Mmm, coffee.

I just had a terrific cup of coffee that I made in my own kitchen.

No, this doesn't sound like a big deal.

But, for the past year or so, I have not been making coffee at home at ALL.

No need to on weekdays. I get my coffee at work, for free.

And, on weekends, it seemed like a giant hassle when I was the only coffee drinker. So I made myself get up and go out for my coffee.

Not having coffee was not an option, as I discovered. Withdrawal headaches, lassitude, and general brainlessness.

At the old place, there were several purveyors of caffeine within walking distance.

Here, not so much. Or, anyway, a longer walk, and not one I was eager to undertake in pursuit of coffee.

I was absolutely resisting buying an electric coffee maker, though. I'm the only regular coffee drinker in the house -- I let melovechocolate have decaf froofy coffee drinks, but she clearly only likes them for the caramel and whipped cream, a cup of regular coffee is not what she wants. And while there are single-cup electric brewers, it seemed awfully wasteful of resources and counter space to have a whole appliance for that one cup of coffee two days a week.

French press, you say? Nope. I don't like the coffee that they make. Too chewy.

What I wanted was a single-cup Melitta cup-top filter holder. I could have sworn that they carried them at Bed Bath & Beyond, but nope. Not at Target, either.

Grr. I went ahead and ordered online. Two, so if a coffee drinker were to visit, there wouldn't be any waiting. Red, to go with my new kitchen - a theme developed when we bought a red microwave. They came with sample packs of filters, too.

So. Cup-top filter, shiny red teakettle on the stove, coffee grinder unearthed yesterday when I unpacked the kitchen -- shadowflyer? are you lacking a coffee grinder? did we used to have two? If you need one, I'll give you the black one, and use the red one I bought at Target, otherwise I'm returning the new one.

Green Mountain fair trade organic breakfast blend, bought on last grocery run.

Verdict: tasty enough to drink black.

*insert primal scream here*

I was feeling JUST FINE about my unpacking progress until my mother got here.

My parents (and my 93-year-old grandmother) came by after seeing the matinee performance of melovechocolate's play so they could pick up an antique mirror that was my other grandmother's.

I really didn't want them to even come in the house. I had WARNED them that it was still all over boxes and they would have to deal with that.

It was okay until I let her upstairs. Where I still had six boxes of baby clothes that I have to sort and itemize so I have a proper receipt for Goodwill to sign off on so I can take the tax deduction. I have several THOUSAND dollars' worth of tax deduction there. I cannot just drop them off with no documentation, and I have nowhere else in the house to put them, because the basement floor IS WET. So they're sitting on my bed.

It still leaves me half the bed to sleep in. It's not great, but guess what? That was a lower priority than dealing with the kitchen, or the bathroom, or keeping the living room to where we could still sit on the couch and see the TV and I could sit at my desk.

And of COURSE melovechocolate's room isn't all unpacked yet either. She's only here half the time! And she's at camp all day! And there have been things we've WANTED to do, like the Harry Potter book release, and getting her hair done so that it wouldn't be crayola red for the play... I figured I could get on her case about unpacking when we got BACK from the week's vacation in Maine.

Which I don't even want to go to now. At all. Because it will mean dealing with my mother for an entire week. After I wound up screaming at her to get out of my house.

AUGH. I unpacked most of the kitchen yesterday. I still have BriAnne's big box to sort through (I wanted to wait until she was here to help me with it 'cause it's Her Stuff) and two boxes of assorted Tupperware that I have to go through and figure out what exactly I'm keeping, which is to say not much of it, probably, just the expensive pantry-storage ones, and what i'm getting rid of. Yesterday when I was unpacking I got rid of three boxes of assorted Things to Freecycle, and today I dropped off two boxes of unwanted dishes and one bag of unwanted sheets-and-towels to the Salvation Army that's just down the road.

One thing I HAVE unpacked already? The liquor cabinet. Which has Bacardi. And when I was at Wild Oats last week I bought a bottle of pineapple-coconut juice. So I am having a therapeutic pina colada right now.

And trying not to break down sobbing.

I don't think I'm letting my mother into my house EVER AGAIN.