When I was very young and very dumb, I got married.  Because the person I married was in the military, I moved to Virginia, where he was stationed.  He’d been living there for a couple of years at that point, so I assumed it best that he choose an apartment for us to live in (he was in the Navy and living in a bunk on a boat at the time, which, if you can believe it, would have been an even poorer choice for me than getting married in the first place.).  Like I said, I was very young and very dumb at the time, so at no point did it occur to me that the person I’d married was an unbelievable idiot who would lease an apartment in the worst neighborhood in town.

Our motorcycle was stolen from the parking lot.  The shopping center on the other side of the parking lot was robbed countless times.  The neighborhood kids learned how to pick the building locks with sticks.

When we left that apartment for California a year and a half later, I asked him why he’d gotten that apartment when it was clearly unsuitable for anyone who wished to remain un-murdered and/or un-burgled.

“I dunno,” he said, “Some friends of mine lived there for a few months and they thought it was okay.”

“Were they 18-year-olds who drank and partied the entire time?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.”

Since he’d proven himself incapable already, I took over the apartment-finding responsibilities for the move to San Diego.  What I found was a tiny bungalow-style apartment in a shady, leafy complex next to a nature preserve.  The neighborhood was a narrow strip situated between the hippie beach where people lived in converted school buses and a gated community where Heather Locklear and Michael Jackson owned property (I heard).  It was nice.  Well.  Mostly.

I haven’t seen much of this elsewhere, so I have to assume it’s a Midwestern thing.  You know what sun tea is?  You have this big jar with a plastic top and you fill it with cold water and tea bags.  Then you put the jar out on the porch (in the sun) for six hours or something.  The sun steeps the tea, which you then stick in the refrigerator for iced tea later on.

Now, according to every box of tea ever, you can just make iced tea one or two teabags at a time in the microwave.  Only I don’t understand this part, the same way I don’t understand how restaurants serve “iced tea” with about four ice cubes in it.  If you make the tea in the microwave, it’s hot.  Or at least warm.  And even though you’re supposed to let it sit for a few minutes and then pour it over ice, you’re still melting a good portion of that ice and negating the whole concept of the beverage.  It’s iced tea.  ICED.  Get it together, world.

Anyway.  Sun tea stays outside almost all day until it gets dark, at which point it cools itself and you can keep it in the refrigerator.  If you’re very fancy, you have a sun tea jar with a spout at the bottom.  The sun tea jar I had in California was not a fancy one.  It was just a jar with an opening at the top and lemons painted on the glass.  It was sitting on the porch one day, doing its job, making tea, being quiet, when some asshole kid stole it.

Yeah.

Bitch stole my sun tea jar.

I can’t imagine why anyone would want to steal a non-alcohol beverage from someone else in the first place, let alone a group of hooligan kids who can’t possibly be that interested in half-brewed tea.  The great sun tea steal and the now ex-husband draining my checking account were the only two thefts associated with the California apartment, though, so I’d say that choice of living quarters was still better than the place in Virginia.

I didn’t get another sun tea jar, by the way.  I wasn’t afraid of someone else stealing it; since California, I have only ever lived on the second floor.  I guess it’s been an issue of not wanting to wash another dish thing combined with living alone combined with re-discovering alcohol so now I drink that sometimes instead of tea.

BUT THIS….

This is pomegranate white tea.  The container is from Oberweis, and the same kind used for bottling milk (which they apparently still leave on your doorstep if you’re into that sort of thing).  I got it at the grocery store about a month ago when I was dealing with an ear infection.  Because I was sick and drugged at the time, I didn’t notice that it was sweetened lemon tea, which, sorry, people in the South, but that’s like drinking pennies and I don’t know how you do it.  I had one glass and left it to Graham to drink the rest, then I saved the container because it’s clearly great.

And that’s how I wrote a whole blog about tea.  If this bothers you, please be comforted by the fact that I made a liquor cabinet replenishment trip to the liquor store today and spent $75 on booze.