reading: Little Bitty Lies, by Mary Kay Andrews.
Finished last night: Death of a Butterfly. Excellent book.
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I think my body is still trying to figure out the new menstrual (as opposed to minstrel) schedule. I’m retaining water like a champ this week, despite the fact that I just had my period two weeks ago and thus won’t have it again for another 10 weeks (thank you, Seasonale!). Also, one of those really painful zits popped up on my left cheekbone, and when that started going away, a couple popped up on my jawline. The one on my cheekbone is mostly gone, but the ones on my jawline are bright, flashing, neon red. If you’re in the same room with me, you can’t look away from them, believe you me.
Oh, it’s FUN to be a girl, ain’t it?
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Know what word I loathe? “Chuckle.” It’s such a smug, self-satisfied word.
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I’m sitting here drinking my daily cup of tea, and it occurs to me that though I’ve informed
Jane of this fact, I perhaps have not shared it with y’all. The fact about me and tea is that I don’t like the taste of tea. That is, I like the peppermint tea I drink every day, but I don’t like tea that tastes like tea. If there’s absolutely nothing else to drink, I’ll take a glass of iced tea and dump 63 packets of Splenda in it, but given a choice between tea and anything else – ANYTHING – I’ll take the other thing.
Don’t tell me I just haven’t found the right tea. I’ve tried them all, and I don’t like the taste of tea. The only word I can think of to describe the taste of regular tea is “grainy”. I don’t know. Don’t give me that look. But give me a cup of peppermint tea, which tastes like peppermint (BUT NOT TEA), and I’m all set.
Of course, I’d take Diet Coke over even peppermint tea any time. The daily (big-ass) cup of peppermint tea is just to shake things up. I love Diet Coke, but if I drink too much of it, I feel like my blood is getting all sluggish. No doubt it’s all in my head, but I’m sure the peppermint tea doesn’t hurt.
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Speaking of things to drink, Fred has lately taken to drinking sugar-free cherry Kool-Aid. He makes it in big gallon-sized jugs, and no matter what he does when he opens a packet of the Kool-Aid mix, invariably the next day when I’m wiping down the counters, the powder has gotten all over the place.
The dishtowels and dishcloths I was using were yellow, and when you use a yellow dishcloth to wipe up red cherry Kool-Aid mix, you get a stain that will never ever ever come out.
Fucking Kool-Aid.
So after some thought, I bought a set of good white dishcloths at Williams-Sonoma, and some white flour sack towels on eBay, and then I bought some dye, and I died the discloths and dishtowels a darkish blue (denim blue, I think this particular shade was called), and now when I wipe up the red Kool-Aid, you can’t see the stain on the dishcloths. And the flour sack dishtowels are awesome; they soak up water like nobody’s business, and they dry out in about ten minutes.
It really takes very little to make me happy, have you noticed?
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I have come to the conclusion that I definitely need a camera phone. It’s always my intention to carry a camera around in my purse, but I do that for a few days then take the camera out to download the pictures to my hard drive, and forget to put it back. And invariably I’m out running errands and see something that would be a cool picture… but I don’t have my camera! I don’t intend to send pictures to people; I just want to be able to take a picture when I need to. Our cell phone contract is up in December, so I think I’m going to trade my phone in for a camera phone.
Maybe I will, anyway. I guess it’ll depend on whether I can convince Fred that I need one!
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“How YOU doin’?”]]>
I don’t have a camera phone, but Aidan does. (I know.) Anyway, yesterday when we were coming home from his school, we spotted a VW Bug dressed up like Shamu from Sea World. (It’s one of those advertising Bugs.) It was too cute and having the phone handy to snap the pic was neat. I’ll post it when he sends me the image. The only downside right now is that the resolution isn’t that great on most camera phones. This will change (and soon!), but it’s hard to go back to a 1 megapixel image. (Scott’s working on a chip that will place a 6 megapixel camera in a cell phone.)
No need to explain about the tea — I have tried and tried to like it, because it seems more earthy than, and somehow morally superior to, coffee, but blech. Someone in another blog describe it as tasting like pencil shavings, and that’s about it. But I have started buying these bottled Tazo “juiced teas” at Starbucks and those are really good (but with most of the calories of juice).
I too don’t really care for tea. I add lots of sugar to it if I HAVE to drink it. Camera phones come in handy for many MANY reasons! 🙂 But yeah, I wish the resolution was better.
What a picture, but what happened to his left eye. It’s gone, gone, gone! What a “come hither” look! Camera phones are nice; I have a camera palm pilot. I took a bunch of pictures of my cats and I was able to take them to my parent’s house. I have a cat that my parents swear I’m lying about since they’ve never seen him. I had pictures! Ha!
Only problem: my work just issued me a BlackBerry and the palm is at home dead as a door nail. Thanks for reminding me to bring home my charger from work!
Val
If you don’t want to wait until December, and if you are planning on staying with the same cell phone company, most companies will let you get a new phone and just extend your contract out from *now*… so instead of getting a new year-contract in december, you’d get a new year-contract now.
Just a thought. 🙂
I’ve found that decaf tea is much less bitter & grainy than regular caffinated tea. Of course, I take a Vivarin with the decaf tea to get the same effect!
so… what you like isn’t really “tea” so much as its an herbal infusion… cause, ya know… technically if it doesn’t contain actual “tea leaves” its isn’t really “tea” (yes you can slap me now).
HOWEVER… there are LOTS of fabulous herbal infusions out there! I loves me some peppermint, but have you tried adagio berry blast or blood orange? Those are some tea-free teas that need no sweetener cause they’re so freakin good.
ok i’ll shut up about the snobbery of tea now.
I’m not a tea fan – at the moment – either, but i’m sure if I had an ingenuiTEA teapot thingy from Adagio teas, I could be! It looks to be the grooviest, coolest little teapot I’ve even seen and I would buy one in a heartbeat, but do they ship to Australia?? Huh, HUH?! NO! Sheesh. I could understand if they don’t ship the tea itself (customs, blah, blah), but I only want the teapot. Yup, they can put a man on the moon, but not a teapot to Australia. Um…I’ll end my teapot rant now and go find that life I left around here somewhere…
I love iced tea! If there is soda, juice or tea in the house, I will always reach for the tea. I don’t like flavored tea, I just love a good old fashioned glass of black tea. I can understand why some might not though.
Tried to click on ANDIE’s highlighted name and it took me to Adagio tea’s website!! That seemed strange… was it a paid plug? My suggestion/offer would have been, could I email her, to have someone in the US order it and have that person remail it to her in Australia, which I wouldn’t mind doing, if she liked.
Have YOU tried the new diet coke that has SPLENDA in it? It taste like… well I cant think of anything witty and fun but it taste B A D and I am not a pepsi fan but oddly I am digging the cherry diet pepsi and diet pepsi with lime.
Nooooo…it wasn’t a ‘paid plug’. As I said, I can’t even get the tea sent to my country…I just thought it’s a great looking website with a ton of info and a really, really groovy looking teapot.
Rejoice in your dislike of tea…that stuff stains your teeth something awful (my dentist says worse than coffee, even). Me, I love it, of course,and coffee, and everything else bad for you. I wish I could love herbal teas, but only kinda sorta like them, if there’s nothing awful for me around to drink instead.
Try hating tea and living in freaking England. No one understands. It’s as if I don’t like breathing or something. (Like you, I do drink peppermint infusion with Splenda when it’s around and I’m feeling peer pressure to have a hot drink.)
Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that I had a disturbing dream last night about you and your family. For some reason, I came back to the US and needed a place to crash, and you emailed me and said I could stay for a week. When I got to your house, you put me in this little cubbyhole apart from the main (read: nice, roomy) part of the house and were all, “So when are you getting the hell out of here?” It was funny when I woke up! But dreaming about bloggers I don’t even really know is slightly worrying. (One thing I remember from the dream was that The Spud was a very good driver.)
Also, thanks for letting me know that sugar-free Kool Aid exists; I’ll have to get some the next time I’m in the US.
I don’t ever use “chuckle”, but I often use “cackle”.
can you post the link to the flour sack cloths you bought on ebay?
I’ve been trying to find good absorbent towels and no luck. They look great, but just push the water around on the sink
thanks
Athena: Isn’t it great to be married to a geek? 🙂
Susan: I had thought of that, but we’re not sure whether we’re going to stay with T-Mobile or switch to Verizon; hopefully by December we will have decided!
Andie: Leave a comment with your email address in it; it appears that Wifeygirl’s offering to send you an ingenuiTEA teapot!
Tammy: I haven’t tried it, but I’ve heard people say it’s good, and people say it sucks. I’ll have to give it a try to see how I feel about it. 🙂
Jackie: I can’t imagine living in England not liking tea. I’m surprised they haven’t kicked you out yet! Also, the dream? I would totally say “When is she going to get the hell out of here?”, but I’d totally say it behind your back. And only if you were staying for more than a week. A week’s about my limit if you’re not related to me! (Also, you might have to share your room with the cats, but you’d expect that, right?)
Kinzie: Yeah, we use cackle all the time! 🙂
cecpet: I think these are the guys we got them from:
http://tinyurl.com/cq3kb
I didn’t get 18 of them, though – I got 10, and they were $1 apiece, plus shipping. They’re very thin towels, but they absorb really well, and like I said, they dry out really quickly, if you hang them up to dry.
If Wifeygirl or anyone else would be will assist in ingenuitea teapot purchasing, that would be awesome. It’s just so darn frustrating to be living in this time of www, global economy, etc, etc, and I still can’t get stuff sent here.
Re: the word you hate. I hate the word “moist” for no reason except it makes your mouth like a kiss when you say it and it’s weird. Does that make me weird?………
Robyn, have you seen this? http://kittenwar.com/ The cutest little kittens and cats.
Robyn, I’ve been reading your wonderful journal for a while now, and something you wrote in this entry perked up mine ears. You mentioned that you are on Seasonale, and that you’re breaking out? My doc put me on seasonale (changed from aviane) last spring, and within a month I had developed horrible backne and face acne… had to go on perscriptions. (at least it wasn’t right before me wedding! Oh wait, it was!) Anyway, he put me back on my regular pill, and the zits were gone in about a month. Just thought my experience might help (not that that’s what is happening to you).
I can’t stand the taste of tea either. I just won’t drink it – I’d rather have water or go thirsty. Tea tastes like dirt to me and always has. I feel like I’m drinking dirt. I don’t know why people are so into it. ick.