By George! I've done it!

Yes, I know I said 'By George!'. I'm embarrassed, of course I am, but my mother reads this, so I couldn't exactly say 'Holy Shit!' now, could I? She'd have killed me. Anyway, what ridiculously historic expressions of whatever that I choose to use in place of swear words is not the point. The point is, what have I done? Focus people.

As you know, Al and I have an espresso machine. And, if you didn't, you do now. We've had the machine for about two or three years, during the course of which have made a dedicated effort to avoid learning how to use it. Turning a hot chocolate out is one thing, I can (but choose not to) do that, but a drinkable coffee is quite another. Al gave me a wee lesson a few months ago, which took an hour of our lives that we'll never get back, and resulted in a cold cup of disgustingness which had once upon a time been perfectly good coffee beans, and perfectly drinkable milk. One hesitates to call it a coffee. The only reason we knew it was, was that we saw how it started.

Since the above failed mission (I swear I didn't sabotage it on purpose ...much), my learning to use the coffee machine has never been spoken of again, and coffees and hot chocolates alike have presented themselves at request on most occasions.

But, the problem here is that Al has to be around to make it. During the weekends, he's usually asleep until mid afternoon, and when my work moves to Papakura, he's going to be in bed and snoring in the mornings well before Elvis leaves the building.

So, what's a Ginger to do? I'll tell ya, but for heavens sake, don't tell him.

While his nibs was sleeping this weekend, I was teaching myself how to use the espresso machine. This way I can make and enjoy my coffees on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and drop a caffeine load before I go to work in the mornings, and he need never have to know about it. I'll just have to keep a sly bag of coffee beans somewhere that he doesn't look (he's scared of my handbag, so that could work) and top the beans up each time I use them (eventually he'll notice we're going through them quicker than usual).

Why the secrecy? Think about it. Is he going to keep making me coffees and hot chocolates every time I ask if he knows I can do it myself? Uh, no.

The pic below was my first little experiment, which was actually not too bad. A bit frothy, but still not too bad. Experiments two and three were a bit ho hum/revolting/poisonous, but experiment five was really good. Experiment six never happened because I made experiments one to five all in a row and I drank them too, so I had the shakes too bad to make another. The only real problem I encountered was later in the day when Al's suspicions were aroused after we'd walked the dogs in record time ...but since I'd also eaten a bag of Allen's fruit bats, I blamed the sugar. He of course gave me that cross-eyed 'she's lying and she knows I know she's lying but I can't be arsed digging the truth out of her' look of his which he gives me when I've been shopping and I've told him it cost about half of what it did.

So, success on the coffee front, we just won't tell the husband about it. It can be our little secret.

And on that note, this blog post will self-destruct (with a little help from moi and the delete button) at approximately 2pm, before his nibs stumbles out of bed.