Happy Birthday to Me

So it’s happy birthday to me today. I’m sitting in our new office (Daughter’s bedroom swapped to old office last weekend), the kids have gone to school, Husband is still in bed. He said on the phone yesterday ‘I saw your blog. We don’t have to do anything; you can write if you want. I can bring you cups of tea all day.’

Gosh, it’s almost worth it.

Husband is a lovely man, but he’s really crap in the tea department. He says it’s because I’m impossible. I’m not; I’ve just got specific standards when it comes to tea. (Water must be boiling, tea must be brewed for 4-6 minutes and then not drowned with milk; simple eh? The mug’s got to be the right one, but that’s not difficult, is it? He could always refer back to my mug post if he’s confused.)

He said ‘if that’s your idea of a lovely birthday: my making you tea all day…’ But do you suppose he thinks he’ll get away without making me tea for the other 364 days?

He’s always trying to rush the tea, but if he thinks you can just brew inadequately and then add milk to make the colour right, he’s very much mistaken. I can tell the opacity of the liquid is wrong. And the taste of course, that’s not right either. Nothing makes him huff and puff more than when I tell him I’m timing the tea he’s making me. Gosh, that does make me sound a bit of a tea fascist, doesn’t it?

But the idea of having him (good naturedly – because Oh Yes, I’d hold him to making tea with a smile on his face!) making tea at my command, really does appeal.

Perhaps I could have a little bell that I ring when I fancy tea …

Nursery Rhymes

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To fill her tea caddy with bags,
When she got there
The tea packet was bare
So poor little JJ had none.




















Aaaaaaaaggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Hello. My name’s JJ and I’m a tea-aholic

One of my blog friends sent me a box of teabags in the post. She didn’t want them and I do, and I can’t buy this brand in Thailand. I told her when she got to the post office, if the postage was exorbitant, please don’t send them: STOP, retrace your steps, and save them for when Auntie Maureen comes round for a cuppa. Or maybe let them rot at the back of a cupboard…

I was very over excited to receive them – they’d been on a big postal adventure, all facilitated by a couple of comments while blogging.

I saw that she’d spent a lot of money on postage and had sent them anyway. So, I remembered something that she wished for in her blog once and I went out yesterday and bought it for her.

But then, I felt like a bit anxious, although I couldn’t quite work out why. I thought about it and then I realized. It reminded me, when I first started reading blogs I kept quiet, and never commented. I kept coming back to a few people’s lives and listened, read and enjoyed, but I didn’t say anything.

And this is because it made me feel a little bit like a creepy stalker.

She (and the other few I read) didn’t know I was there and I felt dishonest. I felt like I was peeping through their curtains uninvited.

Now that I’ve joined the novel racers and introduced myself I feel more legitimate. (My mother would be so proud of my good manners). But it interested me that I’d once felt this way. I’d quite forgotten.