When people think of tea, they often think caffeine, and when they think caffeine, they think of being alert, possibly even jittery. So “lullaby” may sound like a weird name for a tea.

 

But this is a white tea, and white teas typically have a lower caffeine content. More importantly, white teas also typically have a higher theanine to caffeine ratio, and theanine is a calming, focusing ingredient. In fact, one of the reasons tea started spreading is that it was seen as a meditation aid. When people talk about this in the West, they often mention the caffeine, but the reality is that the “focus” portion is probably helped as much, if not more, by the theanine in tea. 

 

(There is a semi-famous gum out there that boasts that it gives an “energy and focus” boost, by which they mean that the gum has caffeine and l-theanine. I’ve never understood this because why would you masticate gross, sticky, artificially flavored gum when you could drink delicious, hot tea? There must be a market out there for people who don’t like tea but do like gum, but I am so exactly the opposite of this target market that the ads bounce off me.)

 

This is a beautiful tea. I mean this both for the taste, which starts off with the initial steeps as lovely and golden and delicate, and for the effect. This is the kind of tea that makes racing thoughts stop to take a break and helps tight, tense portions of the mind take a deep breath and relax. By the third steep, this tea becomes flavorful and almost fruity. 

You can get Lullaby at white2tea as both a mini, single serving ball or as a full cake of tea.

One of the lessons I have really tried to internalize in the last five years of my life is that physical therapists are incredibly important.

 

I had a minor bout of random back and hip pain at the beginning of this year, and rather than waiting for it to become unbearable, I went to see a physical therapist right away. (If you are in the Denver West area, I highly recommend Elevation Physical Therapy--I have gotten extremely excellent care from them with zero fatphobia.)

 

That back and hip pain resolved, and along the way, a few other things did, too. One was this: for the last six to twelve months, I've been waking up in the middle of the night with aching pain in my hamstrings, which usually would fix itself with stretches and a little movement, but was not ideal for the goal of actually sleeping through the night. It turns out that as women age, we sometimes have a tendency to lose muscle mass in our glutes faster than in other places, leading to imbalances and stresses on other major muscles in the back/hip complex. This has entirely gone away.

 

I've also had a weird toe pain thing, where if I walk a ways (longer than about three miles), my toes on both feet started tingling, and then getting sore, as I walked for no discernible reason. It usually goes away if I stretch them, and so I haven't taken it too seriously. But my PT helped me figure out that when my balance feels unsteady, I have a tendency to curl my toes. It turns out that after I broke my toe a few years ago, my balance has been slightly worse.

 

We added in a few balance exercises and an exercise to help me have more conscious control over my toe movement, and that is also beginning to go away. (Incidentally, I used to go ice skating before I broke my toe, but haven't been back since in part because my balance has been off. Now I'm hoping I'll be able to get to the point where I can get back on the ice again.)

 

Aging is inevitable. Not having the same body that we had when we were younger is inevitable. Not everything is fixable.

 

But some things can be fixed, and you never know what those things are until you try.

This newsletter is late because I had a class on wood joints at the tool library yesterday, and when I got home, I forgot to send this.

 

Here's what I learned how to make.

Thank you all so much for your overwhelming response to my last newsletter. Special thanks to those of you who mentioned Fourth Wall and LemonSqueezy as merchants of record who would take care of sales tax and VAT on my behalf, requiring no extra executive function. (I'm including the names in case anyone else reading this has had the same issues.)

 

I'm working on setting up a store so that you can buy directly from me. This is happening in my evening hours (when I can't use my brain for writing), so it will take a little bit of time, but I'm hoping to launch direct ebooks in a week or two, and audiobooks a little bit after that.

This has been Courtney's Weekly Tea, a weekly newsletter about tea, books, and everything else. If you don't want to receive this email, or do want to receive additional emails about Courtney's books/book events/etc, please use the links below to unsubscribe from this list or to manage your mailing list preferences.