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I’m going to allow myself a break in the midst of an otherwise fairly chaotic week. This has been an incredibly stressful week, and I feel very close to being at the end of my tether. The exam is this upcoming Tuesday and Wednesday though, and then, for the time being at least, I’ll be able to heave a sigh of relief and my life will resume some semblance of normalcy.

I also had a really troubling encounter the other day with someone who seemed to have a lot of trouble with handling my disability. I won’t really get into details, but the experience really shook me up, and made me question my overall competence. I came home that day hating the world, and sobbed for an hour. Then I went to check the mail, and noticed that the package JustJames sent me had arrived. And he had come up with a labelling system that I could decipher so that I was immediately able to tell which tea was which. using raised stickers, he put different variations of them on different packages and sent me the legend. I must also say here that absolutely everyone who has mailed me anything has asked if they could do anything to help me discern the packages, but the sticker idea only came to me very recently. steepsterites are wonderful, wonderful people. and I held the package in my hands and realized that so much of our experience, so much of how happy we are depends on how we are perceived, and how people respond to us in all our complex and wonderful and awful glory. And they love us anyway. Isn’t that great? that they love us despite ourselves.

Anyway, just James didn’t send me this sample; i actually got this the last time when I was at David’s. I just wanted a break this afternoon, so I tore into this one because I suspected I would like it a lot. And as I sat and listened to Polyphony’s rendition of the Masaya, I was once again reminded of the beauty in this world, and how it continues to exist even when we’re in the midst of our own turmoil. If you’re into that type of music (or even if you aren’t), I urge you to listen to Polyphony’s recording of it. It’s as if angels themselves descended from the sky and the beauty of their voice is enough to make you sink to your knees.

Yeah, the tea. Sorry. So in the bag, it smells quite Christmas-like. Not entirely unlike Sugar and Spice, but perhaps slightly softer, a little less intense with the gingery cloves. This is one of the teas that remains strong even in taste, and I was correct in comparing it to Sugar and spice, although with the cloves and ginger muted, this does not taste like a gingerbread cookie, but it tastes wonderful nonetheless. I even used only one tsp of sugar instead of my standard two, and really enjoyed it. I know I’ll be finishing up the sample, and will very likely purchase more. It always makes me happy when I find a David’s tea that I like, because they’re local and I can keep restocking if I want to. I only wish their tins were larger because I tend to use a lot of leaf when preparing. This time though, I just used a David’s perfect teaspoon in eight oz of water. Steeped for seven minutes!