I was bleary-eyed. The rain pounded on my windows echoing the headache pounding inside my skull. Bebop pranced around my neck, licking my face. I hadn’t heard the alarm go off yet, so I knew it wasn’t even 7am. Bebop can usually make it until AT LEAST 7:30. I grabbed her little body and tried to force her to lay back down next to me. She simply wasn’t having it…with the same persistence I’ve seen as my niece tries to open a candy bar wrapper, she continued panting in my face. It was obvious…her highness would wait no longer.

I wrapped my robe taut around my body–an ugly, faded pink fuzzy thing. I really need a new robe. I put on my galoshes. My coat. My scarf. I reached down to the place where I usually keep my umbrella only to remember that I lost it weeks ago. Instead a grab a hat.

Bebop and I go for a weary walk around the block…well, for me it was a weary walk. For her, it was playtime. She bounced around, taking her time to pee on everything. My hat blew off my head. I managed to grab it and put it back on before anyone saw the disaster that was my hair.

By 6:50am I was back inside my apartment dripping wet. For the first time in her life, Bebop didn’t seem to mind the rain. Every dog owner’s….dream? Nightmare? It was still too early to formulate coherent thoughts.

Coffee. The second the thought entered my head, I could feel the adrenaline rush hitting me. Just the thought of caffeine was enough to energize me…if only for a second. With hope, I rushed to the cabinet and grabbed the bag of French Roast.

Empty. Empty. Noooo, this wasn’t possible. When did I finish my coffee? Oh, that’s right. Last night during my midnight marathon of editing. There had to be more coffee somewhere in my house. I always kept reserves of it…

Fridge - no. Cupboard - no. Cabinets - no. Linen closet - no. I was, for the first time in my life, without any coffee whatsoever. For the past few weeks, I’ve been eating random things in my house - peanut butter and jelly on tortilla wraps (because I was out of bread). Then I ran out of jelly. Then peanut butter. I’ve had no vegetables in the house. No protein. I even ran out of sugar and cream. I’ve been living on take-out and brown rice every day for the past few weeks. But none of that mattered because I had my COFFEE.

But now, even that was gone. And I officially NEEDED to go food shopping.

Which was fine, because I could grab a coffee on the way…