Hate the headache
February 20, 2012
When did I become dependent on coffee? For the longest time ever, I’d just have my decaf in the morning. Maybe twice a month, I’d dare to have a cup of regular in the afternoon. I was so staunchly decaf that I bought my own little four-cup coffee maker for the office so that my decaf-making wouldn’t interfere with the regular in the big pot. I used to tell people that it would self-destruct if it came in contact with caffeine.
Now it’s me who sets myself up every week to self-destruct with regular coffee. I have swung completely in the opposite direction.If I manage to behave myself, I only have half-caf in the morning. But a lot of the time it’s a couple of cups of the full octane joe. And in the afternoons I don’t even try to be reserved. I like the post-lunch pick-me-up of my two, sometimes three, mugs of regular. And then I wonder why I don’t feel like going to bed earlier at night.
By the end of the week, my need for speed rears its ugly head earlier and earlier. By mid-morning on Thursday and Friday I get that caffeine headache that I know I’m easily prone to. And on the weekend I look forward to the major headache because I don’t usually make coffee at home. My routine is just different and doesn’t make me think of sitting and sipping. I suffer through it and resolve that next week I won’t give in. I have known for ages that I quickly become “addicted” to caffeine and that’s why I was perfectly content with high-quality decaffeinated for years and years; I didn’t want to deal with the headaches. I hypothesize that as I stay at my position longer and longer (seventeen-year anniversary coming up next month) and the types of projects I work on become more and more routine, the little jolt I get from caffeine makes me cheerier on the job.I guess I have come to accept the weekly withdrawal as a small price to pay for something that gives me enough pleasure during the week. I am weak.
I love to sleep
April 29, 2010
Don???t most people? I would think so. But I know one person, @aaronh, who seems to have superhuman abilities to exist on subhuman amounts of sleep. Four or five hours a night for weeks on end? Come on. I???m tanked if I have two nights in a row of seven or fewer.
I know other people who keep vampire hours and don???t go to bed until the wee hours of the morning. But that???s a little different, because @someToast doesn???t seem to knock himself out getting up in the morning, so the quantity of hours is probably still there.
I, on the other hand, neither stay up late nor scrimp on hours.??
That doesn’t mean that I don’t often feel like I wished I had slept more. In reality I get seven to nine hours of sleep most nights. The exception is Thursday nights when I stay out late after bowling, whooping it up at karaoke. I get to bed between 1:00 and 2:30, depending on how much I???m singing.
But most of the time I go to bed between, say, 11:00 and 12:30 and actually get up at 8:00. Since I???ve been writing this blog, bedtime has crept later. I sit down for some quick writing and the next thing I know, what I thought I???d dash off in thirty to forty minutes has taken me an hour and a half,??????????1` (cat landing on laptop) and it???s an hour later than I had in mind. That lateness is facilitated as well, I believe, by my afternoon coffee habit, which I am seeking to get out of this week. Caffeine has a marked effect on me and even if it???s only mid-afternoon when I have some, it???s enough to keep me feeling peppy later than I should at night.
Sleeping more than is practical isn???t helped by the fact that I have a nice bed, and give myself a sleeping environment that is low on temperature and high on covers. When you???re that comfortable, can fault be found that you just want to stay there? And if you???re laying down you might as well stay asleep. Plus, for me anyway, when I???m half-sleeping in the morning because my subconscious knows that I should really get up so it doesn???t let me fall fully back to sleep, my other subconscious is going to town giving me absolutely wacky dreams. I like those dreams a lot and I treasure the experience. It???s especially fun when the dream involves people you see frequently in life and is so vivid that the next time you that person, you have to wonder for a few seconds whether that actually happened or not. Sometimes in those dreams, I even do fictional work work, such as writing It???s a Baby Armadillo, and hang out with people I???ve never met.
There???s nothing not good about sleeping. Plus, you get to snuggle with critters.
My drink of choice (second runner-up)
March 11, 2010
I suppose the time of day would determine what I would say to this. In a shootout at the OK Corral, water would probably win because it’s the most versatile and the best for me. For fun, well, you all know I love beer. But beer isn’t always practical, and I also covered it in a previous post. So for this entry, the winner is coffee.
I do coffee backwards. I drink decaffeinated in the morning and regular in the afternoon. It’s like this. I get addicted to the caffeine very quickly, so I have to be careful. If I have a couple of cups two or three days in a row, I fall victim to that awful caffeine headache if I don’t start getting my fix soon enough on subsequent days. That is why I started drinking decaf years and years ago. So that I wouldn’t get hooked on caffeine.
In the last year or two, however, regular coffee on a regular basis has crept back into my life, after lunch. It’s sort of like when I started smoking again the last time. I thought, oh, I’ll just have this one and it’ll be just fine. Next thing you know, you’re smoking close to a pack a day. Same with coffee. One afternoon when I was bored, a little sleepy, and there was already some made, I drank a cup of regular coffee. And guess what—I perked up. Maybe once a week I’d do that. Well, now I’m drinking two or two and a half mugs an afternoon. On Saturday at home when I don’t make coffee for myself, I am visited by the splitting headache. I usually just take a few aspirin (not Excedrin, my prefered pain-reliever, because that’s got caffeine in it) and tough it out, only to start over on Monday. I still drink decaf in the morning. My reasoning these days is that presumably I’ve just been sleeping all night and should be rested and not need artificial stimulants. I also believe that morning caffeine reels me in a day or two faster than afternoon coffee. My name is Kelly and I am in denial.
Just to recap on my beers of choice, we have (L–R): Summit Extra Pale Ale, Surly Coffee Bender, Bell’s Oberon, Lagunitas India Pale Ale, Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale.
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 