Just Add Coffee

I love coffee. I love coffee more than I should. I love coffee more than the average person. (I inherited this from my mother, who has an even more intense relationship with coffee than I do.)  I started realizing I had a problem recently, when a group of friends were looking for coffee shops in different neighborhoods in the city, I had several suggestions for every neighborhood they threw at me, local chains, independent shops, coffee shops with food, shops with pastries, shops with just coffee, shops with seating, ones that were just a hole in the wall.  And at the end of the conversation they were sort of dumbfounded, all I could do was laugh and say, I drink a lot of coffee.

Part of this I attribute to commuting into the city for years, I would need to find a spot to sit and read or write and wait for friends, class, happy hour, dinner.  And in my early 20's I much preferred to be a single girl waiting alone in a cafe than a single girl waiting alone in a bar. As such, I became well acquainted with coffee shops, my cafe au lait the price of admission to sit and wait for good things to come.

But I won't blame my relationship with coffee on waiting for friends to arrive, I wake up in the morning, put water to boil, then go brush my teeth.  Coffee is a priority, and so much more than just my routine.  There are some mornings where my body is so craving the bitter-sweet warmth of a cup of joe, that I can actually feel the change after the first sip. Especially if its good coffee, which in my late 20's I have become a snob about.  Its an unhealthy, addictive relationship, which, as I sit here and sip on my sweet and nutty Long Island Coffee Roasters Ethiopian Sidamo blend, I don't think I'll ever want to quit.