Rounding the corner. I think.

Eric will most certainly disagree. It was a rough weekend. I was drinking tea like crazy, trying to get my brain to kick in, and it wouldn't. Small tasks were too much for me to manage. Even breaking them into tiny pieces was more than I could handle. At one point, I'd just made a sandwich and Eric brushed cat hair off my sweater, not realizing that it was landing on my food. I almost cried.

Oddly, the hardship made me want a cup of coffee less. The fact that it's been increasingly difficult to function without a large hit of caffeine makes me realize how badly I need to get off of it. The trouble was that I was getting a little desperate to just have the process done. Finally I forced myself to sit down and think through it objectively. I was drinking a lot of tea, but probably not enough water. I was slacking on taking my vitamins, and trying to use sugar as a stimulant rather than snacking on protein and complex carbs. These are simple adjustments, and they have helped. I did, however, find one temporary secret weapon. Half a can of Diet Coke restored brain function quickly and for an extended period of time. It's a crutch, I know, and it's definitely temporary. Tea has health benefits; Diet Coke has no nutritional value whatsoever. It is nice to know, though, that when I really need to focus on something intense (like the Genesis submission due this week) that I have something cheap and readily available to help me do that.

The reason I think I'm rounding the corner is that yesterday I had to take Alex back to school. That amounts to seven hours in the car, round trip, if traffic cooperates. I had my usual pot of tea (2 1/2 cups) in the morning, and took the other half of my Diet Coke from Saturday with me. That's all the caffeine I had until Eric and I went to dinner a little after 7 p.m., where I had one glass of iced tea. The key seems to be to stay busy so I don't think about it, don't over-analyze a little throb in my head (withdrawal or allergies?), don't stop to stare into space.

Eric asked me this morning to please go drink some coffee already. It's been 24 days. Maybe I'll wait until day 42. 42 is the answer to everything, right? If I'm not better by day 42, I'll drink a cup of coffee. (That's April 9th, honey.)