The Boyfriend In: The Case of the Missing French Press

The Boyfriend received a French Press coffee maker from my parents for Christmas. Since the holiday, this present has definitely stood out as one of his favorites (with the exception, perhaps, of the Cuisinart coffee bean grinder that I gave him to accompany the press).

He delights in finding new coffee shops to get locally sold bags of crack cocaine...er, I mean coffee beans (coffee is his crack, unless there's chocolate around...but strangely enough, I don't think I've ever witnessed him ingesting both at the same time).

Since December, he's regularly arisen, kind of crabbed around sleepily, and tinkered with his "coffee laboratory". He's got his own process, and when I make coffee, he'll pause, assess the accuracy of my methods, perhaps question it for a moment, and then, "oh, right right right, you push the coffee DOWN, while I stir mine". Peace and unity are restored.

And just as joyfully it came into his life...it was gone.

He paced around the house, all the cupboards open, as if to demonstrate to me that all his options were explore.

"Did you check in the backyard?" I ask. "I know you watered the plants with it this morning."

"Yes, I checked outside, it's not there." Slumped shoulders, slight frown.

"Did you look downstairs? You were looking for more seeds, perhaps you took it downstairs by accident?" I felt genuine pain seeing him this sad over his missing toy, as though it were a new toy fire engine.

"No, I didn't take it downstairs."

I didn't want to press him too hard, this was a difficult topic. I quietly checked downstairs, and then did the only thing I could...I went to work.

With the carafe gone for a week, his melancholy had only gotten worse. True, he was participating in life regularly (because that would be really lame if his missing press were to induce life altering depression...we'd have far bigger issues if that were the case), but he occasionally brought up his missing object of affection.

I plotted to sneak to Bed, Bath and Beyond to rebuy it as a surprise. Kind of a variation on the whole child's fish dying and parents replacing it with one that looks the same so the kid doesn't have to experience loss (I don't endorse this approach...let the kid lose something, they're not that fragile...but I digress).

The Boyfriend walked over to the rack where we hang our pots, he grabbed one and started laughing. There, wedged into the stainless steel sauce pan, was the lost French Press. It had been hiding there for a week!

I'm wondering if it was just hanging out, biding it's time, trying to make sure it wasn't being taken for granted. We'll never know for sure how it got there (we've both blamed each other).
One thing I can say with certainty: the coffee this morning tasted extra good.