Even though we don’t celebrate Mother’s Day here in Romania, last Sunday I went out with an old friend of mine to enjoy the sunny afternoon and treat ourselves to a nice cup of coffee. As a rule, I try to avoid fancy coffee mostly because I don’t want them to serve me a sugary drink with very little caffeine. I’d rather go with an espresso, but that’s something I can get down in two gulps. Not good if you want to sit down and have a chat.
I decided to get something called Viennese Cappuccino, as I was in the mood for cream. I got quite a lot of it and, yeah, I made it last for about an hour, so we did get enough time to shoot the breeze.
When I got home it was already 8 pm and something didn’t feel right. Not enough caffeine in my system. What do I do about it? Well, get me a decent coffee, obviously. A pretty strong one as I use an Italian stove-top coffee maker and on the box it said it makes two cups!
The problem is, as much as I’d love to, I don’t usually drink coffee in the evening as I already stay up till the very small hours without it.
I am the atypical night owl. I don’t need pots of coffee to keep me going. I live in a time zone of my own where bedtime is normally 3 am. As I am a freelancer, I can get up as late as I want so getting enough sleep is not a problem.
When I made another coffee in the evening I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I was up until 5 am, and that’s too much even for me. I don’t have a problem staying up late as I always have some book to keep me company. It's waking up at noon that bothers me as I don’t seem to get anything done that day.
Speaking of books, sometimes it’s very hard to resist the idea of a late-night coffee. A few weeks ago I was reading a book called “Before the coffee gets cold” which takes place in a coffee shop in Japan. The whole story there's always someone preparing or pouring coffee. (Quite an interesting book, by the way!)
That book was torture as I could almost taste the coffee. I craved coffee, yet I knew I must resist as I needed to get some sleep.
When I’m not at my desk I tend to leave my cup of coffee around the house which often makes for a lovely surprise when I round up the dirty dishes. Hey, there’s a bit of coffee left in there! I don’t have a problem with drinking it cold and, in my book, throwing away perfectly good coffee is a sin, so I’ll gulp any leftover coffee no matter the hour!
It’s 9 pm now and I just downed the rest of the afternoon coffee. There's no point in me still being at my desk, is there?