another round of caffeine withdrawal

If it weren’t for health reasons, I’d never quit coffee.

I’m, yet again, trying to quit coffee.  Well all caffeine.  Even tea. 

I love my coffee.  It’s a not-so-secret friend that occupies my time and butterfly coffee mugs.  And my heart.  I heart coffee.  Coffee is my routine.  And I am a creature of routine.  If I didn’t have my coffee-making-drinking-savoring routine in the morning, I’d be lost.  Like a little puppy, wondering the cold hard streets, waiting the ASPCA to pick him up and deliver him to a warm home.  Only, in my case, the ASPCA would be java.

Have you seen those ASPCA commercials?  Sigh.  I don’t even look at the tv when that Sara Mc-whoever song comes on.  I just know, my little ami-nal loving brain screams LOOK AWAY!  For the sake of the Man, it’s best.  If I successfully watch an entire ASPCA commercial, I’d be crying, then asking him if we could adopt another dog.  Tears would be rolling down my bloated and red face, I’d be blubbering and drooling and hiccupping and my non-waterproof mascara would run. 

A withdrawal effect I’m experiencing is distraction.  I’m already a “ooo! Look!  Something shiny!” type of person, this makes it worse.  Most of the time, with my steady caffeine drip, I can fake concentration on what people are saying.  It’s my focus.  I can’t fake it without.  I change subjects in the middle of thoughts.  Every sentence I’ve spoken today started with “Oh!  Did you hear…?” or “Oh!  I saw….” and “Oh!  I read…?  I’ve become an eleven year ADD boy on Mountain Dew in a mall. 

Did you hear that kids with ADD should be screened for heart defects because the stimulants doctors prescribe have cause sudden death related to un-diagnosed heart problems, in addition to numerous strokes and other heart related bad things?  Yep.

Except, I’m not a full-blown eleven year old on Mountain Dew.  Unless someone spiked that eleven year old’s Mountain Dew with a couple doses of benadryl.  Because I’m easily distracted, can’t maintain a string of thought AND I feel drugged.  Tired.  Fatigued.  Fuzzy gray-matter syndrome.  I also think I’m slurring my speech.  The lack of caffeine has caused my tongue to swell and my mouth to dry out, it’s like trying to talk through a mouth of peanut butter.

Speaking of swelling, it’s caused my right foot to swell up too.  So that my really great looking shoe is uncomfortably tight.  But just the RIGHT foot.

I can’t stop eating this can of nuts.  I’m normally not too terribly hungry, but the past two days it’s been hard.  I picked up a can of Mauna Lao Almonds and Macadamia nuts at the store, and have eaten half the damn can already.  Ridiculous.  I’m not hungry for good-for-me thing either.  I wanna gorge on a frosted brownie (but that has caffeine) or cookie the size of my swollen foot or a cold Stone ice cream concoction of sweet cream ice cream, heath bar, butterscotch, Reese Peanut Butter cups and coconut.  It HAS TO HAVE coconut.  The coconut makes it.

I don’t feeling like making food tonight, but I’ve got to and I ready for bed, but I can’t and I don’t want to walk home, but I haveta.