Tea Obsessed.

Here’s something that tends to shock people when they learn it:

I don’t drink coffee. Never have.

I love love love the smell of coffee. I despise despise despise the taste of coffee.

All of THIS? *makes swooping hand motions around my effervescent self* Totally natural.

That’s right: I’m a morning person who can jump up from my bed at o’dark thirty and sing happy songs before my feet actually hit the floor, with no external aids.

My husband, who has been drinking coffee (no cream, no sugar) in copious amounts since his days as a Machinists’ Mate in the Navy, has tried to get me to start drinking it by suggesting that I add tons of cream and sugar to make it taste better.

That makes no sense to me at all. I’m good, thanks.

I’ve dallied with tea over the years, but just, you know, the kind that comes in little paper envelopes from the grocery store. Boring. It never occurred to me to try tea from an actual tea shop because, well, I had never tried tea from an actual tea shop. Vicious circle.

Then, on my most recent visit to New Jersey, Liz and I went to the mall. “I want to stop in at Teavana,” she said. I followed her in, and, well, it was all over after that. We ended up trying the Raspberry Limeade blend and, with the assistance of a hilarious and friendly sales woman, suddenly I was at the register with thirty dollars’ worth of tea that I never would have imagined I’d end up with in a million years. (That is the sign of an amazing salesperson.)

Also, this post is not sponsored. In fact, for as much as I’ve been talking about Teavana both on social media and on the phone in the last two weeks, they really should be paying me.

Anyway.

Back at Liz’s house later that day, we enjoyed a rainy, movie-watching, tea-drinking afternoon (see picture at the top of this post). We were all, “OMG THIS TEA IS DELICIOUS, ISN’T IT?” We were hooked.

I didn’t buy an infuser in New Jersey because I thought I had one at home. In retrospect I have no idea why I would have thought that, because I didn’t. Desperate to drink that tea the day after returning home but not wanting to leave the house just to buy a tea infuser, I complained on Facebook for a while and then sought out alternatives to tea infusers on the good ole’ internet. I was overjoyed when I found directions for making my own infuser out of aluminum foil.

I didn’t actually follow the specific instructions in the post except for the parts about using foil and poking holes in it, but I want to give proper credit to the genius who saved my sanity that day, so check out that post here. It worked like a charm. In fact, I made my own tea infusers out of foil for the next three days, maybe four.

When I finally visited my own Teavana store, the excellent saleswoman talked me into a better infuser than the basic model, and I ended up leaving there with MORE tea (ALL! THE! TEA!) as well as a tea tin and rock sugar. She was GOOD, but I put the brakes on before she talked me into buying a teaspoon. A TEASPOON. I have lots of those. Pfft. I mean, really. I should probably limit my mall trips.

Since then, I have had ridiculously detailed conversations about tea. I would be annoying myself if I didn’t know that I am speaking the total truth about this tea. It changed my life. Wait, too much?

Liz and I actually discussed tea for a full eight minutes on the phone yesterday. EIGHT MINUTES. We talked about buying the tea. We talked about how I blame her for my addiction but she blames Heather and Holly (her two oldest kids) for introducing her to Teavana, and so by default I will blame them too. We talked about how nice that rainy, movie-watching, tea-drinking afternoon at her house was. We talked about the benefits of just adding the rock sugar to the infuser with the tea and letting it melt in that way. I told her that we sound like total addicts and we laughed, but in all seriousness there are worse things a person can be addicted to than awesome tea and happy memories, don’t you think?