things i’m losing
Posted on September 21, 2006 - Filed Under general
i feel like i’m losing things i love. i feel like i’m getting old. i’m not yet 30.
first, there’s caffeine . i quit drinking it a while back. not exactly cold turkey. i’ll still have black tea once in a while. but for the most part i’ve quit my caffeine mistress. i was just drinking too much. i’d say around 32 oz of coffee a day and maybe a soda for good measure. i wouldn’t say i was jittery exactly. and i didn’t seem to go through withdrawal that much. so what exactly is it that i’m losing? it’s that coffee. i love coffee. i love the taste. i love the act of making it. i love the ritual in drinking it every morning. and now, since i’ve stopped, when i do have some, i do get jittery. so drink decaf, you say. well i do. but it’s a poor substitute . it’s like drinking nonalcoholic beer. there’s something really nice about sliding up to the counter at a little dive diner and saying, “cup of coffee , please.” and you get that little white cup that has been used a million times and it’s a bit chipped but the coffee is super black and hot. mmmm. . . you get a look if you try to do that but instead say “cup of decaf, please.” they assume you have some sort of medical condition or something. i mean why else would you drink it?
the second thing, also a beverage, is beer. i severely cut back on my beer intake a couple of months ago. i wasn’t drinking a ton of it but probably a 12 pack every week or two. now i drink that much in a month maybe. the reason was simple. my pants no longer fit like they used to. i’m not 20, i can’t drink all night and have it not matter to my head or my stomach . so yeah, i cut back and started working out at the gym and i feel better. i don’t think i’ve dropped more than a few pounds but i feel better and that’s really what’s important. however, here’s the problem. now, when i have as little as one beer, my stomach can’t handle it. one! it’s not that i get sick and throw up , i haven’t done that in years (and it always took many many more than one) but that i get a stomach ache andi’ll be “unpleasant to be around”. let’s leave it at that. okay so fine, don’t drink beer anymore. well two issues with that. i really like beer. in the same way i like coffee. i dont’ like football but sitting down with the guys eating chili and having a beer just can’t be beat as a fall activity. the other reason that it’s a problem is that my bachelor party is coming up in about a week now. it’sok, i can still drink hard liquor. i guess it’ll just be whiskey for me that night.
so, i’m approaching 30 and it looks like i’m saying goodbye to coffee and beer. or maybe it’s more like, well we can still be friends but friends who don’t talk much. friends like someone who lives in somewhere in the south pacific and can’t correspond much because it requires a five mile hike to the radio that acts as a telephone through the coastguard .
sigh, well i’ll just dump another shot of whiskey in my decaf coffee and get back to work.
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