Tea Tirades

I did try taking the laptop downstairs when I went to lunch on Friday, and while there was still some goofing around before I got around to writing, I'd written 1,000 words and washed dishes before the time I usually would have started writing, so I'd call that a win. I'll have to try that again today.

I managed about 6,000 words on Friday. I had grand plans to do some writing on Saturday, but I was hit by what I assumed at the time was allergies, but then I started running fever, too. Now the fever and most of the allergy-like symptoms are gone, but I feel really tired and weak. I skipped yoga this morning because I suspected sleep was more important. We'll see if I feel up to going to the Requiem rehearsal tonight. It would be annoying to have made it to all the rehearsals up to this point and not be able to sing in the concert because I got sick right before the final rehearsals.

I want to get writing done today because I'm at a good part in the story. I got to write a scene I've been visualizing for years. Oddly enough, it came out very different from the way I'd visualized it. That may have had something to do with putting it in context, which changed the setting and circumstances slightly, and that then altered the scene itself.

In other weekend news, the preschoolers had to sing in church, and this time they actually sang so that they were audible. It was an achievement. They were very, very cute. Bonus: All the clothing stayed on. No one ran off or cried or tried to jump off the chancel steps. So, all in all, a win.

Weekend movie viewing: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. These movies are basically extended sitcoms for the PBS crowd, but they work when you need a good feel-good film and are craving a chance to watch Maggie Smith and Judi Dench act together. There's a scene near the beginning of the film in which Maggie Smith's character and the young hotel owner are meeting with executives of an American hotel chain, trying to get funding to expand the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel into a chain. Maggie Smith's character asks for a cup of tea, and then she launches into a tirade about how tea requires boiling water to release the flavor from the dried leaves, and yet all she's ever served in America is a cup of tepid water with a teabag on the saucer, and she has to dip the teabag into the tepid water and see if it changes color or flavor at all. I was shouting "Amen!" at that scene because that's exactly what you get. Even if you bring your own tea, trying to get actually hot water for brewing it is a challenge, and you're lucky if you don't get water that has at some point come in contact with a container that's previously held coffee, so that you get coffee-flavored water for brewing your tea. I need to get a recording of this scene on my phone so I can play it at restaurants when I'm served "tea," since it sounds so much better when Maggie Smith says it (even if it's in the voice of a character who's a former maid rather than in the voice of the Dowager Countess).