For years, Sam made the coffee in our marriage. I wasn’t a fan of coffee at all, and I didn’t want to learn how to make it. It all seemed very complicated.

No laughing. You’ll see how right I was.

But once I got hooked, I learned how to make a good cup of coffee – in our French press, in the expresso maker, and tried to in the pot. But the last one did me in. No matter how hard I tried, it came out too strong. And Sam would always say, “Man, how many scoops did you put in?”

I’d reply, “Just like it says on the bag – a little more than one tablespoon per cup.”

And since we fill the water up to the 8 line in the coffee maker, I naturally put in 10+ heaping tablespoons. Because it was 8 cups of water.

The odd part was – once I used a glass measuring cup, and exactly 6 cups of water later, I was already past 8 cups in the pot. Which puzzled me. How was this possible? Was our measuring cup wrong? Had I bought a defective one? Was I cooking and baking with something that added 2 spare cups to each 6 cup recipe? That’s why we have enough pancakes to feed an army…

Last night I went to make coffee and asked Sam again, “How many tablespoons?”

“A scoop for each cup in there.”

“Oh!” I said remembering,” I meant to tell you, wait, let me find it…” I pulled out the measuring glass. “This piece of crap is wrong. I can measure EXACTLY 6 cups into that machine and it marks it up to the 8 line. So something is off and I bet you anything that’s why we end up with so many pancakes too.”

He stared at me and said slowly – “The cup line is 6 oz. For every ‘cup’ of coffee. That’s why the bag says one tablespoon per 6 oz.”

HEAD.EXPLOSION.

What the heck – who came up with a new way of measuring a cup and casually put it on the coffee bags for all of us tired housewives to be fooled by?

Also – my Twitter blew up with other women who had no idea so I am NOT the only confused by coffee one out there.

Lame. People should make coffee making much simpler for us. I mean, that is way too much for me to ponder for like – 4 years.

Also? This means the massive amount of pancakes are all on me.