Girl Gone Wired

I was a bad girl the other night.

That’s actually not entirely accurate.

I was a perfectly well-behaved girl the other night in the company of a very attractive young man with whom I talked until nearly 1:30 in the morning.

That’s the bad part because, as you know, I need my beauty sleep.

As a result of my late, late night of conversation, I was in desperate need of artificial energy yesterday. I started out with a cup of coffee at work which, if you’ve ever worked in an office environment, is pretty terrible. To compensate, I like to add two packets of hot cocoa mix to the coffee and make my own not-all-that-great-tasting-but-more-or-less-passable cup of mocha-like java.

Despite the added sugar, my cup of coffee did little to dispel the fog that surrounded my brain and I asked one of my coworkers to pick me up a tall flavored coffee with an extra shot of espresso on her way into the office. Though aware of the danger of giving that much caffeine to everyone’s favorite webmistress, she complied — for which I am oh so grateful — and I was flying high for the next several hours.

Then came the crash. And, goodness, was it unpleasant.

I’m sure it was amusing for anyone paying attention as I went from speaking 7-times faster than usual (which is already pretty fast, by the way) to barely being able to choke out a coherent sentence by mid-afternoon. This was, of course, no good as I still had a board meeting to get through after work for the nature center with which I am associated.

Already feeling kind of sick from the sugar and caffeine running through my system for most of the day, I had to face the fact that there was no way I was going to make it through my evening without a double shot of my baby’s love...or four more shots of espresso as it turned out (something about the espresso machine delivering its shots in batches of two so I might as well take the fourth as a freebie). It took a bit of time to kick in but by the time the caffeine was raging through my system I was barely able to sit still during my meeting (to which one of my fellow board members kindly pointed out where the Ladies Room was).

By the time I finally got home, exhausted but still wired, I wanted nothing more than to sleep. Too bad I couldn’t really as I was still hopped up from the seven espresso shots. Needless to say, I didn’t get the best night’s rest and am already dreading that I’m going to need caffeine to get through the morning.

If you see me today, you may want to take note and use appropriate caution.