Don't ya just love it when you tell folks that we should convert to metric here in the States, and they quiver and say, "Oh, but I would never remember the conversions!!" Well, if you have 60km to go, and you drive 60kph, does it matter how many miles it is to your destination???
Americans are so bright.
But anyhow. So I filled up my tea ball with this yummy jasmine green tea, poured boiling water into my large tea mug, and covered it to steep for five minutes, just like the instructions say.
And promptly forgot about it for 20 minutes.
At least it's still drinkable. It's quite good, actually, though I think it would be more tasty if I had managed to remember it after 5 minutes.
In other news, today is my best friend's birthday!! Pop over to her diary and wish her a happy birthday!!! She's 27 -- positively ancient!!!
Oh my goodness, it seems like yesterday I had just met Caroline when we were all of 13. She in her acid-washed jean skirt and loose purple (satin?) blouse (hey, it was the early 90s!!) with black flats, singing in the choir at our church as the one and the only teenager. That changed of course once the choir mistress (the pastor's wife) realized I could sing too, and a low alto / tenor to boot.
At one point Mrs. Johnston forbade Caroline and me to sit next to one another during choir practice. We had a tendency to giggle too much.
It's amazing how good friends she and I still are, though our lives have gone in such vastly different directions, geographically at least. We still wrote letters every so often throughout high school (I moved away to Virginia before I started 10th grade), but I didn't see her again until her high school's chorus sang on the steps to the Lincoln Memorial right after graduation.
Then I went to college, and she married her high school sweetheart (awww how sweet!), which, being a sailor's wife, landed her in Norfolk, only an hour from me. Even though I lived in Portsmouth after graduation, and she was just thirty minutes away, I didn't really see her, much to my dismay now.
But now we talk at least once a week if not more often. We can talk for HOURS on the phone if our children allow, swapping stories of whose kid pooped in the bathtub last (mine), and whose baby has more teeth (hers).
Caroline understands me as no one else does -- she's also a Navy wife. She has young children as well (a gorgeous toddler who's almost 2 1/2, and a beauty who will be a year next month), so she understands what I am going through. She understands the unique position of being a married single mom when our husbands are deployed out to sea. But we also have similar thoughts on raising our kids; we both own slings to carry our bundles of joy and we enjoy cloth diapering.
We don't agree on everything, as I'm much more of a liberal than she is, but when we disagree we are respectful of each other's points of view. Discussing our differences brings us closer together instead of forging a wedge between us, as it makes us think of another viewpoint on the issue.
And now she's back in Virginia after a few years in Houston, and we wistfully wish I were stationed there too. We would finally have childcare for each other kids for when we need a date on the town with our husbands. We kid all the time that we're going to win the lottery, build ourselves a gigantic house, have babies and adopt them, and banish our husbands to the guest house, only allowing them inside to help us make more babies.
Oh, and to go out dancing with our gay friend Fred every Friday night!!!
But we're the greatest of friends, and every day I am thankful for her friendship!!!