You see all this stuff online, people showing off their fancy lives, calling everything ‘fabulous’. It’s usually just expensive crap, right? Takes a lot of money, a lot of effort to look that way. Honestly, most days I’m just trying to keep things from falling apart.
So, the other week, my old coffee maker finally gave up. Just stopped. Dead. My first thought was, great, gotta buy a new one. Probably something sleek, stainless steel, maybe with a dozen buttons I’ll never use. More money down the drain for something that’ll probably break in two years anyway.
But then I looked at the old thing. A simple, cheap plastic machine. Had it for years. I dunno, maybe I was just feeling stubborn that day. Instead of tossing it, I grabbed a screwdriver.
Figuring it Out
Didn’t have a clue what I was doing, really. Just started taking screws out. Carefully laid them on a paper towel so I wouldn’t lose ’em. Pulled the casing off. Looked inside. Wires, tubes, some kind of heating thing. Looked like a mess.
I poked around a bit. Cleaned out some gunk that had built up near where the water goes in. Just used an old toothbrush and some vinegar water. There was this one little tube that looked kinda clogged. I managed to wiggle it free and blew through it. A little chunk of white scale stuff shot out the other end.
Was that it? Seemed too simple. But I put the tube back, screwed the casing back on. Held my breath and plugged it in. Poured some water in, hit the switch.
It fucking worked.
The little light came on. Heard the gurgle. Then the drip, drip, drip into the pot. Hot coffee, just like always.
Seriously, the feeling was just… great. Better than buying some overpriced new machine. I fixed it. With my own hands. Cost me nothing but about 20 minutes and a bit of vinegar.
Real Fabulous
That whole experience got me thinking. We chase these big, shiny ‘fabulous’ things – the new car, the fancy vacation, the promotion. And yeah, sometimes they’re nice, I guess. But they often come with headaches, debt, stress.
But fixing that cheap coffee maker? That felt genuinely, properly fucking fabulous. No bullshit. Just a simple problem, a simple fix, and that quiet little satisfaction of making something work again.
Maybe that’s the real fabulous stuff. Not the big, loud, expensive things. Just the small wins. Keeping the old stuff running. Solving a little problem. Making a decent cup of coffee in a machine you saved from the trash heap.
Yeah. That felt good. Way better than scrolling through pictures of someone else’s shiny, perfect life.
