Snoqualmie

Enamelajamela.

I'm fascinated by what my tea is doing to my teacup this week. In the shuffle of packing and unpacking my favorite matte black cups all got buried, so I'm using a shiny white coffee mug. Rather, it was a shiny white coffee mug. Now it's shiny and white on the outside and a dull tannic brown on the inside. Green tea, I'm realizing, isn't green. It's really quite brown. That cup is more stained after three days of holding tea than it was after years of holding coffee.

I should point out here that I'm obeying the sign in the kitchen and washing my cup. I use soap and a sponge and everything, and still the brown keeps getting worse. In addition to the general watercolor effect there are several alarming rings where the tea appears to be actually eating into the cup. This shouldn't surprise me, since I once left tea in one of Jacob's mugs and found it three days later using a tiny pickaxe to make pits in the glaze.

Strangely, my reaction when I notice this wanton destruction of crockery is to pick up the offending liquid and tip it into my mouth. Not the three-day-old tea in Jacob's cup, I mean the fresh, hot, delicious tea sitting in front of me right now. It's a little like clutching a serpent to my bosom, or perhaps more like tossing a serpent into the crib of my hypothetical infant child. My sweet, innocent, defenseless molars are being drowned again and again in deadly poison, calling out to me for protection and receiving none. I wonder if they raise their slightly tattered caps to the heavens and ask why, why is there no mercy? Maybe their cries are heard by my taste buds, which answer to them in ringing tones that fate is cruel and one's joy comes at the price of another's destruction. It's a bittersweet joy, but mostly bitter since I don't put any sugar in.

Speaking of the adjective "innocent", I'm still giggling over an Onion headline I saw this morning: Enchanted By Own Innocence, Michael Jackson Molests Self. That's brilliance.