I go through these phases when it comes to coffee. I will take it black, no sugar for about a year, then switch to heavy cream and plenty of Equal for about six months. When I make the change it is full of stress and relief all at the same time - relief to rid myself of my current troubles and stress over the knowledge that I have signed myself up for new ones.
I am going through one of those phases now.
02:18 PMI spilled coffee on my jacket the other day - another milestone in a 5 year coffee-drinking career. It is a milestone because it breaks a long streak of success, allowing me to reflect on success only after failure.
This is only the second time that I have ever spilled coffee, and the first time that the drink has been one of the complex, espresso and whipped-cream type beverages as opposed to plain coffee.
When I was in college I started drinking coffee and prided myself on never spilling it anywhere but in my mouth at the designated times. This was no small feat as I was often sporting a dopey-fresh bookbag and, at very busy times, a laptop and case. This would mean that when I was standing in front of the coffee-that-has-no-taste-but-does-the-job machine I would be plotting the complex series of movements that would allow me to grab the coffee, put back on my bookbag, and pick up my laptop without spilling a drop.
I would like everyone to know at this point that the only time that plain coffee has ever been sacrificed was when a small chinese woman ran past me as I was picking up my coffee right after a difficult but highly successful laptop floor-to-shoulder transfer. She bumped into me and I thrust the coffee upwards - my mind shouting "Save the coffee, sacrifice yourself!". About a tablespoon of the coffee spilled down the arm of my gray jacket, and it smelled so good for weeks. The chinese woman, I assume, made it to class on time.
This time I spilled coffee by placing my coffee behind my laptop and then thirty minutes later pushing the laptop back (because it was time to take a sip of coffee) and, unaware of the coffee's location, causing it to fall to the floor where my gray jacket rested. So although the two spills are unrelated they both involve a gray jacket and the same laptop in a weird Twilight-Zone-but-nobody-really-cares kind of way.
When I came into work today I smelled coffee on my jacket and had a split second in which I thought that either I had not ever washed my jacket from 2 years ago or that I had achieved another milestone without being aware of it.
07:16 AMI am bitter and hot, burning your mouth and causing that sweet part of your tongue to moan about your inattentiveness.
The fact that I am comforting on a cold day is a coincidence only, a consequence of me being out of my natural habitat. I was meant to burn more than the hot sun under which I grow, to cause bitter little burns on the tip of your tongue on the first sip, to cause your face to squint in like your eyes do.
But you cover me in whipped cream and carry me around like little hand warmers when it is bitterly cold outside. I am bitterly hot but you splash me with caramel and cinnamon, rock sugar and white mocha. That way when you sip me I am sweet and sour, cold and warm.
I am angy, quiet. Steaming in my own warm bath, brewing about the unfairness of the world. But my owners, my drinkers are perky loud people who are full of energy. I sustain them and they rely on me, only feeling like me when they can't have me at the very start of the morning, when the wind slices them to their core and their eyes squint and look out onto the world bitterly, another day.
04:28 AM