Guess what time it is! It’s time to laugh at my stupid mistakes! I need a clever name for this because it’s probably the most recurrent theme on this weird mishmash of a blog. I’m open to suggestions, especially if they reference a particular day of the week so I can save such stories for that day. “Schadenfreude Saturday” is okay, but the initial sounds aren’t quite close enough, and I almost never do Saturday posts anyway. Maybe something more like “Fuck Up Friday” or “Whoopsie Wednesday.” No, definitely not Whoopsie Wednesday. Forget I ever said that. But you get the idea. Hit me with your best suggestions in the comments. Something that conveys the feeling of Nelson from The Simpsons saying “Ha-ha!” but maybe a little more eloquent
I like to have a couple draft posts hanging out in WordPress so I can work on something when writer’s block is particularly bad, or if I have an idea that I think might work but I’m not ready to flesh out just yet. One of those drafts is a review of the samples of tea I have acquired over several years, but it’s going to take a long time to get that post finished because, while I do love tea, I can only drink so much at one time and I have acquired a lot of tea over the years.
Most of my tea is from Republic of Tea because I have both purchased a lot of tea from them and, as a regular customer, received a lot of promotional samples from their catalogs and included as bonus items on orders. One day last week, one of my best friends texted me a picture of a tin of their tea that she saw while shopping, Red Hot Holiday, and asked if that one was any good. I told her I didn’t know but it just so happened that I did have a sample of that flavor, and I offered to brew it and give her a review.
Aside from the fact that I just really like their tea, one of my most favorite things about Republic of Tea is their packaging. Their tea bags are gauzy, unbleached paper and don’t have strings, tags, or staples, so they are fully biodegradable (for bonus green points, they often use the cut-out scraps as packing material for shipments; I love it). Even without staples and strings, the bags almost never break during brewing, but I have been known to accidentally rip a bag or two when opening the foil pouch packaging for samples.
Of course, this is what happened to me when I opened the sample of Red Hot Holiday, and I knew that loose bits of leaves and spices floating around would definitely bias my rating of the tea. I love whales, but I do not enjoy pretending that loose tea is krill to be filtered through my baleen.
It was a pretty fine tea, however, so most of my various tea-brewing paraphernalia wouldn’t be much help in filtering this. I could, with enough patience, hold the bag in place while it steeped, but the steam might burn my fingers and I didn’t think I could summon that much patience, just holding a tea bag in hot water for five minutes. I looked around the kitchen and found the solution:
For my birthday last year, Kalen got me a couple of cloth, reusable tea bags for brewing loose leaf teas. I hadn’t actually had a chance to use them, but the weave on the material looked tight enough that it would catch any loose tea bits that escaped the torn paper bag. It worked splendidly. After the tea was finished brewing, I removed the bag and set it aside to cool so I could empty and wash it later.
The tea was…. fine, if you were curious. Red Hot Holiday is a spiced hibiscus tea and it definitely smelled like red hot candy (or cinnamon Jolly Ranchers, or those cinnamon mints that look like Star Brite mints except they’re cinnamon instead of peppermint). It tasted pretty much like any other hibiscus tea, which isn’t my personal favorite, but is okay. I prefer hibiscus in flower form, but I’m not entirely averse to it in tea form. If you like hibiscus tea, you’d probably like this one. I couldn’t taste much of the cinnamon, but it might be more noticeable with a little sugar or honey, but I left mine unsweetened.
I removed the paper tea bag (and the tea inside it, duh) from the cloth tea bag (now a beautiful pink color, but tea bags are bound to become stained, regardless of one’s tea preferences), and threw the reusable bag into the washing machine to be washed with the next round of dish towels and such in the next few days. I then entirely forgot about it.
If you read Quid Facis regularly, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I don’t love doing laundry. It’s a task that is never truly finished and there’s only so far it can be multitasked. I often end up putting laundry off until the hamper is overflowing and/or I am out of underwear/leggings/whatever article of clothing I decide is most important for the month. Not that I wear a single article of clothing for a month, but whatever type of clothing feels most important in a given month, like when I’m out of shorts in the summer, but shorts don’t matter in the winter. You get it. I’m not that gross. Moving on.
I had to do some laundry. It was time. I had the necessary clothes, but the sheets needed washed. The fluctuating temperatures meant that I had a couple nights this week where I woke up drenched in sweat so I stripped the bed and washed the sheets. Also, perhaps counterintuitively, washing bedding is right there with washing towels for me. It’s one of the least tedious loads of laundry. I think because it’s fewer pieces to put away at the end. I’d rather fold a fitted sheet (or better yet, just actually make the bed) than hang up a dozen shirts any day.
I was making the bed when I realized my mistake. Apparently the sheets were the first load of laundry I had done since making the hibiscus tea, and the tea bag was still in the washing machine waiting its turn.
It’s not like my sheets are ruined; it was only one small bag of hibiscus tea, but the flat sheet and a pillow case definitely have a few weird purple spots on them that look like I washed and dried an ink pen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are splotches I didn’t see. (Although, it’s been a couple days now, and Kalen hasn’t noticed anything, so maybe it’s not that bad). I guess its time to shop for some new sheets. Oops.
There’s a Fuck Up Friday for you (or whatever we’re going to call this). I hope you have a nice weekend, and if you happen to mess up like I so often do, at least laugh at it and maybe let me know so we can feel ridiculous together.
