Effing S.A.D.

she's so happy she's going to eat the whole bowl of fruit!

I used to think it was funny that someone came up with "Seasonal Affective Disorder" to make "sad" sound less pathetic and more like an actual, clinical diagnosis, but I'm not laughing now.

That shit is real, and now I blame Canada for making it especially bad. Fucking Canada. I also picked the wrong month to stop eating doughnuts.

If I could open a vein and shove a dozen doughnuts in there along with a pot of coffee, I would do it. I have a Cuisinart.

At first I thought it was just the lack of sugar and my serotonin levels were all frakked up. Then I thought it was my ever-volatile hormones pickling my brain. Now I'm pretty sure it's just winter - that shitty, shitty bitch.

Living in the Bay Area, we usually don't get much "winter." We might get a few storms that can knock a bird turd off the hood of my car, but that's about it.

Supposedly there's an El Niño this year - that's Spanish for "THE Niño" - and "the storm door is open," so we just had a shit ton of storms come through, one after the other for about a week. It seems like it's been much longer.

I love the rain, especially a fierce storm with thunder and lightning. What I don't love is having to turn on all the lights in the house at 10am.

The depression kicked in again this week - just enough to kill any shred of motivation I might have had to be productive in some way, but not so much that I couldn't eventually find a way to put on pants and drag my ass to the store, which I did today only because the cats were out of food and YOU DO NOT RUN OUT OF CAT FOOD if you want to keep the skin on your face.

Now I understand the desire to take a pill - any pill - if it might bring relief from the endless inertia and apathy.

Rather than take a pill, I went to a trusted remedy - caffeine and sugar. That's right - I broke my resolution and had fully-leaded Peet's coffee and a granola bar with cane juice and chocolate. I had to. I couldn't wear that fleece robe one minute longer and watch any more bad TV. After a while it's no longer comforting, it's just lame.

I tried just the caffeine first, trying to avoid the stronger drug - sugar. After some Peet's half caf I didn't feel any different, but the delicious flavor made the drive to Pet Club a little less boring.

By the time I got to Trader Joe's I was feeling a little better, but bought the chocolate-coated chewy granola bars anyway. Popped one of those with the last of the coffee and sure as shit, I'm feeling fine now.

Some of you might be thinking, Oh Nootsie, you should have just laced up your trainers and gone out for a run, and to that I say go run yourself into an oncoming train.

When I was *sooper* depressed a couple of weeks ago and posted something about it on Facebook, someone said I should "do some cardio! it totally helps!" You can shove your cardio in your ass.

If you've ever been depressed, you don't just "do some cardio!" Depression precludes doing just about anything. And the shit running through your head keeps you heading farther down the rabbit hole - it's like a virus that replicates faster than you can try to kill it.

Thankfully, mine only gets so bad and I know it's temporary and I know it'll pass and I know I can still function if I have to and I know if I really need to, a little caffeine and carbs can help, but it doesn't make it any easier when I'm in that hole.

Maybe I'll break down and buy that incredibly ugly lamp for SADful people, then bask in its glow with a vat of Peet's and a case of Krispy Kremes until spring comes.

Summer is Better with Coffee

I feel like a kid fresh out of school on summer vacation, but it's taken a few days to feel the joy. I spent most of the weekend fighting sinus trouble & migraine-ish headaches, then Monday was busy with meetings / social activities with another migrainey headache in the background, and early this morning was my first foray into the obligation of jury duty.

When the judge told us this morning (after only a few hours of waiting / roll call / waiting / sitting / waiting / listening) that we would be released after filling out a questionnaire, I felt like you do when you find out a nasty 4-hour afternoon meeting gets canceled. Giddy. Drunk on free time.

I was anxious to get some caffeine into my system, as I'd made the big mistake of not grabbing ANY coffee this morning on my way to Hey-Ward. I would also be able to take care of a dozen things I couldn't get to last week or over the weekend.

I couldn't tolerate much coffee yesterday, thanks to Mister Migraine, so I thought I wouldn't need any this morning - I didn't feel any withdrawals yesterday so today I should be fine, right?

So not right. Yesterday I had little Miss Vicodin working on the migraine, and Miss Vicodin doesn't need little things like caffeine getting in her way. She works alone and is amazingly effective, if not a bit dampening.

Mmm... calming, soothing, fuzzy Vicodin blanket.

Sorry - where was I? Yes - caffeine - right. So 2 hours into the waiting-to-be-called-a-thon I realized I'd made a big mistake. I asked the folks at the counter if there might be time to sneak downstairs & grab coffee and the woman said "Oh no, we're going to get the call any minute now and even if you did get it, you'd have to dump it" (because you can't take it into the courtroom with you). Drats.

She wasn't lying about the call - it came about 5 minutes later, so we all filed downstairs to the courtroom to meet the judge and find out what's next. It took about an hour for the judge to give us all the details of the type of trial, how the jury will be selected, courtroom hours, parking, our obligation to serve on a jury, and that we're WELCOME TO BRING our COFFEE or other non-alcoholic beverages INTO THE COURT ROOM. Bracka fracka bracka!!!

Then they handed out the 14-page questionnaire, which I rocketed through and might elicit additional questioning by the lawyers next week, because I was totally WITHOUT CAFFEINE at that time - something that's happened only twice before in the past 27 years.

I said some things about law enforcement and incarceration - nothing any other envelope-pushing young adult hasn't gone through. It could get me kicked right off the list and that wouldn't be so bad, but at this point I wouldn't mind doing my duty. The judge seems cool and they had a surprisingly efficient way of dealing with 150 people in a few hours. But geek that I am, on the way home I was thinking of ways some things could be streamlined and done online.

Anyway, I raced to Peet's and topped off, got home & packed up my mom's b-day gift (which she should have opened yesterday), paid a few bills, went to the store, caught up on email and had lunch. With caffeine again running through my veins, all is right in the world. The migraine is finally gone (for this month) and it should be smooth sailing, at least until next Monday when I go back to court & find out what they thought of my questionnaire.

The Joy of Saeco (Thanks Dad!)

This post is for Griffin, who isn't sure if he'd want his coffee/espresso to be *that* automated. If you had one of these, that thought wouldn't enter your pretty little head ever again.

Here's the smart little guy sitting comfortably on my kitchen counter:


It sits on a swivel base so you can easily access the water reservoir from the top on the back left side and/or the bean hopper on the top right side. The reservoir holds about a liter of water & the bean hopper holds about a half pound of coffee beans - enough to last me a week or more drinking a couple of cups a day.

The water dispenser/milk frother is the nozzle on the right, and the espresso/coffee dispenser is on the left. Underneath those is the removable drip tray that slides out for easy dumping/cleaning. To the left of the espresso dispenser you can open up the front door of the unit to access and clean the "brew group" - the unit that receives the ground coffee from the hopper, tamps it, pre-moistens it, brews the coffee & then expels the "puck" (used coffee grounds) into the little compartment you can access on the left side of the machine for easy removal.

I only have to dump the pucks once a week and I've cleaned out the brew group a few times with a soft brush - that's it. The drip tray needs to be dumped & cleaned once a week and the water reservoir needs to be filled every other day or so depending on the demands of the habit.

In the bean hopper you adjust the coarseness of the grind as well as the dosing - how much coffee is used for each brew. Once you have that set to your liking, all you have to do is turn it on (the button on the left), wait about 45 seconds for it to warm up, turn the dial to the amount of coffee (single espresso size to a full mug of 'americana') then press the button in the middle and get ready.


The button on the right is for dispensing hot water, though that's the one thing I don't recommend using as it means refilling the reservoir a lot more often and the water isn't boiling hot - it seems to cool off fairly rapidly. For things requiring hot water the tea kettle seems the most straightforward route.


If you want to steam milk for a cap or latte, after the machine warms up, you turn the little nob on the right side of the machine above the steamer nozzle and wait about 30 seconds for the hot water to turn to steam, then shove that sucker into your pitcher of milk and in a minute or two, you've got hot foamy froth ready to go.


And the crema... look at the crema!


I never minded making a pot of coffee in the mornings before work, but now with this wonderful robot, I have a delicious cup of coffee in a minute, vs. 15 or 20, and each cup is a fresh cup. I'll never go back to a regular coffee machine again.

Ponder that over your next cup of drip...