Ever Get Really Bad at Something You Used to Be Good at Doing?

This is not the most important thing that’s going on right now, but all of a sudden, I make the world’s worst coffee.

“All of a sudden” isn’t quite accurate. The problem clearly started while I was pregnant and not drinking coffee.

It was never my intention to avoid coffee during pregnancy, by the way. I planned to cut back to a reasonable amount (as determined by my OB and frantic late-night Googling). I couldn’t picture surviving without it. But then I was pregnant and nauseated all the time and coffee smelled as appealing as a piping hot cup of nail polish remover.

So, I left the world of coffee drinkers for about eight months. When I returned, every pot of coffee I made was wrong.

Sometimes, it was too weak. Others, too strong. I tried adding more coffee, and less coffee. I Googled the correct coffee-water ratio and found loads of conflicting advice. (Some people are out there drinking mud; others might as well drop some food coloring in their water and heat it up.)

A few times, it tasted just … off, like that one time I almost drank urn cleaner by accident while I was closing up the IHOP where I waitressed in high school.

I don’t use urn cleaner to clean my coffee pots, because I’m a middle-class white lady in the year 2018, so I’m legally required to clean everything with vinegar. (Note: I am sure this doesn’t work. But on the upside, my house smells like Easter.)

When no amount of adjusting and cleaning would fix my coffee pot, I tossed it and got a new one … only to find that I had the same problem.

And the problem is definitely me. My husband makes good coffee with our coffee pot, as does his mother and my mother. I’ve even asked them what they’re doing that I’m not, but I still can’t figure out what’s wrong.

You guys, I know that the world is full of heartache, sorrow, and panic right now, and my coffee situation is not important. But if it’s the little things that finally break us in the end, please believe me when I tell you that my inability to make a decent pot of coffee will be the reason I’m arrested in the local supermarket, drooling, with no pants on. You heard it here first. Use this post as Exhibit A at my commitment hearing.