Coffee

Monday morning. Do I need words to describe the dreadful Monday morning? If you’re a working man you’ll know of the weight these two words bear.

Last Monday was pure hell for me. It started with me wrestling my alarm clock the night before. The damned thing just didn’t work the way I wanted it to. I ended up smashing it against the wall, waking Nadia – who was already asleep – in the process. The alarm clock wasn’t the only thing left damaged after that.

That dreadful morning some screeching noise pounded my eardrums, tearing through my peacefully sleeping consciousness. After a loud smash on top of the apparatus from hell on the small night table next to my bed and realizing that time was not on my side, I dragged pewter from his bed and rushed downstairs.

Downstairs I hastily made Pewter, who was still groggy from sleep, a sandwich and prepared a cup of coffee for myself. It took me a minute to realize that there was one thing missing; coffee. Essential, I’d say. A trip to the provisions locker provided me with the precious ingredient to brew the black tar that woke me up every single morning.

As soon as I entered the kitchen again I noticed the door of the fridge was wide open. In front of it was Pewter, along with about 4 empty cans of Red Bull Energy Drink. Being only eleven years old, the taurine had a nasty effect on him. If he were only seven years older I’d have put him up for a mental hospital.

In this case I’d suffice with Nadia’s help. I jumped up the stairs, kicked in our bedroom door and found my wife sleeping peacefully. Ignoring any subtlety which was trying to pry its way to the surface I swooped the blankets off her in a single, fluent move.

“Wha- what’s going on?” Nadia mumbled. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, glanced at the alarm clock and slowly pulled the blankets over her again. Now, I was agitated because of everything that had happened this morning and our son was running amok downstairs, thrashing the living room. When I heard the words ‘Look daddy, I can fly’ echoing through the hallway that I grabbed Nadia and – once again – rushed downstairs.
Upon seeing the living room being thrashed by our 11-year old son, Nadia shouted something vulgar which I’d rather not repeat, then shouted at me to clean this mess up. I declined and politely informed her of my expected time of arrival at the office, pointing at my watch. She took my wrist and looked at the watch.

“You’ve still got one hour, professor. Damn it, you’re such a stray head sometimes…”

Well, I’ll be. She was right. Apparently I had set the alarm clock one hour back last night during my mighty struggle with the fine piece of crap technology. I sat down at the kitchen table and sipped the freshly made coffee, while Nadia made a dive for the couch, from where pewter was throwing eggs at her expensive Persian carpets.

God damn, this was some fine coffee.