Coffee Spoons and Trash Bags

  I know J. Alfred wouldn't have drunk instant coffee, but that's pretty much all we ever had in the house. Dave preferred making his own Maxwell House in the morning, and would get the real stuff on his way to work, and after he retired, occasionally at Stewart's, often with Don and/or other locals.
   I was never a coffee drinker, though I always liked the smell of coffee brewing. My mother would get up early---when I was little, it seemed she was always awake and downstairs ----and she would make my father's breakfast, brewing coffee in a little yellow enamel percolator. It was a comforting smell; all was right  with the world.  Later, for our breakfast, she would make us cocoa. I don't know about the others but I never switched over to coffee. During my "social years," I would go along with the others and after dinner and a drink or two, would come the coffee. I would take a few sips, and  that would be enough, even back then, to make my heart race a mile a minute.  I don't suppose I've consumed more than a pint of coffee in my entire life.
    So it would be incorrect to say "I've measured out my life in coffee spoons," but you get the idea.
  Now trash bags are a different unit of measure, and a more plausible one. The accumulation of life's daily existence could be measured by the contents of a trash bag.  "I have measured out my life in trash bags," doesn't have quite the same ring, though. Apologies, T.S. Eliot, I'll work on it.