The problem with glass is that it breaks.

The problem with German Shepherds is that they have a bad reputation.

The problem with owning German Shepherds is that it’s almost impossible to get a delivery man to get out of his truck to deliver a parcel to your door.

The problem with owning a German Shepherd puppy is that everything looks like a toy to him.

The problem with owning a German Shepherd puppy like my Fritzy is that he weighs 85 lbs., and he alone can scare off any delivery man on the planet. When he is coupled with our older German Shepherd, Dixie, the "delivery man fear" is compounded.

I like coffee. I need at least 32ounces of the dark beverage every single day. I like it strong with just a little bit of milk, not cream, and no sugar.

The problem with that is, when I don’t have coffee, I get cranky.

And when I can’t get coffee at home, and I have to buy it in a coffee shop, I also get cranky. Even though money is not problem in my life, something goes against the grain when I am forced to buy thirty-five cents’ worth of coffee for two dollars.

However, being an addict, I will force myself to that when my coffee-maker at home bubbles up and dies.

(Coffee-maker? We never used to call them coffee-makers when I was growing up! Now-a-days, you put the water and ground coffee into a coffee-maker and flip a switch. The coffee then heats up in a holding tank, drips out of a plenum and into a carafe. It wasn’t all that long ago that there was no such thing as a coffee carafe. We called them coffee pots instead. However, since coffee has soared in price over the past few years, it seems to soothe some sense of outrage to be able the pour the brown gold into your cup out of an elite “carafe” rather than a mundane “pot”. I guess.)

I have a 12-cup coffee-maker made by Gevalia. It is a good coffee-maker, and it makes wonderful coffee.

So. There you have the background to this story. The exposition, if you will.

The other day, my coffee carafe broke. It was made of glass, and when it slipped out of my hands and hit the slate floor of my kitchen, it shattered into a million little shards that went tinkling all over the room, and even into the adjoining room.

So, I called Gevalia, and I ordered another one for $21.00. They told me that it would take five to seven working days for it to be delivered to my doorstep via UPS. Five to seven working days? I can’t wait that long! However, no matter how much I pleaded and begged, the very pleasant-sounding woman with the heart of Attila the Hun on the other end of the phone line insisted that that was the very best that she could do.

So sighed, I hung up, I wept bitterly, and I waited, and waited and waited . . . and waited for my coffee-carafe to come.

After six days of waiting, I called Gevalia again and told them the thing had yet to appear. So they were kind enough to give me a UPS tracking number and a website where I go and find out exactly where my carafe was at any given moment.

I did just that. I got on the website, typed in my tracking number, and, lo and behold, I found out that my carafe was slated for delivery to my doorstep the following day!

All day long at work the next day, all I could think about was my carafe. It could be being delivered to my house right at this very moment! The excitement was almost paralyzing!!!!

After the longest workday in the history of paychecks ever, four o’clock finally rolled around, and I was able to leave for home. All through the commute, I could taste and smell and experience the coffee that I would be brewing the next morning in my carafe!

I pracitcally tingled as I turned onto my street. I was almost there! I wondered where the wonderful UPS man left it? Probably on my back deck.

As I pulled into my driveway, the sight that confronted me suddenly drained all the excitement and giddiness out of me.

The scene tbefore me that assailed my senses was horrible! It looked as though somebody had put a bomb inside a brown, cardboard box and placed the box in the middle of my driveway, where it had exploded. There was shredded cardboard, paper and those damned, little, white syrofoam packing peanuts everywhere! The debris spread out from Ground Zero and covered a good part of my upper driveway and a sizable portion of my front yard too.

What the hell? I thought. What’s all this?

Then, I saw some printing on one of the larger pieces of cardboard – “Gevalia”.

All the blood drained out of my head. A deafening ringing exploded in my ears that rattled me to my very core. Everything in and on me went numb. All at once, I felt as if my essence had left my body, flown over top of it, and was looking back down at it as my mouth opened, in painfully slow motion. I watched with detached amusement as my lips formed the word that my muted voice could not utter – “SHIT!”

Suddenly, it became apparent to me what had happened. The UPS man must have shown up to deliver the package, and he encountered Fritzy for the first time. Being terrified of dogs, as he had told me in the past, (How the hell did he ever get a job as UPS man if he’s afraid of dogs???), he simply opened the door to his truck, dropped the package in the middle of driveway rather than walking it up to house, and then drove off like a screaming banchee before the perceived Hound of the Baskervilles could rip his scrawny, cowardly, ugly little windpipe from his worthless head.

After a few moments of gathering myself, I managed to get out of my car and staggered weakly into the horrible rubble. It was then that I noticed something was not quite right with the destruction that was all around me. I looked closer, squinting my eyes. Syrofoam, paper and cardboard. That was it.

No glass.

Suddenly, hope began pounding like a Bob Marley bongo track in my chest. My gaze shot everywhere as I quickly surveyed the crime scene yet again. NO FREAKING GLASS!!!!!!!!!

I ran into the my front yard and screamed at the top of my lungs, “FRITZ! FRITZ! FFFFRRRRRRIIIIIITTTZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!

All at once, the big, goofy, lovable dork came bounding around the corner of the house with his marionette-like gait and . . . my Gevalia coffee carafe in his mouth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! As he came closer, I could see that he was gripping the glass vessel in his teeth by its white, plastic handle. He came to me, and being the good boy that he is, relinquished his new-found toy into my hands without a struggle. I held the treasure up to the sunlight and carefully examined it. It had made it through the entire ordeal without so much as a dent, chip or scratch!

At that point, I pledged to God that I would start going back to church again…even CATHOLIC Church…because I was so happy and felt so much gratitude. (Don’t worry. The euphoria quickly dissipated, and I returned to my senses before the day was out.)

The next morning, I came down the stairs and flipped the switch of my Gevalia coffee-maker. I couldn’t help but smile when I heard the old, familiar, comforting sound of the hot, freshly-brewed liquid as it began dripping into the new carafe. I breathed in deeply the rich aroma of the beans as it wafted though the house.

I sighed a deep, satisfying sigh.

I had been though a terrible, life-changing trauma, and I had lived to tell and blog about it!

And as I lifted the hot, steaming cup of coffee to my trembling, anticipatory lips, I somehow knew that, at that one isolated moment in time, God was in His Heaven, and all was right with the world once again.