Cats & Coffee

[Listen to an audio version of this blog here.]

It was a Monday morning. The air was cool but humid and the sky was soft like soft Laffy Taffy, and a blueish-pink color that reminded me of a gender reveal party if the couple didn’t know the answer. I woke up early; after the 4 a.m. fanatics but before the mad rush to offices began. After spending an hour lifting my sandbags, engaging in an obligatory chat with my neighbor, and checking my mailbox for the first time this month, I sat down to work with a very large, very dark, cup of coffee.

Only I did a bad thing, and drank too much coffee. I started feeling goopy, like my fingers weren’t attached to my hands, weren’t attached to my arms, weren’t attached to my shoulders. It wouldn’t be so bad to feel like this if I didn’t feel like this most mornings. I wondered, briefly, if I’ve ever been close to caffeine poisoning. I wondered if caffeine is any better a drug than alcohol or crack cocaine or meth. A drug is a drug, right? Wrong, probably.

Me being high on caffeine, and it being a purple-skied Monday, I had some difficulty figuring out who to call. Not John, I thought, because John talks forever and I would need even more coffee in order to have a productive conversation with John. Not Amy, because she wasn’t very friendly last time we spoke. Not Bill, because Bill is very old and hard of hearing. I settled on…