A Girl With a Sword

middlesex village

First I felt like a blog geek, being the only one posting for weeks, and now I feel like a slacker. To tell the truth I've always been more comfortable being a slacker than an overachiever, but then paranoia kicks in and my beautiful facade is ruined. So I'm back on the blog, determined not to erase everything I write and get off my computer in disgust this time, not like last night. But last night there was red wine going on and tonight there's just tea.

I've started putting sugar in my tea again, at least at night. It's so much more cozy that way. This summer I quit with the sugar. I was at other people's houses in Scotland, then in the youth hostels it was hard enough to find milk, let alone sugar, too. And I love the simplicity of just the milk and the tea (milk first, we are prelactarian here), in the youth hostel mug, standing in the kitchen looking out into Uig harbor, or in the yellow chipped mug in the L'Abri garden. My favorite thing about L'Abri, and I may have mentioned this before, was the tea times. Twice a day, for half an hour, sitting on the grass in the sun (or the rain). Now I make tea in the staff kitchen on my breaks at work. There's nothing quite as cathartic as boiling water and brewing tea, even if I just end up throwing it out after that because there's just half and half or spoiled milk in the fridge. We've started using a regular kettle at the house lately, too. There were some incidents of fuse blowing last week that seemed directly linked to the electric kettle so we broke out Keri's "postmodern" kettle and everyone has to put up with me making a mad dash for the kitchen as soon as there's the faintest hint of whistling. I did pour the kettle a bit crooked the other night, when the power was out and I was trying to fill my hot water bottle so I've had this annoying peeling burn on my finger all week. So with the power going out and no heat and the occasional water going off we feel like we are getting the true Boston experience, just expecting Paul Revere to ride by any night now.