We had a lot of cold and snow earlier this week (the arctic blast that is currently hitting the east passed through Denver first), and so I made up for it by drinking tea and watching snow fall and staying warm and cozy inside.

 

This is a mini-tea cake that I got as part of the white2tea tea club last year. I'm still working through a pretty massive tea backlog, and realized I hadn't broken this one open. Watching the snow fall unbroken outside was probably the perfect experience for this.

 

This is a lovely raw puerh. It's only a year old, and so it's still rough around the edges; the latter steeps become chewy with a smoky aftertaste, but having had even a little bit of time to age meant that I got some excellent steeps with the more delicate taste in the beginning.

 

I know that 90% of the country is ice right now, and the parts that aren't are fire, so wherever you are, I hope you're safe.

This came with white2tea's tea club: it's a standard one that comes around once a year (I guess?) and isn't available for purchase anywhere else.

This January 20th, I thought about the ways I could spend my time, and made the decision that I was not going to make myself feel awful by watching the inauguration with speeches by a lot of people promising to do terrible things that will hurt a lot of people.

 

I spent a lot of time four years ago in a state of constant worry about the world, and while I think it’s important to stay informed, I don’t think it was helpful to bathe my brain in a constant bath of stress chemicals. The stress chemicals need to be meted out. So this time around, I’m planning to do things differently.

 

If I’m worried about something, I want to find something to do: donate, volunteer, or boost the profiles of people and/or organizations who are doing something. And then I want to continue on doing things.

 

So today, I did some work in the morning, and after I’d done that, I gave myself a little time to noodle around with garden plans. (I have gone through approximately thirty iterations of my planned garden.) In honor of the inauguration, I set up a monthly donation to my local food bank.

 

Then I worked on cleaning up some of the not-great areas in the house, because we have a room in this house that can charitably be described as a dumping ground, and it’s hitting the point where it is dire.

 

When discourse online started making me anxious, I rummaged through the Room of Doom and eventually found the tools I needed to fix the interior doors in our house so that they would close and latch and then open again.

 

Those of you who have been here for a while may remember the Saga of The Doors, which has been ongoing since we moved in here. Most people do not really question what doors normally do, but alas, we have been missing out on the latch/open part for a long time, and when I tried to remedy that last year, I failed on the “open again” part. 

 

I am now covered in sawdust and in possession of a house that contains the expected number of interior doors, all of which do the entire range of door functions.

 

I feel powerful. I feel competent. I feel like I can do things and I should buy a miter saw to more effectively do them, and possibly when I think that, I should remember that it took me thirteen years to get the doors done.

 

And that's my goal for the next four years: to do my work, to do some good, and to fix things that are broken when I'm able.

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