A hug.

Is there a better way to describe the feeling that wraps around you when you're drinking your first cup of coffee in the morning? It's like a big, warm, fuzzy, slightly buzz-inducing hug. Like there still is hope for humanity. And it's all due to this hot, brown, steaming liquid sloshing around in your favorite mug. Or potentially down the front of your brand new white shirt as you run around late for work once again (been there SO many times).

Now, I really try to sit down and enjoy my coffee in the morning. I don't like dumping it into a travel mug and running out the door. In fact, I've tried to do away with travel mugs all together, with the sole exception of my Kleen Kanteen. It's fabulous at keeping my coffee hot and waiting for me while I work out or do something else. I think coffee is meant to be sipped and savored. I like the way that happy feeling of "Ok, I'm awake now" slowly starts to spread through your mind when you really take your time and taste the flavor of those ground up roasted little beans of goodness. I don't have time to notice that when I'm commuting or running around! I don't like to use my coffee like a drug, for the sole purpose of waking up or getting some energy. I'm not in college anymore. I can put my time to better use.

And really start enjoying my coffee hugs :)

I also like how everyone has their own coffee meet cute. You know, the moment when they were first like, "Hot damn. I definitely have a future with this sexy brown liquid. I think we're really good together." Mine isn't the most exciting. I didn't even drink coffee at all until I was a senior in college (I'd been an avid tea-drinker before). But on a cross-country road trip with my Mom from Idaho to Indiana to get my car to school, somewhere in between South Dakota and Nebraska, I was fading fast. We had a couple more hours until we were supposed to arrive at our stop for the night, and I needed something. Enter (ugh, I shudder thinking about it) McDonald's drive through next to the interstate. Iced coffee. Medium. No sugar, cream please.

And, yes, it was McDonald's coffee that introduced me to this whole new caffeinated world. But that doesn't override the fact that I felt my first happy little buzz while we were cruising along the freeway. I was a little more awake. A little more human. A little more into whatever country song was currently blasting.

And that was my meet cute with coffee. I continued drinking it all throughout that year at college (even if the best coffee on campus was Starbucks) and well beyond. Look at me now, world! Sloshing back these cups of joe and soaking in the world, loving humanity. I really do think coffee makes us feel more human. We are connected to so many people through that morning mug. The growers and the coffee cherry pickers, in the beautiful coffee-growing regions of the world. The buyers and the roasters, with their big burlap sacks of beans stacked up in their roasting rooms. The baristas or the shops where we buy our freshly roasted bags of beans, the final step before we get to take that sip. Every bag of coffee has a story, and when we drink our coffee and get our warm hugs every morning/mid-morning/noon/afternoon/late-afternoon (is that just me?), we choose to become a part of that story. Just like the whole world of coffee is giving us a big embrace.

Now, when was your first coffee hug?