Tea for the morning

noaa.gov - my favorite weather website - showed information last night that made me decide that today is a day to not leave the house. At all. It is a day for reading and for drinking tea and maybe even jamming out to Bitches Brew while I finally begin the process of making room for Lent. More on that not right now.

The thing is, the tea kettle drips like a moody bitch.

Wait, I have to explain: I live with my parents. I did not used to live with my parents; I used to live with cats and stuffed animals in small apartments in various places in downtown Lincoln. I have also been known to live with roommates and the occasional husband, but that doesn't seem to be a good idea, so ... yes.

umm.

I live with my parents in a very large house that has a very large attic. That attic holds all of the boxes of things that we've got stored away because there is not room or need for them right now. Most of my kitchen stuff is up there. None of my books are. There's also a really lot of china and goblets in boxes labeled with my name, which tells me that I'm gonna need that china cabinet when I go. And maybe a few more. eeesh.

It was sort of assumed that most of my stuff would not get unpacked, except that boiling water is kind of a thing that we do around here. We use it for all sorts of stuff: hot chocolate, pasta, hot buttered rum and, most importantly, tea. A saucepot works for boiling water for pasta or rice or eggs. For pouring into fairly narrowly open mugs or tea-pots, it is fail. Just fail.

But we couldn't find their tea kettle. The stress of moving is enough without access so comfort tool, so when I found mine I proudly contributed it to the cause of family happiness. Except, see, I forgot about the thing where the damn spout drips water everywhere. But only when the kettle has been filled past a certain point. If you only fill it 2/3, there is no drip. If 5/6, no drip - but you just try to fill the damn thing 7/8 of the way and then it's the inverse of Mount fucking Vesuvius.

And here's the part where it's important that the people that I live with are my parents, and not my peers: I have forgotten how to be self-sufficient. On my own, I had Ways Around Things that involved study and consideration and specifically placed empty mugs that would catch the splooping water and would then be warmed (yay!) while preventing stove-grody.

Not today. Today I watched the water sploop onto the hot stovetop and heard the crackle and crunch and did nothing but let my eyes float over to the shelf where my mother keeps my special Daughter Cups and wondered if I would take the honey upstairs with me or just season the whole pot of tea in the kitchen.