intermission

Amanda stumbled into her darkened kitchen, yawning profusely. Momentarily forgetting where she had stored the coffee beans, she fumbled for the light switch and toggled it, thanking Thomas Edison for his perseverance with designing a functional source of artificial home lighting. Illumination flooded the room in milliseconds. Approaching the kitchen counter and installing a fresh filter in Mr.Coffee, our heroine was grateful that Instacart had delivered her order on time — in spite of the fact that she had nearly forgotten to click “Place Order” at the bottom of her electronic shopping list. Instacart had been her lifeline during the pandemic, although she had never ordered groceries online before 2020. She had read articles in the New York Times which attested to the value of caffeine in improving her short-term memory. So she prepared her magic beans in the whirring grinder, installed two tablespoons of perfectly-ground coffee in the filter basket, poured bottled water into Mr.Coffee’s reservoir, plugged the unit into the wall outlet, and toggled the coffeemaker’s vital switch to the ON position. Inhaling deeply from the remaining Arabica beans in her grinder, Amanda reflected on the aroma and was grateful to learn that her sense of smell was working just fine.