OMG WHY

Crying over spilt coffee

So, it seems the year hasn’t gotten off to quite the start I was hoping for when I was writing down my New Year’s Resolutions, punching the air, and muttering frantically about how 2017 was SO going to be my year, just you wait and see!

So far, though, 2017 has looked a lot like this:

OMG WHYWhoops.

It happened yesterday morning. Although I’d slept late, I’d woken up feeling absolutely exhausted, and, ironically, I think it was my desperate need for coffee that led me to empty an entire mug of the stuff over … well, everything, really. It’s amazing how much coffee you actually get in a mug that size, isn’t it? And how many white/cream things I have to cover it with, for that matter. In this photo alone, for instance, you will notice my old friend, coffee, covering:

*My white desk

* My white chair

* My white keyboard

* My off-white carpet

* My brand new dressing gown, which I JUST got for Christmas, and which is the softest, snuggliest dressing gown in the whole world, not even joking.

Not pictured, meanwhile, are:

* My white mouse (Er, I dunno why, but I feel the need to explain that this is, in fact, a computer mouse I´m referring to. I don´t have an ACTUAL white mouse on my desk, although, now I come to think of it, I reckon I´d quite like one? It could be a cute little desktop companion. Do mice drink coffee? Because my mouse would have the option of drinking a LOT of coffee, I´m sure…)

* My iPhone – which is not white, and which only got a couple of drops on the screen, so while it doesn’t technically count as A White Thing, it does technically count as a Thing You Really Don´t Want to Soak With Coffee, Do You?

I´m not really sure what happened. All I know is that one minute I was sitting at my desk, happily working away (Yes, I was working in my dressing gown. I know I´ve said in the past that bloggers TOTALLY don´t work in their PJs, no matter how lazy you think we all are, but… yeah, I was working in my PJs. I hang my head in shame.), the next I was completely covered in coffee – as was everything around me.

As soon as the coffee hit, I let out a shriek, and jumped up from the desk… which I´m guessing is how the coffee managed to reach the chair I´d been sitting on, too. Then I just sort of… stood there, staring at it all, helplessly. I was so shocked, I couldn´t think what to do first, so I did what any blogger would do in this kind of situation: I picked up my phone and took a photo of it. Oh come on, AS IF you´d expect any less of me!

(Then I picked up the coffee mug, and drank what was left in it. Priorities, people, priorities…)

Aaaaand that was my first day back at work after the holidays. The upshot was that I have NOT, in fact, been spending the first week of 2017 busily working towards achieving all those goals I set myself back at the start of the week.

Actually, I spent a large part of yesterday cleaning up the mess I´d made (This is the second time> in two months that the office carpet has had to be shampooed, thanks to an act of random stupidity from me. On the plus side, though, at least we´re getting our money´s worth out of that carpet cleaner we bought when we realised we were moving into a house filled with off-white carpets, huh?), and praying that my keyboard would survive the soaking – which, spoiler alert, NO, IT DIDN´T. And neither did the carpet, which is still quite badly stained, despite its shampooing.

(I also spent quite a bit of time making the very profound observation that sometimes it´s the smallest mistakes which cause the most damage. Not really in this situation, obviously, because, look, it´s just coffee, let´s not get carried away here, but then again, I reeaaallly can´t afford a new keyboard AND a new carpet right now, so actually, my observation stands…)

The upshot is that I´m typing this post on a spare keyboard which Terry managed to unearth in the attic, and which turned out to be designed for Spanish speakers, so nothing is where I expect it to be, and it took me a full five minutes to find the ´delete´ key. Needless to say, my plans for world domination have had to be slightly postponed, which is why you´re getting a rambling post about coffee today, instead of the “Ima totally smash my blog goals for the year!” content I had planned for this week. The good news, however, is that the dressing gown survived its ordeal unscathed, and I can now type upside down punctuation marks, like ¿ and ¡. I mean, every cloud, right¿¡

How´s your week going?

P.S. The stand-in keyboard does a weird thing with apostrophes which makes WordPress think words containing them are, in fact, two separate words, and treat them accordingly. Any wonky formatting in this post, then, is the fault of the unfamiliar keyboard. Anything you find particularly brilliant, on the other hand, was totally down to me. Ahem.

P.S. I write a weekly diary which goes out every Friday to my subscribers. Sign up below to get on the list...

books by Amber Eve
COMMENTS
  • Myra

    REPLY

    Been there, done that so many times, but your lovely white room!

    January 5, 2017
  • Totally feeling you- within the first 24 hours of being in our new place this week we have had the salt water fish tank spring a leak and soak the carpet with salt water, lost the cat for 8 hours before finding her in a drawer, and discovered that the guys who put the washing machine in didn’t connect the out pipe so we flooded the laundry.

    2017 has not contained enough wine to deal with it all.

    January 5, 2017
  • I want your room. My future goals to have everything white!
    But hey, spilt coffee is nothing compared to what you went through in 2016! 🙂

    Charmaine Ng
    Architecture & Lifestyle Blog

    January 5, 2017
  • Violette

    REPLY

    Believe me or not, I covered myself in tea a few minutes ago while working from home. So, as soon as I started reading your post, I had a laughing fit that lasted over a quarter of an hour. Yes… I am that kind of silly.
    Also, sorry for your pristine white room. Little home accidents can be a bit of a pain in the a@#.

    January 5, 2017
  • Gem

    REPLY

    Assuming you touch type you should be able to change the keyboard to UK in your settings. It will mean the symbols on the keyboard won’t match the key strokes, but I’m guessing that won’t matter to you.

    For Apple it would be under system preferences I think.

    January 5, 2017
  • I feel your pain! With all the sickness over Christmas, my cream carpets took a beating! Try Vanish powder, it lifted the stains right out. You brush it in, leave it and the hoover it….it actually worked! Made the smell go too. X

    January 5, 2017
  • Alison

    REPLY

    I’ve killed several keyboards this way. So annoying.

    January 5, 2017
  • Flagless

    REPLY

    I lost my last laptop to coffee. First, I spilt the liquid from an espresso filled chocolate all over the shift key. A friend was able to clean it, so that it made only a tiny crunching noise when pressed. But a few months later, I spilt an entire mug of thick, Turkish coffee all over the entire laptop, killing it. Maybe I should’ve bought a desktop after it, so as to avoid any other accidents that would result in the death of the entire computer, as opposed to a keyboard, but I didn’t. I’m clever like that.

    January 5, 2017
  • I can’t even count how often I split coffee or tea over my smartphone. So the best thing I ever invested in is my waterproof smartphone…

    xx
    Sandra <3

    January 5, 2017
  • oh dear. Yeah I’ve had moments like that too. I can be really clumsy at times!

    January 5, 2017
  • Shiraz on a cream rug just last night – I feel your pain!

    January 5, 2017
  • Oh no! I honestly gasped when I saw the picture.
    At least you got a blog post out of it…

    January 5, 2017
  • Brenda

    REPLY

    I spilled about 500ml of beet soup in my kitchen yesterday… not fun to clean up, but at least we have wood floors and not carpet!!! It looked like a crime scene!

    January 5, 2017
  • Nickolina

    REPLY

    Do they make silicone envelope skins for keyboards? Because that should be a thing.

    January 5, 2017
  • Oh Amber, I feel your pain, but your post (writing style and self deprecation) is hilarious! (She says after she moved her coffee away from MacBook.) And here I am sitting her in my white bathrobe, which actually has coffee stains–that I didn’t work too hard on, as it was more of a hand me down than a gift. I sometimes work (although even though it’s 11:16 a.m. and I’m not working yet,) in my pjs but am really trying not to these days. Love your blog…and to make you feel a little better about your spill, “at least you didn’t get hurt!”

    January 5, 2017
  • Erin

    REPLY

    On a good note, I just scooted my diet coke away from my keyboard – It is a miracle that I have not done this (and now I will because I said that). I am working in a robe as well, and I’m not even a blogger :/

    January 5, 2017
  • Oh no! I’d have been too busy having a full on crying fit to take a photo so: well done, you!

    January 5, 2017
  • At least I know I’m not the only one that this has happened to (many times) I totally had the “2017 is going to be MY year” mindset and then someone threw a golf club at our kitchen window which put me in a really bad mood and then to top it off my hoover broke today along with the car so I’m pretty sure I’m due a breakdown any minute now

    Jodie <3
    http://www.jodiesjournal.com

    January 5, 2017
  • I’m definitely feeling your “sometimes it´s the smallest mistakes which cause the most damage”. A week before Christmas, my husband twisted his back replacing some shelves in a unit, and a few days later woke up unable to feel his legs. After rushing him to hospital, he needed emergency surgery, as a disc in his spine had prolapsed and some other bad stuff with big words I can’t remember had happened as well. All this from overstretching! Now it’s three weeks later and he’s learning to walk again.

    January 5, 2017
  • Veronica

    REPLY

    The wonky punctuation is killing me! I love it!

    January 6, 2017
  • Hope it all came out! My week is all over the place – I feel like it’s Monday again after working Tuesday, being at home with a sickness bug on Wednesday, having Thursday off as usual and then being back in the office today. I’ve also not run since Monday so I really feel all out of sync 🙂

    January 6, 2017
  • D. Johnson

    REPLY

    I set scalding hot green tea on the dashboard of my car. I turned to get something out of my purse. The next thing I knew my lap was experiencing pain and, not having had time to fully wake up, I couldn’t figure out what had happened for a long two seconds. Then, getting out of the car to pull the hot, sodden cloth away from my thighs, I was thrust into the biting cold of a Maine winter morning. That which had scalded, chilled. Without caffeine I was wide awake after that!

    January 10, 2017
POST A COMMENT