Amanda Beard has a book coming out, tentatively titled “In the Water, They Can’t See You Cry.” Said tome is being pitched as a memoir of her struggles with drugs and alcohol which hopes to serve as a cautionary tail for young adult women. I think that’s a good idea, because a lot of pain and misfortune can befall a young adult woman who abuses drugs and alcohol. The only problem is that young adult women who are into booze and pot are very unlikely to read a book with such a horrible title. Except maybe at 3 in the morning when they are all hopped up on wine coolers and wondering where things went wrong.
Was that over the line? I hope not, but my judgement may be poor. I’m all hopped up on decongestants and cough drops. Fortunately, I am not sick. I did not catch strep throat from the groom, and I will not be running a fever anytime soon. It’s just prolonged exposure to dust in East Jerusalem followed by 27 hours of travel and a day and a half cooped up in the house because of snow. Maybe the problem is that I changed the air filter, which is something I do annually whether it needs it or not. It may be that some beneficial dust mites were lodged in the filter like ecoli in our intestines. That crap will kill you anywhere else, but in the right place it makes the whole world better.
By coincidence, this is a theory which I apply to the coffee pot as well. Like a good cast iron skillet, a coffee pot needs to be “cured” over years. The result of poor attention to coffee pot sanitation is a fine brown film which coats the sides and aids in hitting the “6 cup” mark which really means 3 cups. On late, cold wintry nights, it is good to have help in finding that mark before I collapse into bed. Every now and then, my Sweet Lady is repulsed by the state of the carafe and cleans the whole operation. Sure, the coffee tastes better but I think it is robbed of certain essential oils.