One Lump Or Two?

Until I met Michele I never drank much tea. I liked the little cups they give you at the fancier Chinese food restaraunts, but that was about it. I wasn't really aware that tea came in all kinds of ridiculous flavors, and now I've been drinking it more and more. Which is a good thing, because I like coffee, but I can't drink it very often or I end up spending all night rushing in and out of the bathroom. I swear, it's like the Friday the 13th movies; the first one is genuinely scary, followed by a seemingly endless line of progressively sloppy sequels.

Tuesday night I put the water on to make a cup. I asked if anybody else wanted anything, but no one did, so I got out a mug, put the teabag in, and poured the hot water into it. I can tell right now that you're absolutely enthralled by my exposition of the tea-making process. The final touch was three giant spoonfulls of sugar. after I'd dumped the sugar in, I put the spoon in my mouth to taste the sugary goodness. But it didn't taste like sugary goodness. It tasted like what I'd imagine used kitty litter would taste like.

I'd like to take a moment now, if I could, to point out that, although we may all have our differences, there is one constant that exsists throughout all the peoples of the world. And that constant is, whenever someone puts something God-awful in their mouth, they immediately track down someone else and make them try it. "Oh, this is gross! Here, have some."

I grabbed the sugar bowl and brought it over to my mom for her to try it. I got pretty much the result I expected. Michele refused to try it at first, but I got her to break down and taste it. It was salty, but it still tasted a bit like sugar.

For some time now there's been at least one mouse running around the house vertually undetected, pooping all over the place and leaving nibble marks on doorframes and any article of clothing unfortunate enough to be left on the ground. In the back of my mind, I was thinking that I had just consumed sugar laced with mouse pee.

Fortunately, it was nothing that dramatic. No, when my dad came home, my mom asked him if he had filled the sugar bowl. He said that he had, and she then asked him where he got the sugar to fill it.

"From the tupperware container with the blue top in the cabinet."

That container was salt. He poured salt in with the sugar, which I then poured into my tea. It tasted like the ocean.

And the best part? He used it in his drink that morning right after he'd filled the bowl and didn't even notice! I guess that's not really the best part, but I was sort of building up to this big climax and that's all that happened. The best part was probably my initial gagging and going around trying to get everybody to taste the potentially mouse-tainted sugar.

I've got a new update up in the Drawings section. You'll check it out if you know what's good for you.