Giving Up Coffee - The End?

It has been a difficult journey.  Coffee is everywhere.  People are either drinking coffee or offering you a cup of coffee. It is the social drink of choice and to refuse a friendly offer of a cup of coffee seems to suggest that one's social skills need polishing. "I would love a glass of ice water," just doesn't cut it.

I remember a Valentine card I once bought for my husband.  The illustration on the card was of two steaming cups of coffee on a cozy kitchen table.  I can't imagine the same illustration with one steaming cup of coffee and a tall glass of ice water.  What would the message say inside? "You're hot; I'm cold.  Be my valentine"  I don't think so.

It's funny how we link associations to a cup of coffee. Coffee is a friendly drink.  It bonds people. It makes us warm and cozy. Just the smell of coffee makes people perk up and smile with anticipated pleasure.  How many times, I remember, enduring a bad cup of coffee, and when I was done saying something like, "Ah!  That hit the spot."  I believed that, even if it tasted like tar infused engine oil, coffee just made me feel better. It's what I went for when I was tired, depressed, bored,  relaxing, or making a pit stop on a long road trip. I drank it to wake up, wind down, warm up or calm down.

I just finished reading the three books by Stieg Larsson:  The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played With Fire and The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest.  What amazed me, while reading those books, was how often the characters were drinking coffee.  In almost every scene - except the ones where someone was being chased on foot - someone was either offering coffee, brewing a pot of coffee, or sitting in a cafe drinking coffee.  Coffee, coffee, coffee!  I think that's what helped me commit to giving up the stuff.  I would find myself sighing with impatience every time a character would start brewing another pot of coffee.  Why were they sitting around drinking coffee when they should have been chasing the bad guys? Why, he probably could have condensed all three books into one if there weren't so many coffee breaks in between the action.

So how do I go from the person I was when I wrote my blog, The Coffee Party on March 29th of this year to the decaffeinated dud that I am now?  Not by choice, I can tell you that.  I loved coffee.  Coffee was my friend.  But like anything that doesn't agree with you anymore, or a friend that turns out to be a jerk, you have to painfully admit that it is time to end the relationship. 

Sure, I still have fond memories and I still have weak moments when I think about my old friend and contemplate a brief encounter.  Who would know?  I could sneak into any one of the thousand Starbucks on every street corner.  I would blend in with the crowd and no one would know that I was cheating.  I could make a 12-cup pot at home, when I'm alone, and spend the afternoon dancing on the tables and singing opera at the top of my lungs (with the windows shut, of course).  Who would know?

Who would know?