Coffee Catastrophe

I’m trying to keep up with my blog a little better, now that the fall/winter hockey season is over.  We’re in the midst of tryouts for both my boys…aka, hell weeks. (More than one week because there are so many teams and your kid has to try out for all of them in hopes of making one…sigh.  Makes me miss horse showing days, where your parents just showed up at a barn with their checkbook and they gladly took you in.)

Still, no pictures are required for hockey tryouts, so that frees up some of my time!  This week was exciting in our house, since we had a big snowstorm on Wednesday that caused my children to be off school for the 15^th day this year (not even this school year—that’s just since January 1^st!).  But that wasn’t the real excitement…the real excitement was that my cappuccino maker died.  You might have heard my primal scream all the way to wherever it is you live, because that’s how serious I am about my coffee.

I used to single-handedly keep Starbucks in business when I worked across the street from one.  But then I had a baby and had to spend my work breaks pumping breastmilk, and didn’t have time for the 10am Starbucks run. To compensate, I splurged and bought a $200+ espresso/cappuccino/coffee maker by Delonghi the year JJ (formerly known as Daniel) was born, back in 2006.  Parts kept breaking (a lot!), but I just bought replacement parts and ended up using it successfully for about 5 years before it finally broke for good.   Because I loved the taste of the cappuccino from that machine so much, I bought another one pretty much just like it. That one had some issues that started about a year and a half after I bought it, but I kept with it until this past Wednesday, when it just…died.  Like, I turned it on, and nothing happened.  And when you are a person who needs their coffee in the morning, a dead coffee maker is a very bad thing.

So, despite the snow, I went out that night (after spending the day working from home) and braved the roads to get myself a new cappuccino maker.  After the issues I’d had with Delonghi over the years, I decided to try something new.  I did some research and found that the Mr. Coffee brand had one that seemed to have good ratings and was easy to use.  I was hesitant to buy it (Mr. Coffee? Really? Isn’t that like a relic from the 70s?), but I was a) pleased with the reviews and b) desperate, so I bought it.  It helped that Bed, Bath and Beyond sent me a 20% off coupon, and they also have a great return policy.

When I got it home, I still had to make dinner, but I wanted to set it up because It looked like it would require some thought to get it working.  (It had to be primed, for God’s sake!)  Because Jamie has such an engineering mind, I asked him if he’d set it up for me and run a cycle while I cooked dinner. He was not only willing, but had a great time doing it!  He talked to me all the way through it, explaining things and making sure I knew how it was supposed to work, and then he made me my first cup of coffee from it.  When it was done, he asked if he could try a little, and since he’d worked so hard, I couldn’t say no. (Yes, I’m the worst mom ever.)

His verdict?  “It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had, but I wouldn’t drink it on a daily basis.” LOL, I’ll remind him of this in 10 years.

So, once my coffee was figured out and all was right with the world (ha ha), on Friday, the kids had a church event that did not require parent attendance.  You know what that means, right?

Date night!!!  My husband and I haven’t had an actual date night (ie, one that didn’t involve an anniversary or someone else’s wedding) in years.  We went to dinner at an Irish pub, where I had a salad and then split a Bailey’s Irish cheesecake with Jason.  It was delicious!  Despite that splurge, I still had a bunch of leftover points, since I’d run so much during the week.  Monday was 8 miles (my last mid-week 8-miler before the marathon—woo hoo!), then five miles on both Tuesday and Friday.  I’m still doing my strength training twice a week, along with my ab workouts, and I had 17 activity points leftover yesterday.  Believe it or not, even with the cheesecake, and a glass of wine, I didn’t even dip into APs last night.  Once I got home, I knew I had to run 12 miles in the morning, so I went to bed early. And left all those activity points on the table! Crazy!!  But that tells you how tired I am these days. 😉

Saturday’s run was windy, but actually not that bad.  At least there was no snow or ice!!  Here are a few interesting pics from along my route.

I take so many pictures of that barn, lol.  You can see a shot from my last run past this barn here.

There are actually a lot of eggs for sale in my neighborhood.  Someday, I will buy some, although I think I’ll try the ones from the family of a girl in Jamie’s class, because a) I know them and b) Jamie has a crush on her, so why not support her family? 😉

So much water right now!  The creek on a normal day isn’t nearly that wide.

Yay, I finished!  All in all, it wasn’t awful.  That time includes my two walk breaks (approximately miles 4 and 8), as well as a couple of stops for pictures.   Considering some of my more recent run paces, I’ll take it!

While I was running, and then grocery shopping, Jamie had not one but two tryouts today! Tomorrow will be a very big day for him—he has his fourth 10k!  And then, after that, he has another tryout. 🙁  Poor thing.  Jason and I are willing to let him skip that tryout, and we’re going to offer him that option tomorrow, but because it’s essentially for the team he was previously on for the last two years, we doubt he’ll say no.  Because of this, our plan for tomorrow morning’s St. Patrick’s Day run is to take it easy and just have fun.  My next post will be his race report—we even went out and bought some “Irish bling” for tomorrow, so it should be fun! 🙂

Thanks for reading!