Coffee Monkey

There's a song by a band called the Bottle Rockets (very cool name, by the way) about being addicted to coffee - the song's called Coffee Monkey. Short and sweet, the song totals all of two minutes and seven seconds and is one very cool country tune that is a great example of why I love under - the - radar country music more all the time. For anyone who knows me and is reading this, you've heard me talk about this kind of country music before, so I won't ramble on again. Besides, I want to talk a bit about coffee here.

My own relationship with coffee started in high school. It started in the worst way possible in terms of quality coffee - brace yourselves - I started by drinking instant coffee. As if that weren't bad enough, I put so much sugar in the stuff that I would eat it off the bottom with a spoon...and like it. Prior to this, I can remember seeing my parents drinking coffee with cream in it when I was a child and thinking that it was chocolate milk - which I liked. All it took was one small sip to convince me of just how wrong that was.

I hear people say they don't like coffee all the time. My own coffee drinking habits have changed quite a bit over the years and while my intake is limited to the hours before noon, I do rather enjoy my coffee. Fifteen years or so back, I used to brew a full pot - 12 cups by just about every manufacturer's standards, and drink it all. Sometimes I would put on another half pot or even full pot. Those days are gone, but I still drink coffee to start my day. Until recently I was drinking it with skim milk, but now I am favoring the flavored creamer stuff, oh man am I favoring that. Kind of reminds me of when I used to ski and coffee with Bailey's in it was so soothing and warming.

Every meal I have at my parents house has coffee making an appearance right before desert and while it's always decaff, it also has Kahlua in it - which has become a bit of a trademark for my stepfather. I'm okay with that one. I'd like to say that I don't drink all that much coffee. I don't actively seek out Starbucks or any other coffee shop, while I'm out and about running errands and I can't imagine (at least most days) getting up and leaving the house and getting my coffee fix anywhere outside the home.

I could set my coffee maker to have the coffee ready when I get up, but there's something about the routine of making it when I first get up and then making my bed, getting dressed and taking the dog out. Maybe this is something I need to work on and my routine would do better to have the coffee ready when I roll out of bed. Note to self: consider revising routine/setting the coffee maker before I go to bed in order to lessen the wait in the morning. It could work.

As for the amount of coffee I drink - well that depends on who you ask. If you ask me, I have three cups a day and it all ends before noon. If you ask the coffee maker, it would say that I drink eight cups a day. Eight cups? Really? I guess it's eight cups if you call the dainty little cup-and-saucer, wide mouthed, tea party cups that are destined to spill over at the slightest movement of either cup or saucer, cups - then yeah, it's eight of those cups. I don't like those cups, never have. I want a mug, that is a cup and I have three of those cups a day. So that's my stance on coffee - do I like it? Sure, but only under the parameters that I've mentioned. Can't drink it black, don't like it that way. Can't drink it with sugar in it, though the flavored creamer is pretty close to doing just that. No matter, it makes coffee more enjoyable to me. I wouldn't say I'll never ski again, and if indeed I do, I'm sure coffee and Bailey's will be there for me. I'm a very infrequent visitor to coffee shops, in fact, I still have two gift cards from Starbucks that I was given five years ago, near  as I can recall that is. So that's my take on coffee. That's the coffee monkey on my back.