The Coffee Algorithm

I took the GREs the first time they were offered on the computer - like a hundred years ago. I remember reading about how the test was programmed as an algorithm. If you got a question right it gave you a harder one - a wrong response meant your next question would be easier. It was like this huge chart where choices carried different consequences and yielded different futures. I spent the whole time trying to decide if the questions I was currently answering was easier or harder than the previous one.

This morning, as I made krispys for Hayden and yogurt with manna for Zeni, the algorithm was again at work. Not about analogies or equations or anything useful, but about something that has come to take up a good deal of my time and provide me with a lot of pleasure here in the Inland Northwest - coffee.

Option one - last year, when faced with the prospect of moving to a town where drive through lattes do not exist, I purchased one very expensive espresso machine so I could use it and make my very own delicious morning beverage. God forbid I just make a cup of coffee.

This is usually an option only if I am not leaving the house until the afternoon. I have in fact done the math and even in the face of a figure that easily tops $500/year I still get some kind of weird satisfaction out of purchasing my morning coffee instead of making it myself.

So, not leaving house - make coffee. Leaving house? Things get a little more complicated.

There are three ways to go. Jacobs, Grand, or Starbucks. The math goes something like this:

I hate Jacobs - they are incredibly slow and never get everything right (nonfat, two shots, three splendas, iced please.) Their location is a pain in the butt - on the way downtown which is almost never where I am headed. It is, however, where my loving husband is always headed - in fact, he stops there most days for his $1 drip coffee, gets a punch on this punch card (buy 8 get the next one free) and then lovingly gives me his card mumbling under his breath about how his drinks cost 25% of what mine do so I might as well get the free one.

Free? I like free. Especially free drinks. Alcohol preferred, but at 9am on a Tuesday, especially when I have no cash and my change stash does not equal the $3.81 Starbucks asks me for, I like it enough to go to Jacobs.

Barring the existence of the free drink at Jacobs or my drive to get there, the remaining options are the Grand Latte (aptly named after the street on which it sits) or Starbucks.

The Grand Latte is locally owned. They use locally roasted fair trade coffee. They also have punch cards - buy 9 get 1 free so technically if I get the card stamped every time I go it's a 10% discount off my $3.50 drink. They are also on the way to preschool, and make a good drink. But their whipped cream sucks. And they have a tip jar and really friendly baristas and (as in any situation that involves tipping) I never WANT to tip, for Christ's sake I just bought an overpriced coffee from you! But then they remember my drink order, or they say hi to the kids or give the dog a biscuit, and I am wracked with a guilt which causes me either to act like a nut case trying to hurry off and not look them in the eye, or I err on the other side and leave like $5 to make up for all the other times.

And then there's Starbucks. I used to go there exclusively. I used to shun those frilly SAHMoms waiting in their Lexus SUVs at the Starbucks drive thru. Then I became friends with a wonderful woman who, in addition to being neither frilly or owning a Lexus, is addicted to Starbucks. We would walk there with our broods, she would get her chai and I my latte. And now I'm hooked. Their drinks are awesome, their whipped cream rocks, if you have to wait in line for too long your drink is free, AND I ponied up $25 for a "Starbucks Gold" card which gets you 10% off each purchase. AND that card expires in March, and their ending the program, so I had better get my monies worth. It is also the uber-franchised, not at all local (though their coffee is fair trade, whatever that means.. and Seattle isn't so far away..) politically incorrect choice.

Again, the guilt.

Seriously?. This is what I think about every morning. Can you imagine if that brain power was going towards something like, say, world peace, or even just raising my children!?

Sad but true.

(This one's for you mom!)

Off Meds, on Blog

History of depression and mania on mother and father's sides? Check.

History of depression and anxiety in self? Check.

History of responding well to SSRIs? Check.

And yet I'm off my meds. Well, not off entirely, I'm switching from one kind to another. But I knew going in that switching meant letting the prozac go out of my system, and waiting for the wellbutrin to kick in. AND it's the holidays. AND I have lovely but still out of town guests for the next 2 weeks.

It was weird this time - the return of depression. It feels like passing through a fog - sometimes it almost lifts and I can almost imagine that it's gone and then out of nowhere it returns and I find myself feeling totally unable to cope with anything beyond ensuring the basic survival of my kids until bedtime.

The first fog came on Thursday. I was so angry at my husband, my kids, my parents, just for being. If I stopped feeling angry for long enough to try and figure out what was actually bothering me I was immediately overwhelmed by tears - the kind where if you take a deep breath and let them start to slip out you are shuddering and heaving with snot running everywhere within seconds. My son, whose behavior is often hard to understand and harder to deal with, had a typical tantrum about his sox being too loose (or was is slippery?) and when I couldn't help, or calm him down (which I can't, which no one can,) I felt like a failure. Not an "Oh, I'm having a bad parenting moment" failure, but a total and complete failure who will never be good enough for anyone or at anything and who is failing the people who rely on her and whom she loves more than anything.

And then poof, it was gone. The sun was out, I was once again enjoying and enjoyable. And then this morning I woke up with this tight feeling in my throat. Like the feeling when you are trying to hold back tears. Every time Jeremy or my mom said something to me I cringed inside, hoping to be able to answer them, to hold a conversation, without either screaming at them or melting into a pool of tears.

My mom and I got the kids geared up to go out in the snow, and the lump grew. My jaw clenched, I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of 2 kids, 1 sled, and all the fucking winter clothing I had to get everyone bundled into. We got outside and it was all I could do not to scream (really, actually scream) at my mom, who wasn't actually doing anything wrong, "just go away and leave me alone!" - at least when it's just me and the kids there is no one to talk to, no one to notice I'm feeling bad, no one to ask me about it and cause the lump to rise dangerously close to the front of my throat, wanting to escape out my mouth.

Sitting at the computer typing I can feel it receding. My jaw is unclenched, the tears are not in the corner of my eyes waiting for a blink to send them streaming down.

Unfortunately this is not the catharsis of putting feelings into words. This is the up and down of my emotions, the switching on and off of the chemicals in my brain. It feels so good right now, to feel that fog slipping away, but it's like driving through the Himalayas in the morning in the back of a dilapidated pick up truck; one moment you're filled with the joy of the wind in your face, the exhilaration of feeling totally alive and like you can conquer the world, and the next moment the truck has plunged into a fog and you can't see the cliff next to you or the cars careening towards you but you know they are there and you grip the rusty truck bed hoping that you survive to the next patch of sun.