At the time, I reported to friends that the coffee creamer no longer tasted remotely like food, and strictly tasted like a food additive. It was a pretty horrible experience.
It is now 8:15 am. I have been awake for just under an hour. I sliced up a small gala apple and a small honeycrisp apple, and have started nibbling on them. There are two slices of sharp, aged white Tillamook cheddar thrown into the mix, to help balance out the flavors, and to help balance out the apple sugars with a bit of protein and fat. I don't want a blood sugar dip later on.
Now, I haven't an alcoholic beverage in at least a week. Not so much as a beer or glass of wine with dinner, despite having had hamburgers cooked on the charcoal grill this weekend, which is something of a classical "beer" food. I've been drinking water, because it's springtime and I've increased my exercise.
But despite my teetotaling as of late, I woke up feeling the nausea and overall ingestion-regret that I have previously only experienced a handful of other times, when I was young and had dramatically overestimated my ability to metabolize hard alcohol. In fact, it would take several times more liquor to make my morning stomach feel anywhere near as gross as this morning-after-drinking-straight-Coffee-Mate "morning stomach" feels.
It feels similar enough to a real and proper hangover that I've started thinking of hangovers future, in addition to hangovers past.
In the past, I have promised my nonpracticing Catholic father that I will someday feel as gross as this, the morning after his wake, and we take that shit seriously in our family. He's said that he wants a live band (he's in good health, but still gave me a list of which bands just in case), he wants everybody to tell stories about him, and he wants his funeral to have a very generous open bar. I'm pretty terrified of losing my father. Not only because he's my friend and my dad and I love him and don't want him to die, but also because of the astronomical bar tab his wake is expected to generate. He'll need to live at least another twenty years before I'm financially ready for that kind of grandiosity. (The dude has a lot of friends.)
So, last night's attempt to swig straight Coffee-Mate like I think I will live forever now has me thinking about family and death, as I lurch through my morning routine.
That SAID, the coffee creamer hangover is different than an alcohol hangover in a number of ways:
1. There is not any leftover junk food in my fridge. No pizza, no nachos, nada. I'm not happy about this.
2. I woke up craving fibrous, acidic foods, instead of fluffy, fatty, starchy foods. Hence the apple slices.
3. I am thankfully still well-hydrated.
4. I don't really have much of anything in the way of treasured memories, when looking back on my evening. There were no sing-alongs, no midnight trips to the Gourmet Dog Japon hot dog stand on Pike St in Seattle, and the closest thing to a drinking game with friends was posting last night's Coffee-Mate article on my private Facebook wall, and laughing about it with friends in the comments. But I didn't get out of the house and have an adventure with people I love.
5. While I feel queasy, like the pH of my stomach is "off," I don't actually feel like my medulla oblongata (yeah, Google that one) is detecting anything literally poisonous in my body. Having finished my apples while typing this, I actually feel fine again. Fixing my stomach pH was the only thing I actually needed to do, to repair the gross bodily feelings that I had woken up to.
¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡¡THERE IS ALSO GOOD NEWS ABOUT THE GIRL SCOUTS THIN MINT COFFEE-MATE BRAND COFFEE CREAMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The bad news is obviously that it cannot be ingested like a drink of its own, even when one really, really wants some fucking Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies, because those cookies are phenomenal. I mean, come on. In recent years, the Girl Scouts have even been praised for being trans-inclusive, which is especially heartwarming given the Boy Scouts' comparative lack of LGBTQ friendliness. Trans-inclusivity is a huge win, in my book. (Hopefully in yours, too.)
Anyway.
The GOOD NEWS is not only that I got to buy something with a Girl Scouts logo on it, despite cookie season having come and gone, but also that the coffee creamer works really well as a coffee creamer! It's delicious!
I own the most effeminate coffee mug in the world.
Here's what I'm drinking:
Peet's Major Dickenson coffee, prepared via French Press with beans ground about a minute before actually going into the press.
A bit of cane sugar.
A splash of half & half.
The coffee creamer that spent the night in the bottom of that mug, uncovered, in my fridge. (Just boasting that my fridge is okay, gets thoroughly cleaned every few weeks, and doesn't stink up uncovered foods.)
CONCLUSION:
The Girl Scouts Thin Mint Coffee-Mate coffee creamer should only be used as intended.
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