Five Hour Energy and the Jeeves of Java

A commercial this morning taught me some new, very eye-opening negatives about coffee.

Apparently, you have to:

• Make it
• Wait for it
• Fuss with it
• Carry it around along with a briefcase and overcoat nearly spilling it upon your person

Or-- if you are unable to manage the painful inconvenience of those-- you must:

• Stand in line for it.

While admittedly I have wished at times that caffeine could be injected directly into my veins-- particularly on those mornings where routine bloodwork becomes a temporary barrier to myself and glorious, life-giving java-- I had never considered the burden it is to actually make some of the stuff appear in a cup in my hand every day, and keep it there until safe consumption is complete.

But 5 Hour Energy tells me this is true. So I feel kinda like a powerhouse of get-it-doneness just for making this extraordinary personally-challenging event happen each morning!

The benefit of their product, 5 Hour Energy suggests, is in its instant gratification.

Just pop it open and chug. Unless you don't have any in the house because you couldn't remember to buy any. Like the coffee. In which case you have to:

• Drive to the store
• Figure out where the frig the store stocks it
• Wait in line for it
• Wait until the cashier scans it
• Yank it out of her hand before she puts it in the bag
• Rip open the lid, which hopefully is easier to do than those little creamer containers you get with your coffee which usually end up squirting you in the eye
• Drink it
• Pause for harsh words from other shoppers for holding up the line while chugging your on-the-go jolt of non-coffee instead of...
• Paying for it.

But, see, and I hesitate to even mention this... I think in 5 Hour Energy's desire to showcase their benefits, they might have accidentally totally not intentionally missed a handy, yet little-known facet about the process involved in crafting a pot of their brethren in wake-up beverages...

Technology has given some of us rare, lucky individuals this thing called the Coffeemaker with Timer. When properly programmed, it is the discreet butler of caffeine, the Jeeves of Java. And it allows for that beautiful brew to come to life without proximity to a lifeform with active brain cells.

It's neat that way.

Now, it may not eliminate the obvious fussing and gravity problems associated with coffee. But it does save on time. Plus, it tastes so good with breakfast foods...

Like pre-sliced cracker-sized cheese squares and pre-fried bacon.

Lettuce Dance

Here at Of Cabbages and Kings, we dig deep into life’s important issues. Like the disorientation, trauma and emotional scars I experienced at lunch yesterday because the Giant Eagle grocery store reversed their salad bar.

Oh, it’s not gone. Just reversed. Totally backwards. Bizarro-world. Salad and veggies USED TO BE on the side facing the store entrance, and now toppings, dressing and yogurt are in their place.

You would not believe the sort of mayhem this has caused.

Okay, okay, feel free to laugh. I’m aware how lucky I am that my biggest personal challenge is in not knowing where my mixed greens are.

Except I am not only a creature of habit, I am a creature of habit who was having a very “off” morning.

When I tumbled out of bed and stumbled to the kitchen, and poured myself a cup of ambition, for reasons unknown to MYSELF-- let alone Dolly Parton-- I promptly poured myself a SECOND coffee, in a separate mug sitting right next to it….

A mug which I actually don't remember taking down from the shelf, and which I ALSO seemed fully-prepared to drink. Because, of course, there is no one else to drink this.

Yet, there it was. Coffee. Twice. Black and no sweetener. Just how I don’t like it.

When you find yourself having a two-mug morning for a single-mug beverage, and you don't recall how it is you take your coffee, you begin to wonder just how the rest of the day is going to fare.

You begin to wonder whether you might not just head off to work, but suddenly wake up in Peoria in your jim-jams, with bad breath, no cash, no ID, and no way to tell the boss you’ll be a skosh late.

So the Salad Bar Switcheroo seemed to be just one more extension of the muddling two-mug morning. My only consolation was, there were others just as confused as I was, and java had nothing to do with it.

Oh, how we bobbed. We weaved. We swept from one side of the counter to the other like candidates for Dancing with the Stars. Only, you know, with less showmanship and costuming, and more bad posture and business suits.

And as I boogied around the buffet, I realized it was like going into one of those Wal-Marts or Targets that's arranged in the mirror image from the branch you usually go to. You know the ones? You step through the automatic doors and while it essentially LOOKS like the store you know, something just feels a bit... off. Wrong. Unsettling. Like: here anything could happen.

Like you wouldn't be surprised if Rod Serling showed up to narrate your shopping experience. Or Stephen King stepped in to bag your groceries.

But honestly, it's not that big a deal in the Great Scheme of Things, and we humans, we're made to adapt. So if lettuce continues to exist on the COMPLETELY WRONG side of the salad bar, then I will learn from it, and change, and grow.

But if today, I step into that grocery store and Rod Serling sidles up and asks me to merengue? I'll KNOW I never did wake up right yesterday.

And if so, will someone please call my boss and tell them I'm running a tad behind? I hear Peoria is beautiful in spring.


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