I normally drink my coffee dark and strong with enough half and half to make it a caramel color.  Some days I go for a weaker blend or a bit more cream, occasionally I’ll use Coffeemate if I have to.  Every now and then I like it black, usually if I’m drinking Columbian or something similarly citrusy and light.  I used to enjoy the coffeemate flavored creamers when I was wanting a sweet treat — but then I puked after drinking a cup with Italian Sweet Cream Coffeemate in it and I haven’t been able to even look at it in the store since.  I never, ever put cream in my coffee if I’ve pressed the beans.  If I use bean coffee, I press it and I grind it fresh.  Most days I use Tassimo T-discs or Kuerig K-cups in one or the other of my single cup machines.  I love cappuccino, hate latte.

And every once in awhile, on days like today, where it went from sunny and almost summery to definite spring-like, looks like rain, April showers weather, I brew up a strong, dark, almost bitter cup and I dump in a couple teaspoons of vanilla sugar.

Vanilla sugar is the bomb. (Shut up, I’m old)

I take a vanilla bean and plunk it into a shaker of organic sugar and let it sit for a few weeks, which turns the sugar itself into a vanilla scented and flavored dream.  In coffee?  It’s out of this world.

Nothing – nothing – does it for me like curling up in my chair, done with work, weather gone gray, toss on a sweatshirt afternoons with a cup of vanilla sugar coffee.  It’s the most relaxed I get. Ever.

Try it.  Turn off the computer, curl up, sip, think, close your eyes, listen to the birdies telling each other it’s going to rain and just savor ten minutes or so.

It’s therapeutic.

---

In other news, my Goose-fraba post yesterday offended some people.

Why do people always assume you’re talking about them, only them, it  can’t be anyone else but them?

Sure, it probably was partly about them but it was a post about being online too much, technology invading rather than enhancing our lives, shutting down and just enjoying life – actual life outside the wee electronic box with the keyboard and screen – for awhile, especially when the online stuff is getting irksome.  We ALL spend too much time connected to a keyboard, ffs.  Not just you.  Not just her.  Not just me.

All of us.

It was a general sort of post, heavy on the emotion and opinion.  If it offended you, if you assumed I was directing it at you…

*blink*

Meh.  I write what I’m thinking about.  If you’re partially responsible for what I’m thinking, due to what you have put out there, then them’s the breaks.  If I actually had an issue with you?  I’d totally tell you, man.

I am teh bluntness.

When I write in general?  Include myself?  It’s not personal.  For serious.

And now, I’m off to eat the plate full of shrimp and fish and chips I have sitting in front of me.  And I’m so not going to type and eat.  It’s not that sort of day.

---

p.s. Protein powder is god awful, even in a peach vanilla cinnamon smoothie. Awful.