“I just can’t quit you!”

Today is National Coffee Day! Surely this “holiday” was invented by Starbucks! I imagine Hallmark gave them the idea because it seems to have worked well for the King of Greeting Cards & Sentimentality to invent new holidays for the sake of increasing sales. Nothing smarter than having a holiday which celebrates your product!

I’ve never been a coffee drinker. I personally can’t stand the taste. Everyone tells me that if you doctor it up with enough cream and sugar, you will learn to like it. If you have to disguise something THAT dramatically just so you will like it, why bother?

I’m a Coke girl…… of course I’m talking about the liquid variety and not the illegal kind. Actually, Pepsi is my drug of choice. I find it suspiciously coincidental (and a bit insensitive) that we are celebrating a day of caffeinated debauchery on the second day I decide (AGAIN) to give up Pepsi.

Now, before you go getting all impressed, let me just say that I’m like Jake Gyllenhaal’s character from Brokeback Mountain: “I just can’t quit you!” I’ve tried sooooo many times, only to, once again, pick up my Pepsi habit with renewed interest and vigor. But for now…..it’s Day No. 2.

I have this quitting thing down to a science:

Day One: Empowerment! Excitement! Determination, as I calculate how much weight I will lose when I finally win this battle.

Day Two: Headaches, followed by remorse for opening my big mouth and declaring to people who might hold me accountable, that I’m quitting. This time, like an idiot, I put it on Facebook! Double idiot! Now, the number of people who can remind me if I slip is close to 1,000. Oh joy!

Day Three: Excitement! Three days of no soda = a flatter stomach! Already!!! I rush to the scale,but alas! It mocks me! There is no Easy Street on the winding route to weight loss!

Days Four through Seven: Resolve with intermittent moments of wistful longing for the good ‘ole days before people told you it was bad for your teeth or poured it into styrofoam cups to watch it erode. Sprinkle in numerous fantasies about sipping on a Pepsi with crushed ice. aaaaaahhhhhhhhh.

Day Eight: Anger, especially when I am in close proximity to someone drinking a soda. Visions of tackling that hussy-of-a-Pepsi-drinker ala body slam style, just to steal a sip of it’s syrupy goodness.

Day Nine: Cockiness! “I’ve gone nine days without a Pepsi.” Hallelujah!!! I’m HEALED!!!! Maybe NOW I can have JUST ONE……..every now and then!

Day Ten: I was wrong! Being a part-time Pepsi drinker when you were a former-Pepsi-addict is like being pregnant some of the time: either you are or you aren’t. “Well….. I guess there are worse habits than drinking Pepsi, right?????” (that’s called justification!)

But today…….TODAY!!!! It’s Day Two….. and I’m sportin’ a KILLER headache on the day SOMEONE decides to celebrate coffee!

Don’t cross me!