Wednesday, November 16, 2005

It is early in the morning, and I am at work with my cup of drugs. I’ve never been a substances girl, but then coffee is just so supremely hard to give up.

I love coffee. I worship coffee. It tingles my fingers and buzzes my senses. It fires my synapses and I can take on the world.

Coffee has carried me through two degrees, two internships and twenty countries. While many prefer to hoity toity through Europe with a glass of Bordeaux, I found the underground café scene much more fascinating. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can stomp on grapes. The art is in the roast.

This morning’s addiction of choice: one tall maple latte, regular milk no whip, not quite courtesy of Starbucks. And my justification for having it is that today is the only day I start work at 8am, and I hate my job.

I am a Computerized Note Taker for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students, which is a nice and shiny way of saying I stalk students who can't hear too good to their classes, and type out everything the professor says. The money is great. The hours, laptop lugging and promise of carpal tunnel are not. It’s not a terribly challenging job either and, when it comes to climbing the corporate ladder in this case, I’ve gone as far as I can go.

It is my second year at this job and while I know I shouldn’t complain, I’m really craving a job in my field (writing & journalism), and something infinitely more stimulating. So if I can’t have a stimulating career just yet, I have to make do with the stimulants Starbucks is selling.

Coffee and the healthier lifestyle, da da dum, don't exactly go hand in hand. Unless you like it black, which I don't, the stuff raises your blood pressure, isn’t great for your cholesterol, works against vitamins B6 & B12, causes anxiety, heart palpitations if you drink too much, and etc.

Even worse, coffee (and my current Maple Latte) is usually full of milk and sugar, and those are deadly in the “newer lifestyle” world. Well, sugar anyway. I recently found a list by Dr. Nancy Appleton, author of “Lick the Sugar Habit” stating no less than 76 ways that sugar can ruin your health. That’s just a teensy bit more than a top ten. My personal favorites are that sugar causes brittle tendons, and impairs your DNA structure. Whoever said the genes you were born with was fixed? Does that mean my firstborn will have coffee beans lodged in his nostrils?

Truthfully, it’s not the sugar alone I crave. Very thankfully, I don’t have a sweet tooth. It’s the sugar in the coffee that I crave since it makes it taste that much better. I can’t have my coffee without the teensiest bit of sugar, and if that’s the case, then the whole lot has to go.

Big, big sigh, lowering my head in defeat, total acceptance & all other associated dramas. In the big picture, it’s small sacrifice for a newer, more gorgeous me. But then that will be really, really hard to remember the next time I’m up before the sun.

So, if this is going to be the last Thursday in awhile that I allow myself coffee, you’ll have to excuse me. I want to savor what’s left in my cup.

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