My blood is stomach acid, my stomach acid has been replaced by Folger's crystals.

I started drinking coffee around the age of 8. You know the story, you want to fit in, but you throw up when you drink the harder stuff like tea with milk in it, next thing you have a three-cup-a-day habit heading into its 25th year, and you start to wonder where it all went wrong.

I drank my grandfather's decaffeinated Sanka for a long time, because he was the coolest person I knew, and he didn't go into coffee-fueled rages and take the closets apart looking for a pair of shoes. Oddly enough, I still took the closets apart. I never did find that last Crystal Barbie shoe. In my teens, I switched to that fancy International cappuchino, and I don't remember much of that time. I think I called someone "bitch" because she didn't like my hat.

Black coffee has no calories, so at the height of my retention problems, I switched to the drink I compare to my cats--hot, black, and easy. I drink Folger's instant coffee as that's what we have in the house and I have no interest in trying other coffees after the Eight O'Clock cup of feet episode, plus my sense of adventure can only manage getting me out of bed each day before it gives up and goes back to reading Highlights.

Today, my 37,894th cup of coffee was unlike any other. The Puppy was walking around on the table stealing napkins and playing Godzilla as she likes to do when she noticed my cup of coffee. I reached for the cup, but warm Corelle and cold vinyl placemats create fusion, so picking up the coffee while The Puppy's foot was on the placemat was not as easy as one would expect.

I am happy and rather grateful to report that the flavor of coffee does not change after having a dog's snout submerged in it.

My blood is stomach acid, my stomach acid has been replaced by Folger's crystals.