Going Strong

I normally don’t write about such personal things, but my husband and I have discovered a device that has completely heated up our marriage. I wanted to share the secret so other couples may benefit.

Thanks to this new acquisition, we no longer just go through the same old motions, with the predictably stale and sometimes even bitter results. Now it’s all hot, all the time — and we’re always ready to go with literally a moment’s notice. I don’t know if it is the mechanism itself or the variety it provides, but it has changed our experience entirely. I am completely turned on by the boldness of its approach and how it has made something we’ve done a million times before seem new and exciting again. Quite frankly, it always leaves me wanting more.

And the truly surprising part? We received this as a Christmas gift from my mom and .

I’m talking, of course, about a single-cup coffee maker.

Lest you think I’m shilling anything here, I won’t provide the brand name. Let’s just say it sounds a lot like “Earwig.” (Wow. That may be the most disturbing rhyme-in-place-of-a-proper-noun, ever.) I know we’re late to the single-cup coffee phenomenon, but that doesn’t mean we enjoy it any less.

Already we're seeing the benefits. We no longer wait each other out to see who needs coffee badly enough and is willing to dump yesterday's coffee grounds and make a fresh pot. Also, we like different types of coffee, so the option of making coffee a cup at a time means no one has to sacrifice every other day.

We got one of these at my office last winter after years of suffering through the acidic sludge that resided at the bottom of the permanently stained coffee pot. Those little teensy prepackaged cups of pure joy completely changed morale at the company. There was a better sense of camaraderie, employees were more productive and profits skyrocketed to a level we had not seen in decades.

OK, not really. But it was definitely nice to at least begin the day with some fresh coffee.

I just re-read the beginning of my column and realized the wording may have led you to believe I was talking about something other than coffee. And I’d like to apologize for that. I realize this is a family column and would never write something so risqué — particularly something that relied on and intentionally misleading the readers just to get a laugh.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to warm up with a tall drink of something dark and strong.

And I may brew myself a cup of coffee, too …