Teavana, My New Addiction

My husband and I were in the mall recently shopping for new shoes for him. We were going to meet our daughter who was playing with the 2 year old and 7 year old in the play area, when my husband suddenly said, "Oh, let's go in this store. I was here last week and I think you will like it".

Now it is important to understand that my husband is not a shopper. He dislikes being in any store and especially dislikes having to be in a store shopping that is crowded with people. So I was a little shocked he was interested in going into this store at all. Not only were there a lot of people in the small store but there were also employees strategically located in every corner for samples. So it took me a moment to get over the initial shock to even register what store we were in.

The store was Teavana. It smelled wonderful and the samples were very good. They were of course the perfect blends of different teas with the perfect blends of sweetener (not too sweet but just enough to cut through any bitterness). After trying a couple of teas I looked at my husband with confusion. "Why are we in here?" He told me he liked the samples the last time he had been in and wanted me to try them. Okay, again I am still confused. "So, you want to buy tea?" I was confused because we drink coffee mostly. He likes black coffee and I like froufrou coffee. I have a tea pot my mother gave me, but I am pretty sure it is decorated with Christmas stuff and is buried in the back of a cabinet.

He finally said, "I know you like that peach tea when we go out to eat and I just thought maybe we could get some tea. You know give them a try. Do you like them? I would rather spend money on tea than Starbucks." (My husband hates Starbucks. I usually only get maybe one a week, but that adds up at 5$ a pop).
"Well, yeah I like them. But we this is all loose tea and that means we would have to buy a tea maker along with the tea."
With a smile on his face he says, "That's okay. What kind do you want to get?"

Now I rarely buy myself anything and I generally use grocery shopping to satisfy my want to buy things. We have 5 kids and I don't work. There isn't much I need. So my husband who enjoys buying me things when he can find something I want or like was enjoying himself. So this is one of those opportunities where he was able to spend money on me and make me smile. Technically its food...technically its healthy...technically its worth trying.

So we bought a tea maker (for use with loose tea) and a few different teas. They included a little booklet with all of the teas they offer and information on accessories for tea. That was the clincher.

When we got home, I made tea. I enjoyed the simplicity of mixing the teas I wanted and following the very simple directions for each type of tea. We mainly got white tea and the roobios were white and red so the caffeine levels are very low. I was hooked instantly.

That night I went online to Teavana.com and ordered more tea, tins, and the German Rock Sugar (which is very yummy). I did find a promotional code that saved me 10$. I also split my order in 2 so I could save the 10$ twice (shipping was free) and each order came with a sample my husband loved. After I submitted my order I ran across an application for my iPhone that has tea mixes, tea timers, and information on all the teas they carry. Hey, it was free.

When my orders came I was like a kid opening a Christmas gift. I put all the tea in the tins (air tight to protect the tea), made a place for the tea in our glass cabinet, and immediately made tea. YUM!

I have had tea every day since we got it. I drink tea instead of snacking, which is helpful. I really didn't think about the tea vs snacking until yesterday. Drinking tea helps me get my water each day and although I am not a big soda drinker, the tea has made me skip any and all soda. The majority of the teas we got are white teas, so there is very little caffeine.I use the German Rock Sugar which is a much nicer flavor than white sugar and its not processed like white sugar.

The only downside to all this tea drinking...I have to pee all the time! Seriously, it feels like all the time. Its worse than drinking beer. I suppose I am drinking more fluids, so that increases potty trips. I am not sure if tea is a diuretic (without caffeine) or not because everything I read was linked to the caffeine. Did you know that white teas are not only good for skin and hair but also teeth? Tea naturally prevents plaque. Wow, I had no idea.

Well, I am hooked. Now my challenge is to stay out of the Teavana store and not buy tea online until we are out. Because there are so many different flavors and I want to try them all!

I will leave you with this...Many of you have heard me talk about my husband referring (lovingly) to me as his 'uppity elitist bitch' (it is because I am so picky and never seem to be satisfied with what I have, always wanting more...better stuff, better service, better environment) well after I fell in love with all this tea my husband tells me...
"Well, I figured you would like it. What could be more uppity elitist than loose tea sold by the ounce?"

Pain and the Pain Pill Haze

So things went well with the surgery. (It was one of those girlie area type surgeries, so I have no intention actually talking about the surgery itself). I am in bed being pampered by my wonderful husband. The kids have their extortion bribery chore charts they have been doing pretty well sticking to. My baby doll (2.5 year old son who is a total momma's boy) is having a hard time understanding why mommy won't play like she normally does, but he is being pretty good as well.

I am in pain. I have pain pills. I am taking my pain pills. So actually at the moment (if I don't move) I am not in pain. If I move then its a whole other story. I don't care for the fog that comes with pain pills or the way you doze off without realizing it until you wake up. I think I did just that a moment ago, ha ha. One minute I am typing and the next I'm lifting my head up off the pillow. So I don't like having this hazy no control over my own mind feeling. However, I do dislike something much more than the haze...PAIN. I am very much against it. If there is anything I can do to avoid pain, I will. So I am hazy and foggy.

I was trying to think of something funny, brilliant, or at least entertaining to write today. I still have not come up with anything. Its raining and dreary out, there is nothing to watch on TV, and I am bored. I am so bored that I actually cleaned up a little when I was downstairs for a snack. My husband asked me what I was doing and I actually said just cleaning up after myself. I was cleaning up after more than just myself but I didn't want to get reprimanded so I fibbed and stopped cleaning.

I am laying in bed watching Red (which is a great action/comedy movie) and about to fall into that comatosed state again. Please forgive any run-on sentences (that are beyond my normal ones) and grammer/spelling issues in this lovely action packed post. Oxycodone is my friend until the pain is gone and it turns out Oxycodone is against good grammer, correct spelling, and things making sense in general. Oxycodone is that passive aggressive friend who somehow always manages to get their way.

I will hopefully be clear enough to write something coherent soon.  Night all.

Trauma...oh the Trauma of it all!

trauma :

1. (Psychology) a powerful shock that may have long-lasting effects

2. (Medicine / Pathology) any bodily injury or wound

My husband has a special kind of sense of humor. I love it personally, its been described as a dry humor laced with strong sarcasm. I think that is only because there are times (even for me) when it is difficult to tell whether he is joking or serious. He has a very stoic demeanor for his public face. He is a disabled veteran, he spent 10 years in the Air Force. He has that serious soldier attitude in his body language, the kind that puts immediate fear in teen aged boys. (Which is obviously a good thing since we have 4 daughters). I will share a huge secret with you, shhhh, don't tell anyone. My husband has a sweet, soft, and gooey heart. He prefers people to think he is mean and tough. But he isn't.

So anyway, my husband and I were discussing the surgery I will be having Friday afternoon. We were discussing how to get our older 4 children to help with housework and our 2 year old son during my recovery time. (We fully plan to bribe and extort our children into helping.) My wonderful husband will work from home as much as he can to help out as much as he can. One of the biggest challenges is I will not be able to lift up our 2 year old son for 4-6 weeks. Wow, that's a long time. Especially since our son is a true mamma's boy.

My husband laughs and pops off with this "Poor little guy is going to be traumatized. First he broke his little arm, then losses his boobs (my husbands reference to the fact that I weaned our son from nursing, charming, huh?), he gets his cast taken off (he was very angry they were taking his Buzz Lightyear arm off), then he had 3 front teeth pulled (along with other dental work done while under general anesthesia), and now his mommy won't be able to pick him up. We might as well start him sleeping in his own room since we are taking everything else away".

I will not be ending our co-sleeping, I am not ready to give that up. But my husband is right on all the other stuff. In just over one month all of the above did happen to our son. Will he be traumatized from the above list? I doubt it. Well, at least not as traumatized as we have been by everything he went through (ok, mostly it was me who was traumatized from it all, not my husband. He's a big strong man!)and next list of things our adorable son has done in less than a month that has scared, irritated, aggrivated, and hurt us.

There are many falls: from laundry baskets, tables, couches, chairs, his sisters arms, and our bed. There's the haircut he gave himself (a day after paying to have if professionally done), the shampoo incident (pink shampoo dumped in the hallway and our room while my husband could have swore he was just playing), the toothpaste tube emptied in the sink and on the floor and then tracked into the living room to tell me it was all over the place, (my husbands personal favorite) the packing peanuts he found in a box in our closet and spread all over our room in a blink of an eye, the many cups of liquid dumped on me or the floor (which he followed each time with the crazy scientist laugh), the cabinet hiding (he crawls into a cabinet and hides while I search everywhere for him, usually it ends when I hear the giggle from his hiding spot), his hugs he gives me when he climbs behind my back and then grabs my hair, pulls, and counters me from going backwards by putting his knees in my lower back (this one actually requires the help of my husband as I can't move when he does it), that time he put two dvds into my husbands PS3 (they came out ok, and it works fine, but it sure made a funky noise while they were both in there), and of course my personal favorite the random headbutts I receive which are generally followed by rubbing noses, cheek against cheek, and kisses. There are so many more things that happen on a day to day basis that scare the hell out of me and we recover from. I just can't remember them all (mental block maybe). Boys sure are different than girls, I can say that with complete certainty.


On another subject, I seem to have eliminated the trauma from the Mommy Wars (the women who felt it necessary to either comment or email me all about how wrong I was in my opinion and experience with my son and his poor little teeth). I am also thrilled to report that after I posted a list of the things I am for and against I didn't lose any followers. Thank you to my readers and followers, I like to believe that we can all have different views, opinions, and feelings on big and little issues and still be friends! You all ROCK!