Good Morning, Sunshine!

There's not a tremendous amount of difference in the way I started the day in Poland, and the way I start the day in the States. Both involve feeding my dependence on both caffeinated beverages and electronic media. (Yes, Mom, those are my pj's on the internet.) I am amused that I would travel 5,000 miles so I can stagger into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and plunk down to fire up the e-mail inbox just like I do the other 357 mornings of the year. There was one vast, and one seemingly small, difference. Shelley's flat allowed for quiet and contemplation in the absence of my noisy brood of kiddies and furballs, and I had to make my own coffee.
I suspect that last one sounds like no big deal, but I've got a newsflash for you: it was more complicated than I could have imagined. Since I only read and think in English, it was an adventure to try to guess what those nifty Polish words meant in my under-caffeinated state. Several containers held coffee based on labels with a photo or drawing, and I was not above opening the bags or jars to check out the appearance and/or scent of the contents, but I still had no idea which one(s) were the desired grounds for the regular drip coffee I prefer. Since I was lost in the morning's brain-fog, I opted to just take a couple of scoops from each container except one that was obviously dehydrated coffee flakes.
It turns out that two out of three is really pretty bad when one is mixing two parts regular and one part instant coffee to be run through an automatic drip coffee maker. To top off my coffee misadventure, the finished product was weak.
I suspect Don would have figured it out the first time, but Don was not there so I just drank my funky coffee rather than waste it. I remembered to ask Shelley for directions before my next attempt, and I had a good laugh at my inability to do well something as simple as making a decent cup of coffee!