Garden of Thought

Well, rather than use up our retirement bucks, I've gone ahead and signed on with a temp agency - though I don't really know if there is much I can do that someone will pay me for. It's my fault for "just" doing charity, child-raising and volunteer work for the past quarter-century. :-P

I'll probably end up with low level clerical, but hey, every dollar I can get is one more than I had before.

Haven't written a resume for decades, it was a challenge to make it look all official with lots of 'skills' and 'experience' instead of employment. Lots of "What year did that happen?" pencil-gnawing. Literally beat my head on my computer desk, much wailing and gnashing of teeth, several cups of hot tea and stress-eating half a pack of digestive biscuits.

Now it flies out into the world to represent me. What a dumb system.

I have an odd phenomena that seems to occur in my kitchen in which my actions are apparently completely invisible to my family when I make tea. Recent cases in point:

Hubby stands and talks to me as I am making tea, we are within 2-3 feet of each other. There is a dishtowel and a holiday potholder hanging from the handle of the oven, and I notice the towel is getting pretty cruddy. I reach right in front of him, take it and put it in the dirty linens basket on the counter then fish for a new towel in the drawer. In the space of time it takes me to do this, he steps up right next to me and rinses a cup then turns and *wipes his hands on the potholder*...
Hubby (confused): "Is this thing meant for wiping hands?"
Me: (new towel in hand) "No, it's a potholder. You just watched me take away the old towel and get out a fresh one."
Hubby: "I did? How did I miss that?"

I am talking with my grown daughter in the kitchen as I heat water for tea. I notice the dishwasher is full of clean dishes, so I work on putting them away as we talk.  This involves walking past her in some cases, and even asking her to move so I can access a drawer.  Five minutes later as I am sitting down with my cuppa she walks over to the dishwasher and opens it.
Her (surprised): "Oh! Someone already emptied the dishwasher!"
Me: "I did. Just now. You watched me, in fact."
Her: "I did? How come I have no recollection of this?"

Hmm...Now if I could only make this work outside the kitchen, think of all the things I could do!

Working on tea stuff, I wanted some lavender in there somewhere and also wanted a pound cake to slice and serve, so I tried this Lavender Lemon Poundcake as the best of both worlds.  It was good enough I wanted to pass it along!

Added a little extra lavender, as I had some from my yard as well as what I got at the health food store, they had it there in bulk for people who make their own teas, ,then reduced the cholesterol a bit by using half margarine, half butter and only putting in half of the egg yolks...doubled the vanilla and dumped in a dribble of lavender syrup we had left from our lavender latte binge.  It's AMAZING - we snarfed the baby size loaf I'd made for us to sample it, the rest are cooling to go into the freezer for next week's tea.  We'll top it with glaze, lemon zest and sparkly purple sugar there. ^_^

Yay!

Well, I got the ball rolling for our fundraising Tea in September with a nice menu at an $18 price, online ticket sales are set up and I put out a call for volunteers. What did I get? Lots of people who wanted to help? Nope - I got feedback that they wanted a reduced rate for families with children so it wouldn't be too expensive to bring their young daughters.
0_o

I just looked at them and kind of went dot....dot....dot.... "Um, you do realize this is a *fundraiser*? And this is a formal tea? For grown-ups?"

"Well, yes, I suppose, but, well, it just gets too expensive, you see, so we need a group discount or something."

I could see this was a battle I wasn't going to win - these ladies WOULD find *some* way to wheedle a lower price and they WOULD show up with all their little kids, I just knew it - there they'd be by some unhappy granny, around hot tea and breakable china and "weird" foods kids won't eat.

SO - ! I added a kid's tea, I'm calling it a "Family Tea" on the preceding Saturday with a much simplified menu, prefab desserts, herbal tea and lemonade for $10 each. I landed an energetic mom who runs a girl scout troop to do the promo for it and am now picking up melamine unbreakable tea cups from the thrift store. Whew. :-p

Still doing the nice one too, they'll be one week apart - got my work cut out for me! At least the people who come to the "real" tea won't be dealing with a toddler having a meltdown over the 'yucky' lemon curd or something.

We got two new flavors of rooibos from Tea for All Reasons in the mail today. She's my new fave tea lady on Etsy... the Mama's Spicy Carrot Cake is our 'dessert' tonight and it's fabulous with a splash of cream, mmmm!  Going to try out the "Pot o' Gold" next (cacao bits, calendula leaves, tiny peppermint shamrocks, vanilla - ooh yeah)

And this is me at this point, with a bright colored afghan one of my dear online friends, Daughter of Kings, made gracing the couch behind:


Rockin' the (very) short hair!

Ohmigosh, we just discovered Adagio teas - they let people make their own custom blends for other people to purchase and....Cara McGee is a genius.

SHERLOCK is amazing, he's all....ooooh, smoky and intriguing and fascinating and dark and addictive.  Much better fresh and hot than after he's been sitting in the pot for a while, though.  We've ordered Moriarity (Moriaritea?) next, oh yeah...ginger is good. I want to try Watson too.

And the TARDIS blend is jolly good too, with little blue flower flecks and speckles of wood in it so it looks like it really has some TARDIS bits in it.  Tastes kind of like a nice blueberry muffin, if it were a tea.  Kind of fruity, not unlike its inhabitant can be.

Now I want to get them all.