CONFESSIONS OF A COFFEE HAG!

Spending a month in Provincetown has been quite an adjustment for Bunion. While it's a vacation spot for most, I've been working here steadily. But it's nice to get out of the NYC rat race for a month in this undeniably quaint town. One major change I've noticed is how well I've slept--and I'm someone with sleep issues who often relies on sleeping pills. It's been so wonderful that I'm trying to find out exactly what caused the change in my sleeping habits to keep them going once I return home. It is quieter here, so that could account for some of it. But there's a Starbucks right across the street from my apartment in NYC, and while I gripe about chain stores taking over Manhattan, I have yet to find a non-chain store that "gets me going" in the morning if ya know what I mean. (If you don't, let's just say that Starbucks sells the most effective laxatives on the market.) So I have at least one coffee from there every day.

Starbucks' coffee is really strong and it's the first time most Americans have drunk espresso-based drinks. Also, the large sizes are really huge. I wonder how much caffeine is actually in them compared to what we were drinking a decade or two ago? I remember when Starbucks got it's initial national boost and I visited Seattle. When a waiter served me the weakest cup of diner coffee I'd ever had, I told him "I thought that you guys liked strong coffee in Seattle since it was the home of Starbucks" and he replied that the tourists would have a heart attack if they served that. Besides sleeplessness, I also suffer from stress. I had a tightness in my chest and since my dad had a heart attack at age 50 and I'm older than that, overweight and not in the best shape, I wondered if this could be a sign of oncoming heart trouble. So I had a stress test and the doctor determined that my heart was fine--the tightness was simply caused by regular stress. One of the causes of stress? Caffeine consumption. And there's no Starbucks in Provincetown. I've been drinking coffee here, just not those huge venti sizes with tons of caffeine. Though Provincetown coffee still packs enough punch to get me to type this long-ass drivel at 9AM. So I guess I'm going to try to to avoid Starbucks when I'm back home and see if sleep improves and stress is reduced. Does anyone else have any similar experiences? I mean, I know all my friends are thin, young and gorgeous with no health issues. But I thought you just might have heard something from someone else. Because I want my heart to be stressed out by fattening foods, lack of exercise, cocaine and poppers--NOT coffee.