Coffeepots of Doom.

I suppose there’s a good thing about having a mother in the food industry – not only is there ample food in the kitchen when I decide to return home (avoiding my brother’s smoke-infused daal is always a good thing), but when I also decide that I should be barista trained, she is there.

My mother teaches hospitality at a school, and while I’m still wondering why I’m awake at 9am, it does make for easy training when one is broke.

So this morning has consisted of:

7am – flee the vicinity of my house to the warm car. Proceed to howl in pain when my mother rolls down windows as we zoom along the highway.

7.30am – stalk Woolworths, hunting down my mother. For reasons unbeknownst to me, she is in the cooler section, wearing a t-shirt. I am the idiot who is shivering in the bakery section (the most heat) whilst wearing a jacket, a scarf, a cardigan, and jeans. Oh, and a beanie.

At least I look stylish.

8.15am – drag various shopping items inside. Attempt to plug Ethernet cables (or, as my mother calls them, “those big long blue cords that stick into the side of your laptop”) into Lupin to get internet. Lupin is up for helping me, but today is where I curse schools having secure net.

8.30am – my father calls. I inform him that my mother does not want to speak to him, and instead, he should drive the hour from Ballina to Lismore to help me. He laughs. He hangs up. I feel shunned.

8.35am – my mother hands me an apron, and tells me to start attempting to make coffees. I instead try tying my hair and the apron so I look as ‘industry’, as it were, as possible. My mother notes this with a hint of sarcasm. “You look quite the part, Tash.” I choose to take the moral high ground and accept her compliments, as barbed as they are.

8.40am – my mother teaches me the gentle art of coffee making. And it is quite easy… though she hasn’t let me start making them with milk. Plus side? Not burned.

8:50am – I escape back here.

8.55am – my mother returns. Proud of my efforts, she rewards me with internet.

NO BOREDOM! HUZZAH!

9.01am – sadly return to Lupin. Unfortunately, in my haste, and my mother’s haste to conduct homeroom, I do not have a password. Hacking would take far longer than it would to simply wait 10 minutes and ask her, unless – no. It’s not the same as last time I visited. I rue having a father who is an IT man and understands his daughter has a weird ability to remember passwords. But wait! She returns! And taps in a password, denies me a lamington (for 10 minutes) and leaves.

I love my mama.

Yet I don’t love the school network. WHAT IS THIS?! WHY THE BLATANT LACK OF CONNECTION?!

I assume that the school wireless will connect come 9.15, when classes begin. Or whenever they begin.

Hang on, why am I still wearing an apron?

9.39am – I am summoned from the heat of the storeroom to continue making coffees. Unfortunately, classes have now begun in the textiles room. The milk-frother thingo is emitting a loud, high-pitched squeal which my mother is periodically shouting at me to, “Make stop”. Apparently this is an unnatural sound, but the whine is unstoppable unless you turn the frother off. Which then leaves me standing stupidly at a coffee machine, holding a jug of lukewarm milk.

So logic dictates that the machine must whine for the desired result. I emphatically turn the machine back on, and my mother appears at my side in almost a whirl. “I told you to stop that noise!”

I can’t stop, I inform her. Unless a lack of coffee is what she wants?

She does not. She tugs the jug from my limp hands and thrusts the frother into it.

The machine whines.

Apparently, when my mother tries it, the machine must be broken or having an off day.

9.43am – the other teacher who lives in the food rooms leans against the doorway and asks, above the machine’s petulant squealing, how I’m going. I reply honestly. “I don’t know if I’m failing or not.” The woman seems to regard this as me jokingly referring to my mother testing me. She is apparently unaware that I use fail to describe many social situations.

Fail – to err.

Fail – to completely suck at something.

Fail – to be the epitome of the above descriptions.

I am erring in the art of milk frothing, and I therefore suck at making coffees, and as a result, I am a fail in the barista world.

9.47am – for some reason, I feel like I’ve been eating Jaffas. Not the case. I have sculled a hot chocolate, though, and feel woozy.

The textiles students next door have an iPod playing. I’m trying to work out, by their playlist, if the owner is one of those people who tries to get all music that seems vaguely ‘cool’ but isn’t so out of everyone’s knowledge sphere that they’re perceived as a musical pariah, so as to seem ‘cool’ by association. By the inclusion of Kate Miller-Heidke, and The Kooks’ Naive, I believe this to be the case. If Vampire Weekend makes an appearance, we have stumbled across one of those who is increasingly populating the world.

I am filled with disgust.

Mainly because, in regards to music, I am incapable of liking a band/artist that anyone likes. Exclusions: The Beatles, Snow Patrol and Coldplay, but they receive enough flak (the Beatles amongst those my own age) that I’m comfortable liking them. Because of those described above, this is becoming difficult. I am now reduced to hunting through soundtracks, to myspace music-ing random names in the hope I’ll find awesomeness, Triple J Unearthing, and going back in time. I fear one day soon all I’ll have left to listen to is classical music. And I’m well on my way. Hans Zimmer appears many a time in my iTunes playlists, and always is met with a, “What… is… this…?”

If I can get a “What… is… this…?” from people, I deem it good enough to like, or a, “Eugh, why?!”

Notable exceptions to my rule: Justin Bieber, and Miley Cyrus. The day they appear on my playlist is the day I plunge from the Storey Bridge.

9.55am – rants.

My mother returneth! Computer for meeee!