For all you coffee-lovers

How is it that I, who freely confess my addiction to the Times, only just now discovered the work of the brilliant German-born Christoph Niemann. Here's his blog on the great love of his life: coffee.

I dare you to read it and not reach for a cup of coffee.

My own love affair with coffee began as a lipsticked catseye-glasses-wearing teenager growing up in Shaker Heights, Ohio. Gramma Lily would take hers black. I couldn't stand the taste so doctored it up w/milk n sugar.

El Pico, Martinson's, Chock Fulla Nuts were some phases I went thru when I dripped my coffee in my yellow Stangl 2-cup brewer that a former boyfriend accidentally broke. I can still see it, its sides and bottom stained with lovely coffee stains.

I adore coffee stains b/c it reminds me of the clarity of thought coffee brings.

Why then did I give it up about 5 yrs ago?

I'll get to that in a sec. Remind me if I forget.

When I worked as a therapist at the now-defunct Bristol-Bensalem Human Services Center I'd drink the coffees that the various departments would make. Some were better than others and I decide to hold a contest among the various departments and have people vote on their favorites.

When I went into the Fiscal Department where Stephen Schwartz was the head, he said to me, "Who authorized you to do this?"

People needed approval for everything.

"I'll be right back," I said.

I flew down the hall to the Crisis Dept where my boss Jon Hartung worked. Is that his name? Sure, he said. Sounds like a great idea. It'll foster cooperation between the departments.

I raced back into the Fiscal Office where Schwartz terrorized the employees w/his iron fist. He was a handsome man w/a thick black mustache, unmarried, b/c no one was good enough for him. When I'd first joined the force, he lifted me up, after hours, and set me in a rolling cart that contained charts of patients and rolled me down the hall with me screaming for dear life.

Suzanne Schollaert who I reconnected with on Facebook awarded me a Certificate of Creativity for the Coffee-Tasters Sip-Off. She runs her own agency now in Pgh.

When I was about to wean off 16 yrs of Klonopin, or Klonny as Simon and I called our marvelous calming drug, I decided to go off coffee as a test. I succeeded with minimal headache to cure my lifelong addiction in 3 days. The Klonny took 5 weeks under the auspices of 2 psychiatrist friends.

It is so cool not to have a psychiatrist anymore. As you know, I'm cured from bipolar disorder, an act of magic.

Who's the magician?