IFEELFINEREALLYFINEFINEME!

I'm not a person who has caffeine on a regular basis anymore.

When I was in High School, I had an iced frappuccino (from a bottle) every day during first period, drank cherry coke on a regular basis, and the northwest being what it was in the 90's, a lovely cappuccino on occasion.

When I got to college, I dropped the coffee for tea, limited my soda (or pop, depending on what half of the country I was in at the time) intake to oh, like 3 a day, and was regularly enticed by the siren song of the raspberry latte at the old (better) Gallerie Espresso.

Then I realized that my debilitating insomnia was probably affected by all the caffeine I was ingesting and I basically dropped it cold turkey, except on special occasions. Occasions such as that certain day a month when all I want is fried chicken and chemicals dipped in chocolate with a corn syrup chaser, or times when a cappachino with my dessert sounds like the perfect thing after a meal out. Which is rare. I do enjoy a cafe au lait (half coffee, half milk) sometimes for breakfast, but I generally stick with my pot of tea. I certainly don't drink coffee after 4 in the afternoon.

So when B told me the other day, that when he used the new coffee grinder for a pot of (french press) coffee one morning and it turned out a little weak, I decided to try my hand at it. I made a cup for myself, and drank it without milk. I thought it was a little weak, too.

Then, on Sunday morning when I would normally have a pot (3 cups) of tea while reading the paper and watching design shows, I made coffee instead. Since it had been so weak up until this point, I really went for it. I'm not really sure how many scoops it ended up being, but I couldn't actually press the stopper all the way to the bottom of the carafe. It was like 3 inches from the bottom. That's how many grounds were in this pot of coffee.

It tasted good. Really good. Like, coffee house good. Stardust good.

I don't really remember how it happened, but I drank the whole freaking pot of coffee. I think I was just going with it, and since I have my Sunday morning routine based around 3.5 cups of tea, I just drank until I reached that point.

90 minutes later, my hands started to shake. I was embroidering at the time, and I couldn't figure out why I couldn't hit my mark. GOD it was PISSING ME OFF. I put the piece down, and stretched out my arm. My whole arm was shaking. My head felt kinda funny, and boy was this TV show getting boring.

I realized that I had better things to do than embroidery forgodsakes. I needed to eat. Pizza sounded good. Yeah, pizza. Find the rolling pin, the dough is a little hard oh did I turn on the oven okay oven on OOH! a salad sounds good why didn't I do these dishes last night I can barely get to the sink oh crap I forgot to do B's laundry I better sort that oh did I remember to email her back I bettergo checkthatismypizza doneyetI'mreallyhungry. Okay I feel a little better since I ate something. God, I should go the gym or something maybe I'll go for a run or just do some cartwheelswouldIbreakthetable ifIfellintoitwhyamiskipping downthehallwaytothe officeI'mthirstythrirstythirsty. WHOO-HOOOO!

I took a nap about 3 hours later, my mind and body exausted from what I can only describe as an out of body experience.

I feel it's the closest I'll ever come to experiencing the effects of being on crack. And I just now had a craving for a cup of coffee...