{"id":4305,"date":"2015-09-10T13:39:54","date_gmt":"2015-09-10T18:39:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/?p=4305"},"modified":"2015-09-10T14:43:45","modified_gmt":"2015-09-10T19:43:45","slug":"a-completely-pointless-post-about-tea-the-british-empire-and-whether-or-not-my-eyes-are-closed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rebeccafrech\/2015\/09\/a-completely-pointless-post-about-tea-the-british-empire-and-whether-or-not-my-eyes-are-closed.html","title":{"rendered":"A completely pointless post about tea, the British Empire, and whether or not my eyes are closed"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
I\u2019m really tired, so I let my ADD brain out to play today. If you\u2019ve ever wondered what\u2019s going on in my head, this is pretty much what it sounds like all the time.<\/span><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t the post I wanted to write today, or for the last week really, but what I want to say isn\u2019t coming out. It\u2019s stuck somewhere in my head because I\u2019m too blasted tired to go find it. Last week, my body decided that it no longer needs to sleep. I was sleeping just fine for the whole of my life\u2026and then the not-conscious decision making part decided that we were just over sleep\u2026so we\u2019re not doing that any more.<\/p>\n
Some nights, I fall asleep just fine only to wake up half an hour later. I try to tell myself \u201cSelf, you\u2019re being dumb and are not really rested. Go back to sleep!\u201d But myself doesn\u2019t listen. (My husband and parents aren\u2019t surprised by the not listening part\u2026which is weird\u2026) I lay there and think about what we\u2019re going to do for Thanksgiving, where I\u2019m going to take my college roommate when she comes to visit in three weeks, or what color to paint the master bathroom in the house we\u2019re going to paint someday. Other nights, I make it all the way until 4-ish, and I\u2019m pretty sure I could go back to sleep except for my husband waking up at 4:45 and making bacon and eggs for breakfast. Can anyone really go to sleep when the house smells like bacon?<\/p>\n
The worst are the nights where I\u00a0almost\u00a0<\/em>fall asleep and then lay there in bed in a weird twilight-y between stage where my body is totally relaxed and I lay there wondering if my eyes are really closed because I closed them but it doesn\u2019t fell like there\u2019s anything on my eyeballs. While I do eventually drift off, it\u2019s not for hours and those are the nights when I have weird dreams. Those are the mornings when I wake up exhausted and am grateful for the man who grows the tea that\u2019s in my cup at 6am.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think the Tea Man gets enough credit around here. The Coffee Man is everyone\u2019s hero. We even know his name,\u00a0Juan Valdez, and that he has a cute donkey. They both live somewhere in the Columbian mountains where the coffee beans grow.<\/p>\n
But the Tea Man\u2026.<\/p>\nTiny little tea leaves\u2026<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
He\u2019s my hero these days \u2013 picking those leaves at the perfect point and then drying them\u2026or whatever magic voo-doo makes those leaves ready for my tea. You know who\u2019s the real hero? The man who decided to take those leaves and put them in hot water to begin with. Why don\u2019t we know that guy\u2019s name? Seems like he\u2019s pretty instrumental to human history. The whole British Empire was built on tea. Without it, what would the Brits have cared about India? They hung around and fought for it because that\u2019s where the tea grows, and where would the English be without tea? They\u2019d be drinking ale or coffee or something, but they definitely wouldn\u2019t be British. Would they?<\/p>\n
So if anyone should know the Tea Man\u2019s name, it should be people in England. They could name a street after him. As long as it wasn\u2019t long and hard to pronounce. Those are the worst street names because they just confuse the tourists, and then what do you get except a bunch of lost people wandering around. Which could be good for the taxi drivers, couldn\u2019t it? The taxi men should hope for confusing street names. They\u2019d make out like bandits.<\/p>\n
I suppose the taxi women would too, but we don\u2019t really hear about women cabbies, do we? I\u2019m sure they\u2019re there\u2026plus I meant \u201cmen\u201d in the universal \u201chuman being\u201d kind of way. Do people still do that? Say Man or Men and mean People? Like the Species of Man\u2026that\u2019s a thing. I know it from Christmas Carols and the non-politically corrected readings at Mass. When did we start Politically Correcting the things at Church anyway? I like my Gospels controversial. It wakes people up and makes them pay attention!<\/p>\n
Like tea does. And coffee if you like it. I only like it with enough cream and sugar to no longer taste like coffee, which is coffee-flavored hot chocolate really. And don\u2019t even get me started on the origins of hot chocolate \u2013 Montezuma and ball games where you got killed if you fouled someone and folks wore big feathered headdresses. It was a hot mess down there. Which makes you wonder why they didn\u2019t drink their cocoa cold. Mexico is hot, y\u2019all. I was there a lot of times\u2026back in the day\u2026<\/p>\n
Whoo! We would go across the border and\u2026well, that\u2019s probably a story for another day.<\/p>\n
So what do you think? Are my eyelids really closed, and why can\u2019t I feel them? It\u2019s weird, y\u2019all. Freaky deaky weird.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photos:<\/p>\n
Tea Cup\u00a0By Miya (Miya\u2019s file) [GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html), CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/), CC BY-SA 2.5 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.5) or CC BY-SA 2.1 jp (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/2.1\/jp\/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n
Tea Leaves\u00a0By Sebastianjude [GFDL (http:\/\/www.gnu.org\/copyleft\/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/3.0\/)], via Wikimedia Commons<\/p>\n
I\u2019m really tired, so I let my ADD brain out to play today. If you\u2019ve ever wondered what\u2019s going on in my head, this is pretty much what it sounds like all the time. This isn\u2019t the post I wanted to write today, or for the last week really, but what I want to say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1979,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-4305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-add"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/b\/b6\/Teestrauch_Detail.jpg\")