My husband has three favorite things in life, and I’m not sure where I rank among them: coffee, wine, and woodworking. He’s also a health nut, but that is best identified by the CrossFit slogan: “Our fun is not fun.” Coffee, wine, and woodworking are Scott’s fun that is actually fun.

My poor darling’s world has been ravaged in the last two weeks. First it was the Expobar, our espresso maker (with which he makes himself 3 double shots every morning. Yes. My husband has six espressos every day. I have 1 latte, 2 on weekends).  The boiler (or something) quit in a rather spectacular fashion involving sparks and melting metal. I don’t know; I was still asleep and Scott was in the morning non-caffeinated coma when it happened, so all shared details of in the incident are suspect. I will say in favor of the machine that it has served us faithfully for well past its warranty and has paid back in time and shots well more than we spent on it. It’s a good machine. But it died while making the first espresso of the day, so The Scott was The Uncaffeinated Scott when he left the house. Bad sign. We survived on French press for a week.

After a short search, however, we found The Alex to replace The Expobar. It’s huge. But it makes incredible coffee. World righted, minus a hefty chunk of change right in between my final paycheck and Christmas. Ouch.

Then two days ago Scott wakes me up with another French press and a cry of distress. The grinder has ceased functioning. Now, this grinder is apparently awesome, but as far as I’m concerned it throws ground everywhere and has had a broken switch for as long as I can remember, which has required Scott to jury-rig some ugly yellow wires to it in some fashion that I’m sure is not approved by fire codes in any country that has them. Other than the fact that this will require a further expenditure, I am not sad. But I am drinking French press again, which is extra-harsh with the gleaming and expensive Alex taunting us in its uselessness sans correctly ground coffee. (We have, ahem, borrowed an unused grinder from, uh, somewhere, but unfortunately it is a blade grinder, not a burr grinder which does not allow it to produce fine enough grounds for the Alex to do anything but dump semi-brown water out of the portafilter. This is the problem with fancy espresso machines; they require fancy espresso grinders.)

So another grinder is on its way, this time one that supposedly flings fewer grounds and does not (yet) require hazardous and hideous rewiring to work. When this arrives, I will be happy (and poor).

Then today the (hopefully) final blow when the refrigeration unit for the wine cooler failed. Luckily this bad boy’s still under warranty and we’re in a cold snap so it will cost no more than shipping to replace (which I still think is a ripoff) and the wine has not been destroyed (which would be reallyreallyreally bad as Scott’s developed a collection that we cannot afford to even partially replace). Still, we need to get the new one in before the weather warms up (which I think is next week) or find a chilled place to put a couple hundred bottles of wine. Ack. Then Scott will need to spend time that we both wish he was using to work on the new bathroom counter that will allow us to get an occupancy permit and get heat working in the upstairs before winter officially rolls in.

AckAckAck. In just over three months now, my car has broken down (massive repair bill), my computer has broken (fixed on our own; lost a day’s worth of work), the refrigerator quit running (fixed on our own; lost most of the fridge food and all of the frozen except the bottle of Grey Goose, which I kept regardless of what the temperature change might’ve done), I popped a tire (potentially when I was hydroplaning off the road into an embankment), the espresso machine exploded (bought a new one), the grinder died (bought a new one), and the wine cooler failed (still dealing with). I shall not ask “What next?” for fear the universe will answer that question.