Broken coffee cups and beer mugs

LIFE IS LIKE a busted coffee cup or beer mug - when it breaks, you mourn. Then you move on.

The other day Sheryl broke her treasured black coffee mug. "I bought it downtown, from somebody, some place, at some point, I think," she said. "It had the year 1918 on it?"

We are coffee hounds and we like our Keurigs. Yesterday morning Michael Mitchell of Bittersweet Confections made us coffee so strong and delicious that we stayed awake for four days. That would place us three days into the future, which means his coffee put us in a time warp, it was so good. So what we use to drink it matters.

More than 20 years ago, a youth hoops team I coached in Alpena gave me a mug with a bunch of ducks on it, and I still have it and love it. Mariann Barnard gifted me a Michigan coffee cup that rocks. I still have an Alpena News mug. Coffee cups do more than give us the gift of morning sanity - they are fabric of our lives, even ugly ceramic fabric.

So I feel Sheryl's pain. She on the prowl for another coffee mug, even though we have tons of them around.

Just a great photo of the dogs - before they knocked my beer over.

Stuff breaks. It happens. Last week Sheryl knocked over and destroyed my treasured CN Tower cocktail glass, which contained foreign currency and had been with me everywhere for 35 years. The other day the dogs crashed into a table by the fire pit and my beer mug went everywhere into pieces - and I lost a good Leinenkugel ale. Angus enjoyed that.

I've dropped and busted so many treasured cups, plates and family heirlooms that I have a "Don't Let Him Touch Anything" tattoo on my forehead. Or I should, anyway.

The point is, we can always replace coffee mugs, plates and beer steins and breakable stuff. Sure, we grow attached. But it isn't life or death.

If only I could train the dogs to get me a beverage after they knock it over .... instead of drinking what I've spilled.