For a long time, I never really understood the appeal of coffee. I always hated the taste, finding it so bitter. To me, if I drank coffee, I turned it into what I call �liquid coffee candy�.
I can remember my 2nd year of college, back before caf�s were really the cool thing, there were a lot of them in Santa Cruz. So, my 2nd year of college, I lived across the street from one of the best ones in town. It was a normal thing to go there with my books and get something to drink and study. Or meet friends there. If you were outside at a table, you�d see your friends just walking down the street. It was awesome.
When I was there, I generally drank tea. In fact, I think I could call that the year of drinking tea. We had this cozy old apartment with wood floors and funky blue colored walls. It was late 1800s, early 1900s and had this tiny, 4 inch deep cabinet by the stove. It may have been an ironing board cabinet at one time, but when we lived there, it had shelves in it. It was the perfect size for holding tea. And we would always have a bunch of varieties of tea in there to choose from. I often would brew a cup and sit on the kitchen floor and in the patch of sunlight, sipping my tea and holding our cat in my lap.
Off topic, but for about 5 months of living there, we really didn�t have any furniture other than our bedroom furniture. We, my roommate Tami and I, had originally rented 2 rooms in a house from a woman. My parents had extra living room furniture since they had recently bought new couches but we didn�t� need it, since the house was already furnished except for our rooms. My sister had come up about a month after I moved in and brought my bedroom furniture to me. Then a week later, seriously, a week later, the woman we rented from got a notice that her lease was terming in a month because the owner of the house was selling it.
So, we had to move. And what we found was this adorable apartment that we both fell in love with. But, it was November 1st and my sister couldn�t come back up with living room furniture (my sister because she had a truck) and I couldn�t� bring any up with me when I visited at Thanksgiving because I had a small car (this was before the days of IK3A and the breakdown furniture). So, we did a lot of sitting on the floor. Because we were downtown right across from the main hub of the bus, and the bus was definitely the main transportation mode for most college students (the campus STRONGLY discouraged car usage with a lack of on campus parking, a lottery system to get on-campus parking and a very high cost for on campus parking, plus they included a bus pass in our tuition so we just used our student ID to ride the bus. And, their busses went everywhere, ran really regularly. It was actually nice not to rely on a car so much � it was mostly about the environment, as the campus was mostly wilderness and had a strong commitment to protect the natural resources), we had a lot of visitors. People would head downtown, and see our apartment and stop by. It was nice. I loved that part of living there. At some point, we started stealing milk crates and we used them for furniture of all sorts. Stack them up, they make shelves. Put them on their end, they make chairs. Put them upside down in a row, they make benches. Stack them in big rows or 4 x 4 and you have a table. My sister didn�t come up until February with furniture, so we really just adjusted. Lot of time on the floor.
Wow, this entry has really taken a detour from where I originally thought it was going, but it has been a nice journey. I really miss that year in some ways. The little community of friends that we had, it was great. But, it was also a year of horrible darkness as I was in the grips of one of my worst depressions, undiagnosed, untreated, unmedicated and no ability to cope with the turmoil of my inner self. But I�m not talking about that here, so I�m just feeling all gooey remembering the good times.
So, coffee. I did drink it a few times that year (and in college in general but especially that year as the (what they called) coffee house WAS right across the street). I would drink it when I needed to stay up all night writing some paper or reading some novel (being a literature major and all � at that time anyway � college was mostly about reading and writing for me, not tests and quizzes). But I never really understood people who HAD to have a cup of coffee to start their day.
Only recently, with the onset of StarSchmucks, have I started to drink coffee-drinks. But even then, I would get them decaf. Because I rarely drank caffeine, I was especially sensitive to the effects. Any caffeine after noon and I was wired all night. Well, the other day, sometime last week, I had gotten only a few hours of sleep scattered throughout the night, like maybe 2 hours, and so I bought some coffee on my way to work. The real stuff. With caffeine. The biggest one they had.
Wow! What a difference that made. I was totally productive all day. I had energy. I had less physical pain. I worked stayed late and worked 12 hours that day. And my energy level stayed all day. So now, I�m all hooked on the stuff. I�ve stopped at StarSchmucks almost every day this week. Well, okay, I did stop at StarSchmucks every day that I worked this week, as it�s only Wednesday, I didn�t work Tuesday and I bought coffee Monday and today. God, I�m becoming an addict. In fact, today, I bought 2 of them. I love the Pumpkin Spice but I wanted to try the Maple Macchiato. I was afraid I wouldn�t like it so I bought both. I planned to drink one on my way to work so I wouldn�t look so gluttonous. But it was too hot so I ended up going in to work with 2 cups of coffee. My co-workers teased me.
But I do have to say, both Monday and today, I�ve had more energy, I�ve been more focused, I�ve been more productive, I�ve had less pain, I�ve been happier. Now some of this is because I�m finally at a good level on my medication (it takes a while for your body to build up the right level and actually respond to the presence of the medication in your body). But I do have to attribute some of this to the caffeine. I fear I shall become an addict. I�ll be one of those people who can�t start the day without it.
