I drink coffee in the mornings and usually switch to tea in the afternoon. At least when I’m in the office. When I’m home (whether it be a work from home day or simply a day off), I’ll make a pot of coffee in the morning, and since I’m the only coffee drinker in the house, that’s usually more than enough for me for the day. Most of the time. If the weather is cold, I’m likely to make a cup of tea or two for myself in the evening. I’ll also opt for tea if I’m feeling under the weather.

The last couple of weeks my husband and I have been fighting off some kind of virus. One or the other of us will get some cold symptoms one day, and the other comes down with the same thing a day or two later. The symptoms never last more than a couple of days, and we seem to get better for several days… until it starts again. But it’s not just us. A number of my friends and several co-workers have been talking of experiencing the same thing.

On my most recent work from home day I woke up with the sinus headache making a comeback, so as I was getting things started, I set up the coffee maker to make a pot of coffee. But there had been just enough left over in the pot to fill my favorite mug, so I also stuck that in the microwave. And because I was feeling as if I were coming down with something again, I also turned on the electric tea kettle, which gets hot enough to make tea before the coffee maker can finish a pot.

I zipped off over to the bathroom to grab my morning meds and came back to the kitchen to find that everything was dark and silent. It took me a moment to realize what had happened. I’d actually tripped the breaker! At our old place we had to be very careful about not having certain appliances running at the same time as others. The place had been built in the 1950s and the wiring just wasn’t really up to a modern set of gadgets. So we had been very careful here, and had tested a few times to see if we had a similar problem. I was delighted that we could have the microwave and the dishwasher running at the same time without a breaker going.

But we had never had the microwave, coffee pot, and electric kettle all going at the same time, along with the under the cabinet lights that are on the same circuit.

I grabbed my coffee mug out of the microwave and sipped warmish coffee while the real coffee maker perked. And when it was done, I turned the kettle back on and made one cup of tea, because now I was craving tea. I know it’s weird, but when I’m not feeling well there is something soothing about tea that coffee just doesn’t deliver.

And because if was nicely raining and foggy outside, and I had a little time before I had to call into my first meeting, I went out on the veranda to drink the mug of tea. It was cool and breezy out there, so if I had lingered over the tea too long it would have gotten cold. As it was, it was barely above tepid by the time I reached the end of the mug and headed inside.

More than one friend had commented on my love of the veranda. I’m sure it seems very odd. There are so many things I liked about living in our old neighborhood, and I’d been happy living in that specific building for over 21 years. But it wasn’t perfect. There were things we didn’t have, such as a nice spot to sit outside if the weather was at all amenable. I mean, yeah, sometimes I would set up one of the camp chairs on the front lawn, but the lawn was just right next to the sidewalk, and we had a relatively busy neighborhood, so there were always people walking by and I always felt as if I was in a public space. It was always a little odd.

But I really like being able to hear the rain and the wind and the birds and the sound of the neighborhood. And opening windows gives you some of that… but also makes your heating bills really high. Having the veranda–being able to be outside but not have others walk by just a few feet away all the time is really nice. So I go out there a lot. Even now that the weather is getting cooler.

I have been using the temperature of the coffee or tea I take out with me to keep track of the time. Which is especially important if I take more writing out there with me, because it’s easy to lose track, and then wonder why my feet are swelling up with pre-gout because they’ve gotten too cold.

So I need the coffee to wake me, the tea to sooth and focus me, and the rain to inspire me.

Does that make me high maintenance? Or just human?