I Drank My Millions

  My sister always tells me that she firmly believes that if my husband and I stopped going out for coffee, we'd be millionaires. We do tend to drink a lot of coffee, and I will confess that we used to spend gobs of money at Starbucks (a.k.a. FiveBucks) and Coffee Bean, but a few months ago we started hitting the corner 7-11 for an afternoon brew...and occasionally an evening one, too.

 I rationalized that a coffee there only cost a buck (we have a local promotional card) so really, we were only spending $2 each time we went, and heck! one Starbucks coffee was at least $4. By the time we got our lattes (and usually a nosh to accompany them) we spent about $12-15. At 7-11, which surprisingly has decent coffee and not the useless warm brown water I remember from my experience there years ago, we'd spend much less. I told my sister to leave me alone (not really) and continued my coffee habit, which eventually made its way into my husband's text lingo: "Need a 711! Pick you up in 5." I figured that was a coffee emergency.

 I think I realized the depth of my addiction when I walked into the store one time and the girl at the counter said, "There you are! I made fresh decaf for you!" Maybe my sister was right. Maybe I needed to reevaluate my need to constantly run out of the house and buy something, even if it was just a dollar. Maybe it wasn't the coffee, maybe I just didn't want to be home. Huh. Now we were getting somewhere. However, "somewhere" is not usually a place I want to be, as that requires thought and introspection and soul-searching. No thanks. I prefer fluff and fun. Thinking too much hurts my brain.

 So now I'm in a new place, a place I'm quite happy in, and I'm not desperate to leave all the time. Now I just brew my Cuban coffee in the morning and take it out to the deck and listen to the birds and feed the pair of chipmunks that live under the house. (I've named them Klump 1 and Klump 2, because these guys will eat everything that's not nailed down!) I'll make my coffee at home, my sister will be happy that I will be a millionaire, and 7-11 will make less money.