White2tea always has great names for their tea--by which I mean evocative, modern names that make me look around and ask questions.

 

I bought a bunch of teas in the short window of tariffs not being prohibitively expensive; they took more than two months to arrive, and 98% of that was spent lounging around in the customs office for whatever reason man might know about.

 

This means that by the time the tea arrived, I had no memory of what it was: I just got a box filled with minis and samples. (I buy almost entirely minis and samples, because I love trying new things almost more than I love having the same thing over and over again. Occasionally I'll find something so desperately good I'll grab a full cake for my long term tea storage.)

 

So I sorted through my package and thought the name sounded interesting and I threw it in a tea pot without really reading much about it. This tea is complex, interesting, lovely, and heartbreaking all at the same time. “Window seat” is a good name for it--it feels like a lucky break, getting the best seat in the aisle. It feels like a little luxury, the kind of thing that is attainable in a world where groceries are going up in price on a monthly basis. It's a delightful tea that left a smile on my face.

 

That is what I wrote before I looked up the tea. After I wrote that paragraph, I googled it to get the link below. Apparently, this was one of those teas where I splurged to get a 25g sample. 

 

This one was $42 (for 25g of tea). A full cake is $315.

 

Apparently I got nine separate samples/minis in this order, for a total cost in minis of $65.55 before shipping, so this one tea was about 2x the cost of 8 other samples.

 

Was it worth the money? Here's what I think about tea, and especially samples of expensive tea: this is one of the cheapest true luxuries a human being can have. $42 for 25 g means four sessions of really delightful, thoughtful, interesting tea, with around 70 minutes of enjoyment during each session pondering the tea itself, and knowing that actual billionaires on this planet can't have anything better, and will probably never even approach this. That's $10.50 per session, about fifteen cents per minute. Per ounce of tea poured, it's cheaper than a Starbucks latte.

 

From that standpoint, truly excellent tea is one of the cheapest luxuries on the planet. You don't need yachts. You don't need staff. You don't need a private airplane or a company that you purchased or a private equity stash. You just need $42, hot water, time, and a little skill.

 

If I weren't worried about the economy and tariffs and grocery prices in the next handful of years, I might figure out a place I could cut corners and splurge and get a full tea cake of this.

 

But I give myself a monthly tea budget. It's $50/month, if you're wondering, and yes, I do cheat on that budget--that is my online tea budget, so if I buy something in person, that comes out of a different budget and so it doesn't count, please don't ask me how that works, it's just too much of a pain to track receipts for things I buy in person, so those count as coming from “personal spending money” thanks.

 

One of the things I can do on $50/month is occasionally get a sample of a tea I wouldn't be able to afford to buy as a full cake. But alas--this teacake would be six months of budget and then some. 

 

So the name sounds about right.  This is a lovely little luxury; but it's just not right for me in this economy, and I'm fine taking my four sessions with this sample, thanking this tea for a lovely experience, and moving on to the aisle seat.

Window Seat is available from white2tea for those who love spending 

money on tea, which I do, and for those who love spending all their 

tea money in one place, which I don't.

The title up there is tongue in cheek. Nobody has died. I want to say that straight out lest I cause anxiety.

 

This is a newsletter about sleep, and how I struggle to get enough of it. I will not get into reasons, but here are the general parameters: it takes daily effort for me to get somewhere around 7 or so hours of sleep, which is up from about 4 hours or so. Occasionally I slip and I backslide, but I'm trying my best to hold firm. 

 

I have been working on this sleep project for over a decade. There has been no magic cure where THIS is the thing that finally makes everything come together. Instead, there are a bunch of separate things each of which makes sleep about 3% easier, and taken together cumulatively, they add up. 

 

Please note that I am not asking for advice and do not want it. I have tried almost everything anyone online has suggested that I try, and the only things I haven't tried involve drugs I don't want to do or that are contraindicated for other conditions I have. I have done a sleep study. I have tried hypnotherapy (this is actually one of the things that helps about 3%). I have tried various herbal teas and tinctures and poultices. I have tried so many magnesium formulations. I have tried red light therapy. 

 

The list of things I have tried expands monthly. I have done so, so, so much. I have seen no radical improvements; just small, small gains. It is a daily process to keep from backsliding.

 

My sleep is a little bit like Goldilocks and the three bears--I need things to be just right in order for it to work. Except there are 19 separate bears. And it's not just oatmeal and chairs and beds. There are like 17 different tests.

 

For example: it needs to be cold. Not cool, cold. However: my feet cannot get cold; my feet must be warm. I cannot fall asleep if my feet are cold or if any other part of me is warm.

 

Also for instance: I need a pillow, but if it’s too high, my lower back aches and I’ll wake up and if it’s too low, my thighs ache and I’ll wake up, and I can NOT put a pillow under my knees unless I want debilitating back pain.

 

Also for instance: it needs to be pitch black. There cannot be any lights. If the cat comes in and knocks the curtains back enough that the streetlight behind us shines in on my face, I will not be able to sleep. If there is any light at all, I will not be able to sleep.

 

It turns out things make light. Everything does. The minisplit for our heat pump. The power strip. Lights flash through a far away room and the play wakes me up. EVERYTHING. So naturally, I turned to sleep masks.

 

I tried a half dozen of them and they were all wrong. I need my sleep masks to not have annoying seams or fabric that is too slippy or fabric with too much friction. If the mask covers my nose, my breath makes it too warm under the mask and I can’t sleep. If the mask doesn’t cover my nose, light gets in and I can’t sleep. Plus, they all have straps and I hate straps because they apply too much pressure and the mask squishes my nose.

 

(Side note: this is not hard to do because I have basically no cartilage in my nose and have the squishiest nose out of anyone I have ever met except one of my sisters; we know hers is squishier because we did nose-to-nose squish tests, and I have the fourth squishiest nose among the set of us five squishy-nosed sisters. But I digress.)

 

The only thing I have found that works as a sleep mask is a homemade solution. After months of trying various things, I finally cut up an old pillowcase, folded it over, and sewed it in place. It now is thick enough to block all light. When I lay it across my face, it gently drapes just to the end of my nose so I can breathe properly. The fabric will mold itself to my face so light doesn't get in. And there are no nose-squishing straps! McGyvering a perfect sleep solution out of a $12 pillowcase is one of the greatest feelings. 

 

The old pillowcases I cut up were blue and so I called this Goldilocks-ass-mask “my blue thing.” Originally, I had four of them. Unfortunately, they get lost, often when I travel, because I have the bad habit of hurling them into the sheets of a hotel when I wake up and then not noticing they are there when I leave.

 

I went from having four to having three to having two to having one, and then, finally, lost that one at the Quills conference last week. I have thus been forced to make more blue things. Unfortunately, the pillow cases I used (which can't be too warm or too slippery or too cool or too frictiony) were not available in blue any longer.

 

So now my blue thing is green. But I'm stocked up again, so we're back to our seven-ish hours of hard-fought sleep.

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.