The Morning Wired.

First it was a hand sanitizer shortage. Perplexing. The threat of a meat shortage. Hmm. Toilet paper disappeared. We rolled with that one, so to speak.  But when I scrolled through the news and saw a headline, oh the most ominous headline of all, I truly panicked. It warned of a projected coffee shortage! Oh no! Anything but that! How important is coffee to me? Let’s just say that when I read about the Tree of Life in scripture, I picture it laden with coffee beans. In the beginning, there was coffee, right? There had to be.

I look back on favorite coffee moments the way other people remember their first love. Oh what I would give right now to be sitting in the breakfast room at the Sacher Hotel in Vienna, sipping that divine brew they make. Honestly, I would brave any virus to be there…

But even here at home, the java is juiced. The current morning ritual consists of one part Mexican Aztec, one part Brazilian Cerrado and one part Fonté Bin 16, supervised by resident coffee cat, Mischa. He looks like he needs a cup!

And no worries now about a coffee shortage because the boys gave me a subscription for my birthday. Subscriptions are so fun because you never know what’s coming next. This one is from a company called Partners  and the first batch is from Rwanda, “along the shores of Lake Kivu” according to the Partners web site.

They’ve also sent me past subscriptions from Driftaway and Blue Bottle coffee. So fun to try new flavors. It reminds me that someone on my gift list is probably longing for coffee the way I do (well, maybe not quite the way I do…other people are sane) so I’m happy to have found this article with all kinds of coffee subscription suggestions.

It seems that every book I read about World War I and II features long paragraphs about the rationing of or absence of coffee. Hard enough to start the day with people shooting at you or dropping bombs on your city but to survive that without coffee is truly asking too much. Over and over there are accounts of brewing a beverage from crushed acorns just to approximate the memory of coffee.

So far, we haven’t come to that. But since we’ve progressed from plague in March and April to murder and mayhem in May, I think Mischa and I are going to stock up on coffee – just in case.