Werewolf
I never used to drink as much tea as I drink now.
Not that I didn’t like tea, I like tea a lot; it’s because I didn’t want to run out. The obvious solution to this quandary was, of course, to buy more tea, try it out, and then save it to share with people that came over so that I could prove how good it was, but I didn’t have anywhere to sit, so I never invited anyone over. I don’t drink caffeine anymore, so I’m not talking about English Breakfast or Earl Grey either. I’m talking about the wide and wild cornucopia of herbal tea choices there are out there like hibiscus, or a really intense mint tea, or that dandelion root tea that I may never experience again because I drank it all to myself. That one I really couldn’t resist, it was so good! It was also a gift from a dear friend, and I don’t know where they got it from, and I’m pretty sure I’ve asked, and I’m pretty sure they’ve told me, but now I’m a little embarrassed to ask again, so the only obvious conclusion is that it’s gone forever.
When I moved in with Hez, I brought all of my tea with me. Hez loves tea and drinks a lot of it. What a perfect situation, I thought, but there was one problem, and that is that Hez also likes a wide variety of teas, and often doesn’t finish off the box. So there were a lot of tea boxes in the tea cupboard, and various containers that I call orphanages for all the lonely randos, and there wasn’t enough room for all my mostly full tea boxes. So we agreed that we were probably not going to buy any more tea for a while while we drank up all the random teas. I made a point of hunting down the most loneliest teas in the cupboard; sunny orange ginger was a good one, and there always seems to be sleepy time somewhere in everyone’s tea cupboard. Mint, of course, and the last bag of the assorted berry teas, those were all good. We have an assortment of detox teas that somehow seem unsavoury to me, like they’re going to fundamentally change who I am in some way, and it frightens me, so I’ll be sticking to therapy and healthier daily choices instead. The maple green tea was a pass for me, and the smooth move remains only for special occasions, and, as far as I am concerned, belongs in the medicine cabinet.
But now we have a different problem. We seem to elevated our agreement into an unspoken pact that we are not to purchase any new tea until we have completely emptied the tea cupboard, and there is some weird stuff at the back. I have disposed of my hardened lump of artisan mushroom hot chocolate, but am weirdly fascinated by the bag of what seems to be the crispy collection from a forest floor after a windstorm gives everything a good shake. It’s all twigs and hard greenery, and requires some boiling. The write-up on the bag makes me feel like I should go to the market and buy some hand crafted pottery to drink it out of before howling at a new moon, which I might do, because I love that shit.
Or at least I’d love to. It’s been a while.
