We went to bed e-a-a-a-rly last night.  It was raining, we didn’t have any work to do, so we just decided to crash and fall asleep to the sound of the rain.  It worked.

Getting up at 6:00, however, was not so easy as falling asleep, but then I guess it never is.

Joey eventually hauled himself out of bed and into the kitchen where I started hearing foreign, unusual noises: metal banging against glass, tugging, and the occasional “oooof!”

“Um….what are you doing?” I asked, hesitantly.  I try not to criticize before 7:00 a.m.

“Gettin’ out the coffee pot to make Greg’s coffee,” Joey chirped.

OH YEAH.  The coffee experiment.

“I’m going to drink coffee every day for a week to see if I like it by the end,” he continued.  Then I heard the WHIRRRR of the bean grinder and started to panic as I was unaware that Joey even knew what components were required to run the coffee pot.

“What are you doing?!” I asked, with more urgency as I approached the bar and peered in the kitchen.

“I’m making coffee,” Joey insisted.  ”I’m doing it myself.  It’s an experiment.”

“OK,” I muttered, and went to the bathroom to wash my face.  It’s always safer not to watch when he’s doing experiments, because it’s much easier for me to hold my tongue if he does something “wrong” (and the definition of “wrong” is simply “not the way I’d do it”, so as you can see he doesn’t like my input on these experiments.)

A few moments later, maybe 5 minutes, he proudly carried a cup of coffee into the bathroom and set it on the counter.  My face was covered in Checks & Balances foam, but could definitely smell the lovely aroma of the coffee.  ”Well, I need to doctor mine so…can you take it back to the kitchen?  I’ll be right there.”

Face still damp, I walked back to the kitchen where Joey was standing over two not equivalent cups of coffee; mine was about twice as full as his. I gamely dumped some milk (as we have no cream) and a teaspoon of sugar in mine, stirred it, and took a sip.

Joey looked down at his, grasped the mug and said, “I need to try it black.  I need to see what it really tastes like.”

“OK…” I said.

He took a drink. “It….it tastes like bitter water.  And……we like this?”

“Add some milk and sugar,” I suggested.  He did so.

“Now it tastes like sweet yet bitter milk,” he told me.  ”I don’t really like coffee.”

“You said you were going to try it for a week,” I goaded him.

He glared at me.  ”I know.”

I just checked and he’s maybe drunk a centimeter of coffee in his mug, which isn’t much, but it’s a centimeter more than he’s ever drunk in his whole life. Good thing this was his idea, not mine or he could have me sleeping on the couch for the entire week.

Unless a miracle occurs and he starts to love it.