It’s time for another coffee. This is a recurring thought, particularly on weekends between the hours of 8 and 3. The weekend coffees are made in a small Bodum french press, so it’s more a matter of frequency than volume, but I find myself wondering if I’m drinking too much coffee.
Like some other foods (pasta, cheese, brussel sprouts), coffee came into my life a bit late. I still remember one of the first coffees I had, a tall from the Starbucks located in the university science library, and I finished it at perhaps two in the afternoon, and later that night was still fully awake at 3 and then 4 am, completely unable to sleep. Even now years later, the late afternoon remains a debatable time, when I start to ask if it’s okay to have that additional cup. I still haven’t understood why some coffees taste more sour than others. I don’t take it with sugar, don’t like it on its own, and prefer adding some form of milk - cow, almond, oat, rice.
I read some articles telling us of the benefits of coffee, and more articles arguing that coffee is bad for us. It’s bad for energy, it’s a drug, we become dependent on it. I’ve considered cutting back myself, particularly when I go without coffee for a couple of days and experience that most noticeable caffeine withdrawal headache, the pressure on the forehead, and find it alarming to be tethered to that daily cup to avoid it.
But I simply adore coffee. There’s that mood lift, one article story comes to mind, about someone who gave it up for health reasons but said they never felt quite as good as they did while on coffee. And there are the associations that come with coffee. The warmth of a café, with its wooden tables and easy music, and the bowl mugs holding café latte. Coffee is a steady companion to books and writing, and a quiet facilitator of conversation between friends somewhere out along a cobblestoned sidewalk, it’s in the backdrop of many a Gilmore Girls episode where Rory and Lorelai are constantly going for coffee at any hour, their answer of how to make the day a little better.