Guilty (or not so much) Pleasures

Okay, so today should have left me standing in the middle of the mall, shaking my fists and shouting, "Teavana!!!!"

I sampled one of their teas on a visit to the mall play area. We were at the mall play area because Louisey has another ear infection and Scout's school was starting late due to teacher in-service, which I totally forgot about. So, I scheduled a doctor's appointment and took my four year old to school two hours early. Once we were out into the world, there was no way I was heading back home with a groggy, perpetually fussy nine month old and a pouting preschooler with a packed lunch box. We were near to the mall. I hate the mall, but I also kind of love it for saving the day when it's freezing and snowing, because they have a huge skylight over the little playground.

The playground also has comfortable benches, and the candy store has that chocolate sponge candy that is so crunchy and tastes like honey and gets stuck in your teeth. (Which is totally of no interest to me since I obviously don't eat sugar anymore. READ: Yeah right.)

Let me mention now that I'm an annoying tea person. I have a cupboard stocked with a mess of toppling over loose leaf tea bags, flowering tea cannisters, wholesale boxes of crappy Bigalow from Costco. I make 30 minute trips across town on Saturday mornings to wait in line for 45 suffocating minutes to buy Blood Orange Rooibos from Prestogeorge in the strip. I have a neverending cup of tea in my hand all day long. There is always an iron kettle on the stove, and a steady stream of boiling water weakening each infusion into oblivion.

Teavana opened up a new store at South Hills Village Mall. I walked by and noticed they had provided samples. I was prepared to taste the tea and move on with my life... but it just so happens that they had provided samples of the most delicious tea in the universe. You can't blame me for spending $30 on three ounces of tea. And I did. Spend thirty dollars today. On... tea.

(Here's where Kurt shakes his fist and yells, "Amandaaa!!!")

I was totally tricked into it, and for just a minute I felt like... "Oh no. What did I just do?" The salesman did a slight of hand trick and was babbling about tea thermometers and glass infusers and air and light tight cannisters and I was just like, "What? No. Wait a minute, just give me the tea!"

Then we made it home, after the mall and the doctor and Scouty missing school and eating her lunch begrudgingly in the car while Louise finally napped and I smelled my tiny bag of tea over and over again, sitting behind the steering wheel in the parking lot of the grocery store. And Scouty was so excited to make our new tea because, while convincing myself that it was a totally reasonable and wonderful purchase, my enthusiasm became infectious and suddenly my four year old was just dying for a warm cup of youthberry and orange spice infusion.

I'll have you know that it was totally worth it. Most delicious tea ever.

I'm also at the library, right now, which is my other guilty pleasure. Kurt is at home with a sleepy-eyed, fussy baby with an ear infection and a little girl who consumed the negligible, (but for her, palpable) amount of caffeine in a white/herbal mix and is no doubt saying, "Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy!" at this magical, brain splitting decible, right this very minute.

Also, I have a computer at home that I could be using. I have many, many unread books that I'm looking forward to and could have picked up. I'm even supposed to be at the gym, sweating it out on the stairmaster to Breakin' Up... but instead, I'm sitting here in total silence, a stack of gardening books with pictures of quiet, ripe tomatos on their covers sitting at my elbow, and I'm surrounded by old people falling asleep in comfortable chairs while reading the newspaper.

Hm. Since when is that my idea of heaven? I'm serious. If somebody asked me to close my eyes and picture heaven, from now on, I would totally envision the nodding off old man in houndstooth that I can spy on over the top of my computer monitor.

Anyway, what are your guilty pleasures?
Do you have a personal equivalent to 30$ tea and the pillowy stillness of bored old people? Let me in on the dirt.