Musings On The Misguided Buying Habits Of The Tea Deprived

Over the last couple months I have developed a fondness for Tea. Black Tea, Chia Tea, oh, and especially any sort of herbal Tea, and of course Green Tea.

I mean I liked tea before, but with these days and nights sort of streaming together, to liven up boring water, and it is very comforting.

Plus, it distracts me from eating. I find sipping a cuppa satisfies that urge to eat.

Sip my tea, listen to some Binaural beats, and go into a zen mode.

I’m not the purest, and I’ll try mixed varieties of teas, with names like calming tea, soothing tea, a tropical antiox tea with vitamin C, a boost tea with B6 with lovely raspberry and strawberry, and of course, just the right tea for a pandemic… IMMUNE tea… with Lemon and Echinacea and some Zinc.

Echinacea and Zinc are both suppose to have immune boosting properties. I know Zinc is the more powerful of the two, as research is kinda sketchy on how much Echinacea actually boosts the immune system.

“Tea! Bless ordinary everyday afternoon tea!”
Agatha Christie

It is a simple thing, the making of tea, and there is a kind of ritual to it now for me. The making of, the warming of the pot with a little of the boiled water, choosing which tea to partake in, and the pouring, and waiting a bit for it to steep. As the afternoon rolls on, I often leave the bag in, as I like it strong and I like it just as much when it’s cold. Except for Green Tea, I learned a while back not to steep it for too long or it tastes a lika shite.

little doggy in the garden with light streaming down

Now, besides being bored, I’m all tea’d up, soothed, and I look around at my little nook here at the heart of this quaint little village. With all the things I need a short walk away, a wee garden out my door, a little doggo to keep my company, and life is good.

Was thinking recently about everyone out there, with a few weeks into this lockdown, shelter-in-place, social distancing, going out only for what we need, we are now sequestered with whatever it is that we at some point deemed essential to our lives… back in the time before.

Guess now people have this time-out, maybe quite a few are looking a bit sideways at all this so-called essential stuff that surrounds them. That stuff we must have, should have, think we should have, what we need for happiness, what we want to show off, well, it certainly takes on a slightly different angle when you are locked up with it all for weeks on end.

Past thoughts on what we believed were essential, reduced now to useless drivel that just takes up space.

Plus, I guess for some, maybe their parents, OK Boomers… yes you… eschewing the lessons of your parents who endured those dirty 30s and a World War, the ones who actually first hand knew a thing or four about useless drivel vs what life is REALLY about.

But oh no, many ya boomers rolled your eyes… Oh, mother, pullleeease… and stomped off to buy that shiny new car, the bigger house, the larger TV, the louder stereo, the more expensive wild sourced from Unicorn poop expensive this that or the other, as if one could actually buy up joy at a mall.

Well, not you mom. Lex and I were talking a bit about this the other night, at how down to earth we grew up. Ya know, not greedy, maybe a little spoiled, but we never thought things were a replacement for whatever… if anything I guess we were loved enough to not need a bunch of stuff.

Well, and now you can buy any ol’thang your heart may desire, online with one simple click, and have useless crap FEDEX’d right to your door.

Then of course there are others, gazing lovingly at the mountains of rolls of toilet paper they hoarded in the basement, right beside the crates of Hand Sanitizer and Lysol wipes they sell for 5x the regular price online.

Oh, happiness, tis bliss suppose for some to acquire crap, while others find their joy in robbing you blind. We are in those times when we watch evil profit, and the good die working the frontlines, and often for shite pay.

“Honestly, if you’re given the choice between Armageddon or tea, you don’t say ‘what kind of tea?”
Neil Gaiman

Necessity being the mother of invention, one learns in times such as this to make do with what one has, or suffer from their own suffering.

Though, coping isn’t something everyone does well.

Stuck at home, worried about how they’re going to be able to afford to go out and buy more useless drivel in the future.

Hamster wheel, anyone? Anyone?

And, course bunch a wacko’s down yonder trying to fake up a series of protests, angry they can’t get a tattoo, they’re hair cut, go to a mall and spend money, I don’t know.

Crazy, but they do not, according to the latest polls, represent the majority, as 75% of republicans and 95% Democrats encouragingly have no interest in risking their lives, and the lives of others for drivel.

Many of those coco for coco puffs down yonder have some hard lessons ahead of them.

There seem to be a certain faction who believe they deserve whatever their greedy little hearts desire, and at the expensive of everyone else around them, pions to be thrown aside, death this abstract liberal plot, I suppose.

Thankfully they are a minority, and as things are looking, their pouty POTUS and his evil band will be thrown out in November.

Now here I am with all my secondhand cloths, and hand-me-down antiques, and languidly living on less, and quite happy with it all.

It is I find a skill set, a mindset really, that you never stop perfecting, it is, as am I, always a work in progress. Changing, adapting, taking away things that no longer serve, or bring real authentic joy. Work at adding things that last, that are real, not just in fleeting moments.

Generally just being not so needy and grabby and greedy and angry, and dropping the BS pretense that acquiring stuff is anything but a band-aid over some other aspect I desperately want to drown in a sea of drivel.

Opportunities sometimes lie hidden in these crises, if we look for them. When everything shifts completely out of sync, and we are dragged from our humble lives, thrown into a chaos we have few tools for, and everything we thought we knew, well, now is questioned, we gain a new perspective and see things we couldn’t see before.

Feeling blessed, you know, even with all the worry. Often little sprinkles of joy erupt, and lots of sprinkles of anxiety, no idea what the future holds, when I can get my teeth done, but I am certainly grateful.

I have my wee garden, a little dog, and tea.

Especially grateful dad was an arse and ya moved back to Canada, that’s for certain. Holy crappo mom, that dude down yonder is a complete lunatic, he’s now telling people that maybe ingesting disinfectants and some other gibberish about UV light. I swear he’s trying to kill his followers off. Strange upside down world we live in when what the President of the United States says has to be followed by a disclaimer… DON’T TRY THIS AT HOME. Geesh.