Advent tea 11: Revitalise

Wait… 11? What happened to 10?

Dear girls and boys, let me tell you about a little something called ‘insomnia’. It comes from ‘somnia’ meaning sleep with the prefix in- meaning I’m not getting any. I go to bed around 10ish these days, read a bit and fall asleep between 10:30 and 11pm. Then wake up between 3 and 4am and that is the end of my night. So four to five hours, in all. That is fine for one night and I can do two but after night number three I tend to get a little bit tired.

It’s been over a week, maybe longer.

During the daytime I work, worry, bike back and forth with the kids, worry, blog and do some other things but there’s a pandemic on so nothing exciting so I worry instead, and then I go to bed because all this makes me very tired. Then I sleep half a night. On December 10 I didn’t have time to make my tea and blog about it because I was so tired, so I thought I’d take it with me to my office today – yes I still go to an office! woohoo! – and drink it there, to blog about later. Catch up a little.

I lost the teabag.

Can’t find it. It’s probably in there in the depths – the drags – of my bag but I honestly don’t know where and my sleep-deprived brain doesn’t really want to spend all that time and energy on it to be honest. Which is why I skipped a day, won’t catch up because sod it, and you’re getting today’s tea instead. Maybe I will catch up later if or when I ever recover the teabag. Now let’s all pretend this didn’t happen and move on.

Revitalise

I shi… kid you not, that’s the name of today’s tea. I could do with some revitalisation so bring it on! What do we use to bring me back from the dead?

Apparently we use ceylon cinnamon bark (it’s always bark isn’t it?), orange peel, elderflower, cardamom pod, licorice root (there it is again!), ginger root (ah ginger our old friend), green tea, more cinnamon bark (but not fancy-schmancy like ceylon?), spearmint leaf, clove bud and black peppercorn.

That’s a whole lot of ingredients for this potion! Some of them I can detect in the scent and flavour, others not so much. I was surprised to find the spearmint and even a trace of black peppercorn. I do not taste much of the orange peel which is surprising considering it is the second ingredient on the list.

I like it. It warms me up, as today’s blurb promises to do. The scent is nice, the colour is nothing spectacular but okay, and the taste is nice too. I call it a win.

Now don’t wake me up until tomorrow morning, no earlier than eight. ‘Kay?

PS. “Hell I can get ya a toe by three o’clock this afternoon, with nail polish.”
The dude abides.