My Inner Coffee Drinker

The Christmas season is my favorite time of year.  The colors, music, decorations, time with family & friends, Advent, Christ's birth, performing plays or shows at Church, buying presents, taking time off from work.... it all adds up to a wonderful time of year, as the song says.  I know a lot of what I love stems from my childhood experiences, but I guess I feel like a big kid now, and still enjoy so many aspects of the season.

Santa Claus visits our home and provides much happiness to the whole family.  My daughter receives three gifts from Santa each Christmas, just as the Christ-child received three gifts from the wise men.  My family goes way overboard with our gift-giving every year, and this year was no exception.  In fact, I received a wonderful gift this year, one of the best I've ever gotten:  a Keurig coffee maker!

Who knew?  I only drank coffee for a short time as a student in college, not really liking the taste and only wanting the caffeine pick-me-up.  I would drink it during finals week as an assist to my studying.  I preferred my caffeine through normal cola drinking, particularly Jolt, with twice the caffeine and sugar as other sodas, but thought coffee was better for me, at least during a time when I needed to have my wits about me.  It didn't help my grades, though, and so it didn't take.  I just didn't care for the taste.  No matter how much dressing up I did to it, I still couldn't acquire a taste for it.

When I was a kid, most of the adults in my life drank coffee, and it was clear that it was a grown up thing.  As I got older, I still didn't think I was "old enough" to drink coffee, so I never started, and never took an interest in trying it.

My boss told me I needed to start drinking coffee at work for social reasons, and, since he tends to be a bit "forceful" in a peer-pressure-y way, he talked me into trying it one morning.  I still wasn't convinced I liked it, but I did enjoy the caffeine jump it provided, especially since I was looking for alternatives to soda (which came about after my diabetes diagnosis).  So I began getting a cup of French Vanilla coffee at our coffee shop in the lobby of our building, and even got to know the Korean owner and his wife, Han & Sue. But I was only drinking a cup a day, and only at work.  The last thing I needed was to get hooked on Starbucks and other gourmet coffees, and I did not want a coffee maker at home.  It didn't make sense, and I didn't want the extra chore of having to clean a coffee pot everyday.

Enter the Keurig.  Mom has one, and she showed me some of coffee flavors she uses, and, just like that, I was hooked.  Mom is a coffee connoisseur, and she guided me through the coffee-making process.  Talk about easy!  So Mom got me my own Keurig for Christmas.  It may be the best present I received this year!  I think I'm making at least 2 or 3 cups per day, not just coffee, but cappuccino, cider, and other flavors.  I may end up getting one for the office, too, so I can be anti-social and drink it in the privacy of my own office.  Ironic, since I was talked into drinking coffee at work for the social aspects.