#1156 Dryer Coffee

The other day the power went out. It was one of those blustery Northwest days. With 50 mile an hour gusts, there’s always the possibility that some tree is going to blow over and wreak havoc on a power line.
My neighborhood has underground power but overground power still feeds it. Can you say overground power? Anyhow, there was some power issue up the line, and the power company was working hard to fix it, but meantime I was without.
It’s amazing how many ways to pass the time are dependent on power. I couldn’t check my email. I couldn’t watch TV. It was too dark to do a crossword puzzle.
And I couldn’t use my coffee maker.
That really made me feel powerless. So I go through the house trying to find the parts to my old-fashioned Melitta filter coffee system. I find the carafe right away; it’s fairly accessible in one cabinet. Then I find the paper filters. Mellita filters are not like regular Mr. Coffee style filters, which wouldn’t fit in my plastic Mellita filter-holder thingie.
Which I can’t find.
At least at first. Meantime, I’m going from cabinet to cabinet, closet to closet, nearly setting the house on fire with my dripping candle. And although I’m short of power-free pastimes, putting out a housefire is not on my bucket list.
Even if I could find the bucket.
I finally find the filter-holder in the basement laundry-room cabinet. I rush upstairs, wash the filter-holder, make the coffee and sit down to a big steaming mug.
Then I taste it. And I detect the taste of something odd. I’d washed the filter-holder so what gives? It’s not rat poop. I smell the old filter papers. It’s not them.
Finally I realize it. I’m tasting the taste of fresh. “Fresh scent” to be exact. The “Fresh Scent” of Bounce dryer sheets. Sheet, I think, a dryer sheet, the plastic filter-holder has been sharing a cabinet with a dryer sheet box for the last 4 years.
This is not the taste of “fresh” coffee I would recommend.
But hey, the whole search and throwing out the full pot of coffee did kill about an hour of being powerless.
America, ya gotta love it.