Rantings and Ravings

By Sun Advocate

I’m at war with my coffee pot and it’s winning.
We decided to get a new one after the clock on our old one quit working. I use the delay timer almost everyday because I love to have a steaming cup of sleep antidote waiting for me as I stumble out of bed at 5 a.m. so I can take the dog for a walk.
My husband researched the web for just the right pot with all the right features. He finally found one with a name we can’t pronounce that was rated highly by coffee aficionados everywhere. So we bought it.
Anyway the pot is here and truly makes a wonderful cup of joe. That is if you do everything just right. I have cleaned up more fresh brewed coffee from my counter top and the floor in the past week than I ever considered drinking.
One day I forgot to take the little lid off the pot that keeps it warm after it is done brewing. We have never had a pot you had to put a hat on before. Then I didn’t get the pot set just right under the coffee basket and it went everywhere but in the pot.
One day I added three beans too much to the basket and it overflowed the top instead of going down into the pot. Still, when I can get it into the pot, it is the best coffee I have brewed at home ever.
This coffee pot war followed on the heels of the infamous cell phone-computer skirmish.
I have also engaged in the hour long “where is the on button for my head lamp?” battle and the “I don’t know why that function of your Leapster doesn’t work-no it is not the batteries” conflict.
Our time saving, technologically fabulous electronic devices are getting so complex that we end up spending more time trying to figure them out than they save us. I tried to set the time delay on my washer the other day so I could go take a shower before the load I just put in ran. I spent 20 minutes trying to figure it out.
I couldn’t find the manual that came with the washer. We got it well over a year ago, but instructions were nowhere to be found. I thought I had it set and then went to take a shower. An hour later I remembered the load and went to see if it was done and it hadn’t even ran yet. No time saved there.
After all this I look around my house full of stuff I can only operate at the most basic level and have to wonder. Even as technically savvy as I consider myself to be, there is much in my own home that seems to get the best of me.
But in the end I shrug and realize that I seem to function just fine without most of these features. I have done thousands of loads of laundry without a delay timer.
I will get used to my super, top-of-the-line coffee pot while I fondly think back to the percolator that my parents had for most of my childhood. They didn’t have a gold filter and programmable settings to deal with.
And yet they never had to slurp their first cup of coffee off the kitchen counter while draining out of the knife drawer at 5 a.m. either.
My, how my life has evolved.