I’d be the first to say that I have an annoyingly perfect boyfriend. His skill with Latin makes him despicable, he’s never once complained about taking care of me when I’m sick (even when I was in bed with a back injury for two weeks), and I’ve just given up on trying to give him instruction in the kitchen because he’s just fine on his own, thank you, and I should leave him alone and let him get on with the cooking. He brought me tulips for the last day of classes, and I’ve told him that he never needs to bring flowers again, so long as he brings his homemade bread.

None of this changes the fact that the way he makes drip coffee is on crack drives me up the wall.

For the record, this is how I think coffee should be made:

  1. Set kettle to boil.
  2. While waiting for the water to boil, set up the coffee filter, measure out coffee, put out mugs.
  3. Take kettle off the heat before it whistles (optimally, I don’t always get to it that quickly) and then begin making coffee.

This is how my kilt-owning, annoyingly perfect boyfriend makes coffee:

  1. Set kettle to boil.
  2. Go do something else.
  3. When kettle whistles, take it off the heat thus allowing it to cool and then set up pot, filter, measure out coffee, etc

Perhaps I do it my way because I am a very, very impatient woman and don’t want to have to wait for the water to boil, and thus try to fill the time with other coffee-related tasks that I find annoying anyway and so might as well get them done as soon as possible. He seems to deal with the annoying, fiddly nature of the task by procrastinating on it as long as possible. True, neither of us have the palate to be able to discern a difference, but still. On crack. Drives me up the wall.

While we’re on the topic and complaining about fiddly things that nobody else talks about: bed-making. A few days ago my fever picked up and I needed to be put to bed while my sheets were just out of the dryer. The annoyingly perfect boyfriend made the bed for me and I crawled up and went to sleep, and only upon awaking discovered the following outrage:

Do you see it? Somehow every man I’ve dated has gotten this wrong. The pattern on the top sheet is facing up. If done this way, and one wants to fold the top edge over the duvet, the wrong side of the sheet is showing. The proper way to make a bed (I insist) is with the pattern facing down, so that when you fold it over the duvet, the right side of the pattern is facing up.

Like so, see?

I will go to my grave proclaiming this. Don’t get in my way.