Some time ago, I wrote an entire story about fishing a dead Keurig out of the trash in my jammies. I wish I could tell you the replacement lived a long and productive life.

Welp, it didn't, so I finally accepted that K-Cup convenience wasn't meant for me, and made do with our trusty pot.

Which I hated.

I'm already awake most days by 3 a.m., so I would program the pot for myself, leaving my husband, The Balkan Storm, to nuke what was left.

He said he didn't mind, but I did; he works too hard to wake up to shitty coffee.

So when the trusty pot recently died (to date, I've managed to kill more machines than Sarah Connor), I replaced it with a stainless-steel carafe model.

Less heat loss, very practical. Definitely assuaged my guilt.

Then I took a road trip and ruined everything with espresso.

The trip had been The Storm's idea - which isn't surprising given I had reached the face-down-in-tortilla-chips-after-work stage of burnout. So he suggested, with noticeably increasing enthusiasm, that I go away.

"Go somewhere and don’t think about anything," he said.

Well, I could try, anyway.

I booked a room in a historic hotel where every sconce, settee, and Sargent felt carefully chosen, which made me painfully aware that most of my own home was decorated in a style called 'necessity with a splash of Target crap'.

But I could sit in a beautiful room with no dog hair in it, sip coffee, and just be.

It was magnificent - and then I tried their espresso.

I’d always ranked espresso up there with silk pajamas, first-class tickets, and counter space: nice, but not something I was getting anytime soon.

But you popped a capsule in the hotel Lavazza and out came fragrant, hot espresso.

A quick search on Amazon showed it marked down to $60. Sixty bucks isn't luxury. Hell, it's not even a full bag's worth of Target crap.

I could have K-Cup convenience and schmancy accoutrements?

I’m not Keurig’s bitch. I’m Amazon’s.

The Lavazza arrived the day after I got home, along with a case of pods and new demitasses I deemed essential to the experience.

If I was going to become an espresso woman, I wasn't drinking it from an oversized mug that read OVERSTIMULATED MOM.

Naturally, The Balkan Storm found the whole production hilarious. Now, to be fair, I’d just come home from a weekend getaway and immediately filled our porch with yet another coffee thing.

I didn't even need the thing; I literally had just bought a new coffee pot.

“What is it with you and all this coffee stuff?" he asked, half amused, half exasperated.

At that point, I'd lost count of our coffeemaker body count and was excited about buying something that reminded me of my relaxing weekend.

It went against all sense of practicality. My husband simply said, "Hey, whatever brings you joy brings me joy."

Easy for him to say; he hasn't seen the Amazon receipts yet.

Now, every morning, I start the day with espresso, flicking dog hair off the sofa she's totally not allowed on. The house is quiet, the brew is good, and for a few minutes, I'm back at the hotel.

And I didn't have to fish through the trash for anything this time.

Yet.

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If this one dies too, I'm sure there'll be another story.

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