Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Got Milk?

The day began far too early.  Our "morning lark" leaped out of bed and scampered to the living room to unzip Cate's bed, so that his best friend, who was peacefully sleeping, would wake up and come play with him.  Perhaps you've noticed that I'm not exactly a morning person.  Groaning, I rolled out of bed and reluctantly followed after them, knowing deep in my heart that as painful as getting up was, it was infinitely less painful than cleaning up the results of the inevitable mischief should I continue to slumber.  The kitchen was a mess from our raucous and late night Settlers of Catan party: mugs, cups, plates, bowls, pan, pot, and lots of silverware.  I love having guests and I love making food, but I hate, hate cleaning up.  And unfortunately, in a two-room apartment like ours, it's impossible to forget about it because the kitchen can't exactly be "out of sight, out of mind."

But I digress.  The real trouble with the morning was that we had no milk.  The night before I had made a 6-cup coffee for us all and some hot milk to make our customary cappuccini (plural of cappuccino), but somehow after I put the milk carton away in the fridge, it tipped over and more than half a liter of milk leaked all over the floor.  This meant that the next morning, a Sunday of all days, we were out of milk. (All the grocery stores except the one at the train station are closed on Sundays.)  Sigh.  No coffee to brighten my morning.  Nothing to quench Catie's appetite for milk.  Another big sigh. 

Dominic asks "What's that?"

I respond, "What?"

He then attempts in a hilariously dramatic way to recreate my big sigh: "UUHHhhhh...."

"Oh, I'm just sad we don't have any milk." 

"What don't we got any milk from?"

"Scusi?"

The day seemed very bleak in my haggard, caffeine-less state.  We don't got any milk from our tiny, fridge with the stupid door and these dumb Italian milk boxes.  We don't got any milk from grocery stores being closed on Sunday.  Quindi (thus), Mommy don't got any coffee. 

I thought the day was just too early and dreary.   Four hours later, however, when we scrounged up some milk from the neighbors under the guise of needing some for our daughter, I hardly had enough energy to even make the coffee.  Yet twenty minutes later, when I was enjoying the smell and taste of a fresh-brewed mokaccino (made a moka, more on how those work next time), I immediately felt like the world was right again.  I loved my life with our little family in Italy once again.


And that's when I began to worry a little.  See, I love coffee.  I love the smell.  I love the taste.  The catch is, I love the taste with milk.  It's just a little too acrid for me without it; in fact, it's very scientific, I think.  I recall once reading something about the fat in milk binding to the tannins and neutralizing the astringency...presumably this is a good thing?  Anyway, the truth is, I just like it better.  I like having coffee immensely, but I don't like having to have coffee, if you know what I mean.  Maybe I should have given it up for Lent...although by this point I'd probably be addicted to it again.  Perhaps I'll switch to making 1/2 caff. for a while. 

1 comment:

  1. I totally agree, although I don't have the same problem of grocery stores being closed on Sundays. In fact, I think we should go get lattes the morning after Laurel's wedding just BECAUSE.

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