For this week’s Tale Weaver prompt from Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie, we have been invited to write about our morning and our need for coffee or tea to get our day underway.

I definitely need coffee in the morning these days, but it wasn’t always that way. In fact, unlike most of my school buds, I never touched coffee in college. I thought it was way too bitter for my tastes. But when I went to basic training in the army, I decided to give it a shot. In order to tolerate the close to sludge-like army coffee, I had to add lots of milk and sugar.

By the time I rejoined civilization after my stint in the army, I couldn’t survive the morning without coffee, and I continued to load up my coffee with milk and sugar. Eventually I decided to cut out the milk and just use sugar. But I was anything but a coffee connoisseur. I was perfectly fine drinking instant coffee, black with sugar.

But as I got older, I became more picky about my coffee. I bought a Mr. Coffee machine and bags of ground coffee and made my own fresh coffee each morning before work. I still couldn’t take it without sugar, though.

Then I switched to whole beans, got a burr grinder, and ground my own. Still black, with sugar. Finally I bought a top of the line Cuisinart combo grinder/brewer. My wife and I use only organic whole bean dark roast coffee. She has it all set up the night before and the first thing she does every morning is turn on the Cuisinart so that, by the time I head downstairs, a whole pot of delicious, fresh coffee is awaiting. I pour myself a cup and sit down and read the local newspaper.

I can’t imagine starting my day any other way.

And by the way, I gave up sugar in my coffee. Now I put half a packet of Splenda in each cup.

And that’s my story about my need for coffee to get my day underway. It’s the best part of waking up.