Failure Is Not An Option

So we're married! I am an official housewife - a housewife who cannot figure out how to use the glamourous new coffee maker that she HAD to register for (hmmm...Aesop any advice on this one?) I'm pretty sure that makes me a big, fat house-fraud.  Allow me to set the stage...as many of you know I have self-diagnosed OCD.  Ground coffee (and glass top tables...I can NEVER seem to get all the streaks off no matter how many passes I make with my Windex and over-priced paper towels) is among one of my arch nemeses. When it spills into the coffee maker or worse yet into the grout of our (white!!!) tile counter-tops it makes a huge mess. I e-hat that [phrase borrowed from "Everybody Loves Raymond - the Pig Latin episode]. When you try to wipe it up with a dry paper towel, it's impossible to get all the grounds; use a wet paper towel and you've created a coffee-colored mess all over the place. Miss a ground or two, you leave a ticking-time bomb just waiting to make its mark on the carpets in your house (Freud?). My solution? BEANS! I'll only use BEANS! Super-easy clean-up if over-zealous scooping occurs with the bonus of added coffee freshness! Ahhh, you might point out, until now you'd need a separate grinder to grind the beans, then have to transfer the grounds to the machine risking the same problem all over again. BUT ALAS <insert choir of angels here> meet the Cuisnart Grind and Brew. Simply scoop the beans into the chamber, pour in the water, and press "on."............. or....not so simply as I would soon discover.

After diligently reading the instruction manual from cover-to-cover (yes, I do that with all my new toys, even the "War and Peace" manual that was my digital camera instructions) I set up, press the shiny new "on" button, step back and prepare for ensuing delight. However, after pouring my first cup of joe, adding the proper ratio of soy milk and creamer, I take a sip only to discover I've created a truly "uninspired" cup of coffee.  How could this be? Chalking it up to being a coffee bean ingenue, I pour it out and start again this time filling the chamber up completely with beans in order to hedge my bet. Same outcome. Coffee colored water with a hint of soy flavor. Damn. So this housewife finds herself under-caffeinated and overwhelmed...guess I need to go apologize to the Mr. Coffee I gave the old heave-ho to last night. Hopefully he's in a forgiving mood.