Coffee is the best thing to douse the sunrise with

You guys, this picture over here is high tech coffee business happening in my kitchen.  I'll get to that in a minute.  I have been addicted to caffeine since I was 14... maybe younger.  When I was in high school, I didn't like the taste of coffee, so I drank a can of Coke every morning - I know, sooo good for you.  Wendy [for newer readers, Wendy is one of my oldest and dearest friends] tried to break me of my caffeine habit and I agreed to go sans morning Coke for a week.  After two days, she brought me over to the vending machine and bought me a Coke - that's how horrible I was to be around with my caffeine detox.  When I was 16, I went on a trip to Seattle and I've been drinking coffee ever since.

Last year I cut way back on my coffee intake.  I read a lot of books suggesting that if you want to get pregnant, you have to cut out caffeine, alcohol, sugar, blah blah blah.  I know some women who cut out coffee altogether, but the best I could do was limit myself to one small 6 ounce cup per day.  I would drink it in the morning at home before I would leave for work.  At that point, I was working in the morning through the afternoon, and then going to class in the evening.  It's tough getting through a three hour class without another cup of coffee.  The worst part was that in the summertime, people walk around with 40 ounce cups of beautiful iced coffee.  I love iced coffee so very much.  I look forward to it all winter, just waiting for that moment when the weather turns enough that I can get a giant iced coffee of my very own.  

Coffee was the thing I struggled with the most, that I missed the most, in those many months of trying.  When I would see those bastards walking past me with giant iced coffees, I'd want to knock it out of their hands.  

After the miscarriage, I knew we were going to have some time off before I had to go back to being really good.  So I got to enjoy some wine, and what not, but what I was really excited about was the coffee!  More coffee!  Iced coffee!  To cheer me up, Jeeves made cold-brewed coffee so that I could have iced coffee every morning (with a little milk and simple syrup mixed in).  He used this recipe to make it.  The above picture is the process of straining the coffee into a container we can keep in the fridge.  But I will note that he makes a much smaller portion because we don't have room for 8 quarts of iced coffee in our refrigerator.  No matter, though - it is divine.  It has made me so very happy.

My friend G who has struggled with infertility long ago made the transition to decaf (even though she readily admits it's not the same), and even when she's on a break from this crap, she sticks with the decaf because transitioning back and forth is so hard.  I know that in September when I have to drastically cut down on my coffee intake again, I'm going to have to deal with caffeine withdrawal on top of all the other good stuff that comes with cycling.  But oh, for this summertime iced coffee, it is so worth it.