It's the little things...

that can make you crazy.Or crazier, as the case may be.

Yesterday our less than a year-old coffeemaker conked out. Boo hiss!

Today I stopped at the grocery store to buy some * instant coffee * after dropping daughter off for work. I've been brewing coffee in the morning for myself and Ralph for many years, but I thought I'd try instant again. An emergency beverage, because tea just doesn't get me going in the morning.

Walked into supermarket and saw big display of blueberries, which I am addicted to. Buy one, get two free. Yahoo! Then I dropped one of the packages when someone said something to me..half of the container of blueberries goes rolling across the floor.
The produce manager comes running over and says "don't worry about it," but also says they are the "worst thing to drop"...so hard to pick up so many.
I felt like a jerk. Well I apologized and helped him pick them up.

So I get the instant coffee, come home, put water on to boil ... and cannot for the life of me open the jar. That lid is glued on there I think. Go back out, head to again, this time to Mickey D's and get a Newman's Own organics medium coffee, cream no sugar.

It tastes good, but I went through a lot of aggravation to get it, don't you think? I hope the rest of the day improves. Yikes. As for the coffee jar, I'll ask my strong son to open it when he gets up. I'm sure he will come to mama's rescue.

Little unimportant stuff going wrong is no big deal, 'tis true, but I thought I'd write about it anyway.

The End.

* Update: Cameron read my post and opened the jar when I wasn't home. What a kid!

An apple a day

On Tuesday I met a great guy. He's a celeb of sorts in the Connecticut-New York area.
His name is Stew Leonard Jr. and he is president and CEO of Stew Leonard's, a small chain of food stores around these parts. His father, Stew Sr., opened the first one in 1969.
Leonard visited an elementary school to help our local hospital's parish nursing and community outreach to program kick off a healthy eating initiative. And I covered the press conference and the subsequent fun visit to a second grade classroom.
Leonard has written a children's story book, The Healthy Way, with Meghan Flynn, a registered dietitian, to teach kids good eating and exercise habits.
All proceeds from the book go to Stew Leonard III Children's Charities Foundation.
Leonard donated 5,000 copies to the parish nurse program, which does outreach in many area schools. He read the book aloud to the children and they were quite enthused about the whole visit. They clearly had been taught about nutrition and exercise already, and this just reinforced the lessons.
When I asked the kids afterward what they learned, one boy told me, "I have really strong teeth because I eat lots of apples. My favorite fruit is either bananas or cherries."
What a perfect age...second grade.
For a treat the kids each got a Gala apple. The grownups got one too! Yum.
Anyone for an apple?