I don’t know whether this up-front disclaimer will relieve my readers or disappoint them: This post is not about vasectomies. (You’re welcome?)
When I tell people I’m a little sideways, I mean that quite literally some days. I’m walking sideways. (Really, this post isn’t about surgeries of any sort…)
This sideways-ness has prompted a quest to chill out. Relax. (Did I spell this right? What is this word?)
Unwind.
Unclench, rather.
Add to that, now, all of a sudden, I.Am.Cold.All.The.Time.
I find myself reaching for sweaters and jackets and hauling them everywhere. I used to tease Grandma Lois about this, rest her soul.
(Sorry, Grandma. I get it now.)
The duality of clenched and chilly prompts people and the great Google to tell me hot beverages may chill me out. And warm me up.
Neither the Hubs nor I are hot beverage drinkers, though we’ve often said we have the perfect spots in and around our home to drink hot beverages. But we don’t even own a coffee pot. I’m a rare one who doesn’t even like how coffee smells. I’ll do hot chocolate once a year or so, but yeah…
My favorite tea—the best iced tea in the whole wide world—isn’t made anymore. Because Grandma Lois made it and no one else’s comes close. I’ve tried and failed several times to get the ratio of tea bags, water, and sugar correct.
I suppose it’s all that love she put into it. A tall, sweaty glass of that sweet golden-brown brew on a hot summer’s day? Ahhh.
Nope. Gave up trying this a couple of decades ago.
(Sorry, Grandma....)
So, Little Miss Muse and I went off to buy tea and a teapot. She came with me under protest to let me know up and down all the aisles that I’d be better off writing.
I argue if I’m freezing and fitful, writing won’t happen anyway, so may as well lean into the quest.
Little Miss starts up a ruckus, like a toddler. Messing with the wheel on the shopping cart. Reaching into the baskset to flick teapot’s stopper open and closed, open and closed. None of the other shoppers seemed to notic, thank goodness.
“You know this is a bad idea.” She flicks purple glitter all along the grocery store aisle.
“Probably. But I’m cold. And clenching.” I’m scouring the shelf for options to try. Variety packs make sense. Taste-tesing.
“You know bad things happen in your kitchen.” She pirouettes and her wings knock three boxes of Lipton from the shelf.
“I am aware.” She knows I’m aware. There’s this squirrel brain spore sphere that comes down over me in that room.
(Why just today, I paused composing this blog midway for a movie and my favorite Mexican restaurant. See? Staying out of the kitchen.
I get home, feed the cats—tuna pate that’s opened on the kitchen counter. Got my little finger in the nasty fish juice. Then, my ear itched. Before I could catch myself, I stuck that little finger in my ear. Then I spent way too long cleaning tuna juice from my canal, and now I don’t know if I’m smelling tuna because I’m paranoid, I have leftover tuna in my ear, or if Malachi’s post-dinner breath is wafting up over the laptop and smacking me in the face.
See? Stuff just happens in my kitchen. Or around appliances that look like they belong in kitchen.)
“You remember what happened in Cincinnati.” Little Miss Muse loves bringing up my foibles. And then telling me I’d have been better off writing. “You’d have been better off writing.”
I get a tissue from my bag to wipe up her glitter chaos and strap her in the cart like the child she is. A child that’s always right. I know I should’ve stayed in that hotel room a bit longer that morning and thrown some more words onto something.
But I went down to the conference early. Then I got cold. And I looked for hot chocolate packets at the coffee/tea probably-belongs-in-a-kitchen-appliance-cart-thingy, but there was no cocoa. I figured I would try tea. Warm me up. Chill me out. With enough sweetness added in, surely I could gag it down.
Wise Writer Buddy caught me and said, “Not chamomile. You’re driving.”
I have a very low tolerance for anything with a sedative effect. And an ignorance of tea. So I’m glad she was on it.
I don’t know what flavor I picked, “breakfast” something. I got the teabag into the cup, the little string and tag hanging out the side like it’s supposed to be. I attempted to get the hot water from the spigot the wrong way, then the right way.
I added a wooden stirrer and a packet of sweetener.
Then it went downhill fast.
The water wasn’t hot enough to steep that tea—or I wasn’t patient enough to let it steep that tea. Probably the patience thing. And it was gaggy bland.
Another packet of sweetener.
I stirred this way. I stirred that way. Another quick taste test. Not sweet enough. A third packet.
The teabag string wound tighter and tighter around the stirrer until the bag was entirely out of the water. I couldn’t get it unwound and it all tasted so bad. And why couldn’t they offer hot chocolate packets? Those things don’t come with strings attached.
I showed Writer Buddy what I did. She can’t even with me and was very glad I didn’t get any sips of chamomile, because what then? Be my glitching self, only in slow motion?
What did I expect? Stringy ingredients I’m ignorant of. Hot water. Appliances I don’t know how to work. And in public.
In public with no patience.
I figured Cincinnati would be it for the tea attempt.
But, here we are. In the grocery store, determined. “It’ll be different this time. At home, I’ll be careful and try it the right way.”
Little Miss reaches behind her, flicks the lid off the teapot, and looks inside. “Yeah, this thing has, like, parts and a valve. And those bags will have strings.” She sticks her impish nose in the air at me. “This won’t be different.”
I toss three boxes of tea in the cart, barely missing her head, and we head home to try it out that night.
First off, I’m pleased to report that, one week in, I have not burned down my kitchen boiling water in my new teapot. (Little Miss wants me to point out I did, on three occasions, forget how to flip the stopper open. I argue that muscle memory is slow to come on board in my current glitch state.)
Second, I’m pleased to report that, one week in, I have found hot tea varieties that I like, and it was, in fact, my lack of patience, social anxiety, and lack of proper add-ins that made the attempt at the conference into that micro-ordeal. (Little Miss wants me to point out that she’s positive this is procrastination in its highest form and with or without tea, more micro-ordeals are on the horizon if we don’t get the current manuscript out of our heads and onto the page.)
Third, I hate strings. I’ve done it three times now. Stir this way. Stir that way, get uber frustrated because that teabag walks right up out of my Star Wars Ewok mug onto the tip of the spoon’s handle. What is this unnecessary talent? I’ve seen gobs of people drink tea. Not once I have ever seen a teabag just climb the rope to get out of hot water.
Only my tea does this.
So, while the kettle is warming, we snip, snip. With scissors. Because if you try to tear-tear, the bag busts and it’s a whole thing all over the place.
Now the bag stays in the water, and I don’t lose my patience. Or become a patient with third-degree burns trying to unwind my bag. (I am, after all, doing this in my squirrel-brain-spore kitchen.)
Come to think of it, the current manuscript could use a little snip-snip.
Tighten up the words. Snip.
Tweak the plot. Snip.
Force the characters to stay in hot water until their personalities develop some flavor. Snip. Snip.
“Heeey!!!” Little Miss is monkeying with the laptop, spinning it so she can see over my hands as I type. With cold fingers. I’m chilly.
She giggles and points, “That’s your problem.”
“What’s my problem?” I have so many…
“Someone’s snip-snipped your string. You must not be done developing.” She falls to the floor, belly-laughing, tutu up over her head.
Like a child.
Like a child that’s always right.
Now I’m chilly. And clenched up. And my ear smells like tuna.
At least I have the ingredients—and the scissors—to solve two of the problems.
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