen for a week, a week and a half, and expect to stay fresh enough for consumption on its own. No, these fresh bakery style rolls need to be taken care of, ideally, within one day, two days tops. Like I already said, today was day three.

I thought, just throw them out. They cost less than a dollar. And I was about to. I had my foot on the garbage can, the pedal, it’s one of those garbage cans with a pedal that you step on to pop the lid open, and I was just about to chuck the bag inside. Still, I felt an apprehension, I didn’t want to waste the food. I was getting mentally stuck here, blocked, all while my hunger steadily mounted.

Out of nowhere, a flash of insight, an idea: what about French toast? I remembered reading somewhere, a cookbook, a newspaper article, something about how French toast was originally developed as means of breathing fresh life into stale bread. Then my brain started really making some connections, I thought about bread pudding, I pictured croutons, homemade breadcrumbs. Whereas I was just minutes ago ready to toss these two rolls away, now I had the opposite problem, I couldn’t decide what to do with them, it was like I was overwhelmed with too many options.

But again, I was hungry. Bread pudding, one, it would’ve taken too long, and two, that’s not really a breakfast, it’s a dessert. That’s why I’m not a huge donut for breakfast fan. I love donuts, but come on, it’s just an excuse to eat cake right away. Croutons or breadcrumbs? Not enough to constitute an entire meal. French toast it was.

It was good. It was OK. Like a dummy I forgot to grease the pan, so you can just imagine the sticking-to-the-pan problems I had to deal with. Who forgets to grease the pan? I just chalked it up to hunger, the same hunger that probably made me reach not for my good silicone spatula, but the cheap plastic one, and so when I tried to scrape the bits from the pan, the black plastic started to melt. I tossed that cheap-o spatula away without any hesitation.

But yeah, it was tasty. I used milk, eggs, vanilla extract. Nutmeg would have been nice, but unfortunately I guess I don’t keep it regularly stocked. It’s more of like a fall/wintertime spice if you ask me, although if it tastes good I don’t see why anything should be limited to a particular time or season. But yeah, it was fine, tasty, a nice breakfast.

Happy April Regulars Day everybody!