Green leafer madness.

So…

very….

sleepy.

Want to…write, but so very…very…sleepy.

And cross.

So…

very…

cross.

Also, achy.

For a long time, I would drink a cup of tea in the morning and pour a second one into my lap, and I was fine and only slightly scalded. Slowly, imperceptibly, I began making myself a third cup of tea before noon, which I would actually drink and only spill about a quarter. Then, one magical day, I noticed Daughter’s after-school classes all seemed within walking distance of a Starbucks, and each one of those Starbucks would give me a cup of tea if I gave them about two dollars! It was dazzling to discover how much less bleak and uncomfortable folding chairs are when one is clutching a hot cup of water with some leaves in it.

Things between the tea bag and I were good until they weren’t, and yet I denied, denied, denied I had a problem. It’s green tea, I would think stubbornly, I’m strengthening my tooth enamel and possibly my immune system. What could be more wholesome than that?

I was so unaware of how often I carried a cup that I stopped noticing when I was carrying it in less than traditional places. Luckily, I live in Los Angeles, where it is now socially acceptable to carry a Starbucks cup anywhere including a funeral; I think some people now request their bodies be displayed with one tucked in their hand, so their friends will recognize them.

I was so jacked up on caffeine that, by last week, I was causing static on the car radio. Bed had become the place where I lay in the dark and tried to remember my third grade teacher’s license plate number.

But, as with so many issues in my life, it was vanity which finally brought me to my senses. You can only drink that much caffeine for so long before your skin starts to dry out. Last Thursday, I looked in the mirror with entirely too much daylight streaming in, and I recoiled in horror. While I have never found myself especially cute, I have taken some comfort in looking young for my age. I was the color of a battleship and the first three layers of epidermis were making a break for it. I was no more than twelve hours away from someone complimenting me on my lovely granddaughter.

Fine, I thought grimly, no more tea for me. I’ve done this before. A day or so of unpleasantness and fatigue and I’m back in the game. A few weeks off the stuff, and I can start a cup of tea in the morning again.

I forgot the last time I had given up caffeine was when I found out I was pregnant, which leads to two important facts. One, that was a while ago, and my body isn’t as accepting of change as it was then and two, I was newly pregnant, which meant I was excited, self-sacrificing and already nauseated and tired. Now, I’m suspicious, self-serving, and inclined to avoid things which make me nauseated and tired.

Friday morning, I drank a cup of mint tea, just for that hot-water mouthfeel. By noon, I was working at my desk, clawing at the headband I was wearing, wondering why it was biting into my head so sharply when I remembered, Wait, I’m not wearing a headband. Caffeine withdrawal, right on schedule and nastier than I remembered, holding my skull hostage all afternoon. The elastic band tightened indifferently and inexorably, and grinding exhaustion set in. I abruptly fell asleep on the couch and dreamed about washing down a pound of dark chocolate with a hot-tub full of green tea. I dreamed about going to a rural area of China, plunking myself down in the middle of a field of Camellia sinensis and chewing my way out. I dreamed about George Clooney stopping by in a tuxedo, bringing me a cup of tea, and my drinking it. George asked, eyes crinkling adorably, “Would you like anything else?”, and I screamed miserably, “Yes! More tea!”

“What, Mommy?”

I woke with a start. The headache was, if anything, worse than when I fell asleep. I had been trying to read a magazine when the exhaustion had hit, and I had fallen asleep on it, and sweated so the magazine stuck to me. This meant Katie Holmes was pouting a quarter inch from my eye, which wasn’t helping matters. Daughter was standing next to the couch, staring at me. I was asleep on the couch in the middle of the afternoon, leaving my small daughter to her own devices. She appeared to have made herself a snack of strawberry jam and olives. All this tableau needed was a smoldering Virginia Slims dangling from my lips.

After two daytime naps, I fell asleep at eight p.m. My last thought as I reflexively clawed at the non-existent headband was “This will be better in the morning.”

Moron.

What it has done is mutated into what I keep thinking must be the beginning of the flu, complete with body aches, lethargy and short-term memory problems. What’s most demoralizing about all of this is if you had asked me to describe my better traits, I might have said something like “…energetic, funny, quick-witted, hard worker.”

Turns out, I am none of those things. Caffeine was using me as a host to express certain character traits, but without my precious green nectar I am no more energetic or witty than tectonic drift, and my appetite for hard work is the same as my appetite for chewing off my own arm. Mostly, I want to partake of my new hobby, which is lying on something yielding and clawing at my eyes.

I saw a friend yesterday who made the mistake of asking me how I was. I responded with something like “…whine, whine, caffeine-free…whine, whine, whine, endless headache…whine, George Clooney tuxedo…whine, whine, lost will to live…”

My friend nodded knowingly.

“Third day?”

I stopped my dirge and mutely nodded.

“It’ll take about a week, and then you’ll feel like a million bucks.”

Forget a million bucks. Right now, I'd take the change my pockets have fed into the couch over the last four days of involuntary naps.