no longer given to expletives**/* for mike

But if I were, I’m sure I would’ve inserted a few in the title alone, besides whatever ended up in the entry.

So, if the phone number I found for OD works, anyone want it?

Have I mentioned I detest their customer service? Because I really do.

I’m going through this for $12. But, let’s face it, it’s a matter of principle at this point.

I forgot about the inane ads. At least the pop-ups don’t seem to be nearly as rampant this time around.

Honestly, if it weren’t for you, I probably wouldn’t be writing here anymore.

Meh. Anyway.

Love y’all. I hope you enjoyed your weekend.

** I’m using Mozilla Firefox. As [glasses eater] made mention of it, I realize this is probably why I’ve not encountered the rampant pop-ups. I thought I should add that in there. Just in case someone mistakenly thinks I have an extremely high tolerance for pop-ups or something. 🙂

* the story you asked for

Learn from My Mistakes

or

The Obvious Learned the Hard Way On Sunday Morning

I didn’t go to bed until after 2 am. I didn’t get to sleep until 3-ish. And my alarm went off shortly after 7:30. 7:35, if one were inclined to be exact. The sound of the CD preparing to play was not a happy one. The music commencing, no matter how enjoyable, didn’t excite me. It was too soon, too early. I wanted it to stop. But for all the right reasons, not just because I knew the right button to push. In the meantime, I stayed in bed, amazed at how quickly 5 minutes can pass.

Once my clock read 7:41, I was inspired to move a bit more quickly. I needed to be in the shower by 7:45 and I still had to get undressed, wrapped in a towel and get a glass of ice water, besides making my way upstairs to my bathroom.

I’m not sure if I made it by 7:45, but it was in the near vicinity. However, once in the shower, I found myself cold and sleepy. A combination sure to slow down the cleansing process as I fiddle with the water temperature and hope I remember what I just washed/shaved/what have you.

I get bathed and dried and dolled up and know I’ve got an hour before I’ve got to be out the door while I wait for the other person in my party to get their morning readiness ritual out of the way. It’s at this moment I can either attempt making my own Americano for the first time, or I can head to Starbucks (in the Barnes and Nobel, also the nearest coffee merchant who wouldn’t a.) look at me funny when I asked for an Americano and b.) lacks a drive-through window) and know it won’t turn out wonky and awful, leaving me caffeine fix-less and in a desperate state of attempting continued wakefulness.

I opt for Starbucks. I typically order a tall Americano. This morning, given that I really, really want to be back in bed, I go for the gusto and get the largest one possible and ask for an extra shot. The more caffeinated the better.

My breakfast consisted of a lot of caffeine and a little bit of yogurt. The kind of breakfast you’re probably supposed to avoid. At least from the caffeine/coffee side of things. I did not care. I was awake. I was alert. I was even verging on happy. I was loving Starbucks. I was loving Katie even more, who was, in a way, responsible for me maintaining consciousness this morning.

As the need to get the show on the road approached, I’d consumed enough of the delightful coffee beverage to be able to dump the rest into my travel mug. Not only was it more insulated, but it could be closed and was far less likely to get me covered in coffee if I was in mid-sip when the vehicle hit a bump or a turn or a stop or anything that would mean jostling, basically.

So, I finished off my coffee while I completed my morning obligations and we returned home.

I was a wee bit woozy at this point. That much coffee without consuming an equal amount of water and more food than I’d ingested wasn’t making my body all that thrilled with my choice of a stimulant-laden morning. But, I soldiered on.

Or, mostly, I managed to get some lunch down and a big glass of water.

It was then decided that looking at houses is what we should do. Which was fine. Though the caffeine high had pretty much bottomed out and I gave up debating if it was bed or consuming more water that had the greater pull.

After seeing some houses in the area, we were off to find Cranberry Lake (or Pond, I’m not sure which). There was apparently a house available out there.

It was a long journey. Which would’ve been made considerably shorter by a better map. As it was, we ended up off of the paved road, the paved road that was quite rough, actually, and onto a whole lot of gravel. Rough paved road and a whole lot of gravel that wound through hills. Which meant a lot of up and down and tight turns.

While traversing such terrain at 40 mph wouldn’t be my choice at any time, whether or not I was driving (I wasn’t), their general lack of smoothness, both in texture and path, was only accentuated by the fact that I’d not sufficiently diluted the black-brown liquid heaven I’d consumed mere hours before.

And while you may be wont to debate the heavenliness of a liquid that ultimately made me feel all icky, I’ll declare to you its splendidness and take the blame for the bout of nausea. If I hadn’t gone all Big Gulp with it, I would’ve been fine and we could’ve continued our passionate love affair without the reoccurring thought of "so this must be what car sickness feels like, you know, sans the puking part."

As it was, seeing vast stretches (when there weren’t a bunch of curves obstructing the view) of gravel road or asphalt whose better days had long since passed made me want to cry while I debated the virtues of exceeding the posted speed limit (we’d be out of the land of ancient paving sooner) while I considered the merits of obeying the posted speed limit (I wouldn’t feel like I was in the back of an exploration vehicle outrunning lions or bandits or something while my body would occasionally snark, "You weren’t all that partial to your lunch anyway, were you?").

But we finally made it out of the hill country and back to semi-civilization. Which mostly entailed decent paving. Thank God for decent paving. And the fact that, though the last time the contents of my stomach decided to take a shortcut was extremely embarrassing, 13 years have come and gone since then and that count doesn’t have to be reset.

And that was the story of how I learned large quantities of espresso-y goodness as part of a highly imbalanced breakfast combined withhigh speeds on terrible roads is the sort of combination that is best avoided.