Author’s Note: This is another list based on the Take Ten For Writer’s prompt book by Bonnie Neubauer. The original post explains it here, and my new word list is coffee, a bicycle, cookies and a female relative. I didn’t realize how much I could write about coffee until I started. This time, I took a lot longer than ten minutes to write.

I wasn’t more than five or six when I had my first taste of coffee. I must have begged my grandmother to let me try hers because I distinctly remember her spooning some into my glass of milk. I’m sure I felt extremely grown up drinking it, but I didn’t start seriously drinking coffee until I moved back home after college. My mother has had a two-cup-a-day habit as long as I can remember, so I started drinking coffee with her. It was a special ritual that only the two of us shared, as my sister was in college and my dad has never been a coffee drinker. I like my coffee strong, slightly bitter (but not burned) with no sugar and about 1/3 skim milk (down from about 1/2 milk when I started drinking it. Of course, when I got married, I got a Mr. Coffee drip coffee maker, but I never really used it much because you have to make at least three cups to make it taste right. I drink one cup every morning (and my husband doesn’t drink hot beverages) so I was appalled at how much coffee I was wasting. I got a Keurig single cup coffee maker for Christmas 2010, and I started drinking coffee again in earnest. My favorite KCup flavors are hazelnut, southern pecan, Folger’s Vanilla Biscotti and Caramel Drizzle.

The funny thing about my relationship with coffee is that I get absolutely no buzz off of it whatsoever. I limit myself to two cups a day at most, and I never drink coffee after noon because it gives me a stomach ache when I do. I don’t feel especially peppy after I drink it, nor do I get in a mood if I don’t. I really don’t notice any difference between regular and decaf, so why do I drink it? Because the ritual is what gets me going every morning. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a morning person, but a good cup of coffee gives me something to look forward to when I drag myself out of bed. I drink coffee for the flavor and the warmth–everyone who knows me knows I am the world’s only cold blooded human, so a warm cup of coffee is what I need to get my juices flowing. My husband jokes that I have two personalities, Jennie BC (before coffee) and Jennie AC (after coffee).  Jennie BC is muddled and somewhat profane, but Jennie AC is mellow and able to move on with the day. I think he likes Jennie AC much better, and, quite frankly, so do I.