December Reflections Day 1: DRINK

I've thought more about drinks this year than I have about anything else. What can I drink? What should I drink? How much water should I drink? How much booze can I drink before I become a "bad mom"? Will drinking this tea make me produce more milk for my baby to drink? How much coffee can I drink before I turn into a sweaty, nervous mess? If I drink a bottle of champagne, will it make me enjoy Nebraska football? (No, the answer is definitely "no" on that one.) If I drink this jalapeno (or raspberry, or rhubarb, or whatever whacky non-beer food item the local craft brewer decided should go in beer) flavored beer will my internet friends think I'm cool and interesting?

It makes sense though, I don't know if there's any one thing we do more often than drink. Carryyourcup.org says "Americans consume 400 million cups of coffee per day, and throw away 25 billion styrofoam coffee cups every year." That's a lot of drinking.

In 2014, I spent what probably amounts to hours (and hundreds of dollars - ack!) in front of refrigerated shelves trying to determine whether this tea/juice/fermented beverage would be better than that tea/juice/fermented beverage. If the Elixir of Life is in a bottle, I would have found it by now.

I'm pretty sure this was the year when some health/fashion guru/reality TV star "discovered" that drinking enough water throughout the day can improve your health. NEWSFLASH!

Tell that to the millions of people around the world who don't have access to clean drinking water. This is probably the greatest global crisis today, and the single most distinguishing feature between developed and developing nations.

What we have in excess, millions of other people don't have at all.

I'm not sure what to do about that problem, or if there is much that I can do myself. Maybe by the end of 2015, I'll have better answers. For now, I'll give to the Samaritan's Purse Clean Water Project, so that more people can have a drink.