Coffee straight from the coffeemaker is seldom hot enough for my husband. He often reheats it in the microwave.

“I don’t understand,” he said this morning as he removed his steaming  cup from the microwave, “why manufacturers haven’t invented a microwave that will return your cup to the position it was in when you set it on the turntable.”

In our comfort-filled, lives, the small act of adjusting a hot coffee cup  before picking it up by its handle has become a nuisance, a problem to be solved.

My husband does has a point. Why hasn’t someone thought of that?

But I couldn’t help but think of my great-grandmother who cooked three meals a day on a wood stove. I tried to imagine her using a microwave — or complaining about the small act of turning around a cup after the oven beeped. I couldn’t.

I tried imagining standing in her shoes and having to cook three meals a day on a wood stove. Couldn’t do that either. Couldn’t even imagine cooking three meals a day period. On any kind of stove.

What would Great-Grandma think of our lives today? When eating out is the norm. When we can heat coffee in seconds but complain about turning the cup.

We are so spoiled.