Giving up my morning coffee + morning yoga

It's 5:05 and my phone is ringing. Eric is on his way to pick me up for the first of our month long "intensive yoga class" series-- 5:30 am, 4 days a week, all of February.

We spend an hour and half in a cold studio folding blankets, arranging blocks and watching as the instructor shows us how to do the next pose. I'm not a prop person. I've just barely warmed up to the idea using a blanket to prevent bruising in upward facing bow. This is monkey business to me. It's not even six o'clock and this is trying. Luckily I'm tired enough that most of my default facial expressions of annoyance and boredom are still controllable.

By 6:55, we are on our way back to Capitol Hill joking about being stressed after yoga as we speed past a driver slowly making their way down 10th-- class ran late and Eric's vanpool leaves 7am. (Departure times in vanpool are serious. Don't mess with your ride.)

It's a hair before 7 when I get home. I shower, dress and set the kettle to boil. I have decided to stop drinking coffee every morning at work and fill my thermos with hot water brewing a cup of mango black tea left over from the sun tea I made in the garden last summer.

I eat my breakfast: Puffins cereal with soy milk, a banana and some oj and then it's time to start the van run. It is quiet for a Monday with several people out traveling for work and it is just Kimberley and me riding today. We fumble through sleepy conversation and running commentary on the NPR story about the good intentions of the missionaries who tried to "save" the Haitian children by taking them away from everyone and everything they have ever known.

At work I start up my computer and do the old email run through. I've been out of the office for a several days making this a slightly greater task than usual. My machine wants to run updates. The office is empty. My computer is slow. So am I.

I see a message on my phone from Jan, he's on his way to the van stop. It is time stamped over 30 minutes ago. I must have missed it. (What's that? Don't mess with your ride? I'm sorry Jan. I guess I didn't hear my phone...)

It's 8:40. I am looking for my partner in crime. Where is Jan? Isn't he here yet? I feel badly for leaving him behind this morning and want to make it up by getting coffee. (Ok, I am looking for an excuse.)

I wait a little longer, catching up on the the latest online postings about mutable mobile phones, everything someone else has deemed I "need to know" about the iPad, and read more emails.

Around 9 o'clock, more people begin to arrive:

Nice to see you back. How was your time off? (I slept a lot. I was sick. I sailed. I'm exhausted --the usual. ) My head twinges with the slightest symptoms of what seems to be a caffeine headache. I haven't had one of those in over a year. Maybe I shouldn't have been making full carafes of french press coffee every day while I was home last week.

Jan pops by, coffee in hand. That's it. I'm breaking down. Where's my wallet?

At 9:45 I am by myself in the lobby fingering through bean filled cups of beverage cards at Café Vita looking for my name. I fill a cup with 12 steaming ounces of Queen City Blend and wonder how I'm going to make it through rest of the week--let alone the month--without coffee. There are 15 yoga classes left in the series.