Our Life

I know it’s true… you feel bad, you have a cup of tea and you feel better, you are sad and a cup of tea helps you to feel less sad if not happy, you are confused and you sit with a cup of tea and it help you to see through your problems….. but WHY??????????????????? *coughs like an academic about to begin a lecture*

I would have to take the stance that a cup of tea acts on an individual in both a psychological and biological manner. Initially, we are offered a cup of tea in times of great stress, and generally in a comforting family environment. The composition of the tea, has a soothing effect, no doubt due to its hot nature and the actual tea leaves and milk themselves. However, as we grow older this part of the effect becomes less relevant. As I and I’m sure many others now begin to experience the sooting effect of tea before we’ve even taken a sip, in fact just as soon as we sit down with it.

I would believe that this is all part of a conditioning process in that drinking tea results in a relaxing process, so we then come to associate this relaxed state and from then on just the presence of tea creates a conditioned soothed response.

Well that’s my psycho-babble-crap explanation for it anyway… Who knows! I’ll just keep lovin it! I’m a nurse. If my patients or their families are stressed, I’ll offer tea. Even the tought of a cuppa makes people feel cared for. Because….it is the simplest act of cooking and cooking is an act of comfort , an act of giving of oneself to provide for the basic human need…
boiling water to brew herbs from mother earth is something that has been passed down from (dare I say the caveman)…its bred within us
the monotonous actions of boiling, pouring, stirring……the smelling….
the steam rising up with the aroma and as it hits your nose, the taste simultaneously hitting theback of your throat your body sighs and releases all of its pent up stress and toxins because it’s warm and cosy, and because someone else usually makes it for you if you’re upset, and that makes you feel better, because they care! Tea is like comfort food–while you drink your body is warmed by it, you lose yourself in the flavour and yu just relax…. We may not sit for hours and use really pretty cups and stuff but when it boils down to it (no pun intended) its still a tea ceremony, we all have our own and that is possibly what makes everything better.
When you make a cup of tea I bet that 9 times out of 10 you make it the same way (milk, sugar, bag order, personally I just have bag and water but hey), have a favourite mug from which to drink and even a favourite place to sit and drink it. Even taking the first tester sip and realising its still far too hot for human consumption. So true :-) Ah Yes!…….. as I sit with my tea in my hand and cuddle in my soft arm chair I could imagine what if……….., the magic of this cup of tea can bring me to Shangri-La. Here is where all the imperfections can disappear. This would be the cup of Tea that would solve everything?! necrothreader! Well i just had a cup of tea..and id have to say i love it because there is something earthy and rootsy about it. It makes you feel so cosy..like reading a book by the fire in socks with an old mangey cat by your side and a patchwork quilt over your shoulders..there is something wistfull and romantic about it all. And its true what they say, that adding sugar takes some of the excitement out of tea-drinking. Because it is the magic powers of tea, from the tea god, that visits tea plantations at night !

But why? That’s like asking why is the sky blue? Just BECAUSE…….

Tea is like a gay man. Warm and comforting on the bad days and clean and refreshing for the good times. Tea solves everything without leaving dirty socks on the couch. Tea cares about its appearance and will hug you no matter whether friends are watching or not. Tea will be there for you in the middle of a dark, desperate night. When good things happen to you, it’s rejoicing there with you. Tea can cry, laugh, and tell really good jokes. Tea is sensitive without being embarrassing. You don’t exactly want to have sex with it, but you may have to call it up afterwards to let it know how things went. Tea doesn’t ask for much but delivers much in return. It doesn’t talk down to you, dump you for someone else, though it may dump on you occasionally (but you forgive that because of everything it’s done for you in the past).

Tea is a really really good friend. That’s why it solves everything. So true. You expressed it delightfully. Tea! Tea! our precious tea. the happiness in a cup just for you and me. We can dream right?! It is okay to dream of the prefect place to be ………………with your tea. 1.Put the kettle on to boil. 2.Warm your favourite teapot. 3.Add one teaspoon of tea for each person.
4. Pour in boiling water and allow to brew for ten minutes, while you do one or more of the following: Lie on the sofa like a great big slug. Hug somebody. Dance like you danced when you were five years old CLINT. Rest. Take off your shoes and wiggle your toes. Sing like Pavarotti. Shake like Elvis. Help yourself to a huge slice of chocolate cake. Call a friend CLINT. Listen. Remember the last time you laughed out loud. Tickle somebody. Sit where you can feel the sun on your face. Smile. Look out a window and drink in the world. Run a hot bath. Wrap yourself in a duvet. Think about someone you love. Light a candle. Be still. Be present. Just be IN SHANGRI- LA

5.Stir and pour. 6.Enjoy.

It just does.
The dozens of groups on Facebook saying something similar -including the interestingly named A Cup of tea Solves Everything!! with the added !!- indicates that many folk just believe unquestioningly in the problem solving abilities of TEA.

Believe. As others have stated, it just DOES. Especially for those of us here in the UK.

I think it’s probably to do with the fact that tea is such a normal part of everyday life (well, in my country, at any rate) that helps. Especially when things go wrong – anything from a minor problem to an out and out catastrophe. Anything from misplacing your bus pass to a terrorist atrocity, really…

When such things happen, tea is comforting. If it doesn’t actually solve something, it at least makes it that bit better, that bit more bearable. I guess it may have something to do with the “business as usual” factor. Something abnormal and not very nice has happened so a cuppa gives that sense of “normal service will be resumed shortly”

It helps people calm down, thus preventing them from flying off the handle and doing or saying something they may regret later.

It helps people focus and thus enables them to get on with their jobs. I speak from very personal experience on this matter!

I think it may help, also, with certain major sporting fixtures… like a certain match this coming Sunday! I have an agreement with a friend from this group who suports my team’s rivals – an agreement about our post-match conduct here on Facebook. I suspect we will both need several good mugs of tea to help us stick to our parts of the bargain and not gloat or sulk towards one another (I’ve said we can do all the celebrating/comiserating with our fellow supporters of our respective teams in order to get it out of our systems).

Win, and a cuppa or two should help the fan not to get carried away.
Lose, and a cuppa should help the fan to show his/her face on Facebook and handle the disappointment that bit better.
Draw? Both fans need cuppas to help ease the mixed feelings – disappointment of not having won but also relief at not having lost.

Well, I guess Sunday afternoon/evening will put that theory to the test… Fair enough people love tea (i happily get through a minimum of 5 a day) but does anyone else here also love the smell of tea? been caught taking a deep satisfying sniff when opening the tea jar or maybe just squeasing the sealed foil wrappers till it pops?

i used to work in Co-op, and when facing up (making items look all lovely and neat on shelves) the shop at night, id always take the longest in the tea section, just cos the whole isle would smell so comforting and reassuring. of course the down side was that id also start heavily craving tea too. i used to get a few odd looks from customers every now and then, ‘whats making him so happy? why’s he smiling like that? he must be on drugs, thats it, we’re never shopping here again..”

Geez, Linda, I think this should be written on a wall hanging or something like that for everyones kitchen. You know, an embroidered tapestry with all sorts of lovely illustrations on either side of the words. You are indeed a master of the craft of writing!!!

Oh, BTW, Iain’s pretty good at the oratorical, too. Maybe “Tea is like a gay man” should be set to some cheesy piano music and we could have William Shatner narrating it. It’s sure to be a hit and we can retire in luxury, living out our last days making tea for each other and looking out on the sea from our cottage home in the Channel Islands or something. Yes!!!Yes!!!! The whole world needs that to happen!! When I’m brewing up my loose leaf tea at work… Having warmed the teapot, then put a measure of tea in the pot, even before I’ve put the boiling water in, I like to take a good sniff of the satisfying, comforting scent coming from the now warm leaves in my teapot…

Mmmmmmm……. :) :) :)

I don’t doubt the tea aisle at a supermarket smells pretty good, but tea leaves inside a warm teapot…. a nice malty Assam for example….

Oh yes….. lovely! :) I think you’re right there, Linda! :D Yes! Yes! So let’s celebrate and commiserate ,as mentioned to the magic and powers of tea that bring us to happiness with our friend and foe. Tea is a sacred fluid sent from above to help us poor morals with the day to day grind of trying to get the bloody thing to work. There’s no way I’d let you hang that up in my kitchen, especially with those revolting illustrations :-)
Don’t put yourself down. Having a poor character shouldn’t prevent you from
enjoying a cup of tea. After all, nobody lives forever :-) Having a poor….
whats do you mean by that!
my character is bloody brilliant thankyouverymuch!
god, i need another cup of tea now!

This is normal puppy behavior. There are two reasons she’s biting… One… She a playful puppy, and that’s how puppies play with each other, and two… She’s teething so counter pressure it feels good.
If she were still with her pack, she’d have brothers and sisters to play with and they would be teaching each other, how hard is too hard, by yelping when bit too hard…. With you, the message isn’t as easy to read. There are two things you can do to help her learn… One is to “yelp”.. A high pitched ahhh!.. Or ah-ah! should make her immediately release, and will help her learn to gauge her bite pressure when playing… The other is… When your hand’s in her mouth and she’s biting you, grasp onto her lower jaw briefly (she’ll hate it!) and in an low authoritative voice say “gentle” or “no biting”.. She’ll eventually put the phrase together with the unpleasant sensation of having her jaw pinned and will get the message. She’ll likely stop doing it for the most part in a couple of months anyway, once her adult teeth grow in, and she starts moving out of puppyhood.

…make sure she has LOTS of different chews for her teeth right now as well.. The thin, hard, rawhide sticks that they can get back into all the sore spots are always a favorite with my pups… Good luck.

It’s dangerous in the sense that your dog doesn’t understand how to interpret the effects, so may do something irrational or out of character harming either himself or someone else….. But whether or not it’s “physically harmful”, it is entirely immoral and unethical… It tantamount to blowing smoke in a child’s face.. And you have no way of knowing, how the experience could affect his overall psyche, because he has no category for the experience, he could develop long term issues with trust, fear, paranoia… It’s just plain wrong.

You need to get kitten formula immediately and start trying to nurse them. They should eat every three to four hours. Make sure you don’t choke them by forcing them to eat, as it is easy for them to aspirate the milk into their lungs. Also they need to be in an incubator-type situation. When i bottle fed mine, i used a couple of old socks w/ rice in them heated up for a minute or so in the microwave. Another very important thing to do is make them go # 2 and pee. A little known fact is that kittens and pups can’t use the bathroom on their own for the first few weeks. To make them go, you just take a warm washcloth and rub it on their bottoms and privates until they go. It sounds gross but it is a very rewarding endeavor. My bottle fed kitten is almost 2 yrs old and very closely bonded to me. Just remember that if they get too cold, they stop being able to digest their food, so it is imperative to keep them in a small, heated, enclosed area without a draft. A heating pad can be dangerous as it can get too hot for the kittens and at such a young area they may not be able to move off of it. I would heat my rice pack and then put it under a blanket or towel in a laundry basket so the kitten would not get too hot, but also be warm enough. Good luck!!! Contact me if you have any questions.

It’s not unusual for cats to “share” litters, but not feeding specific kits is (by the way… Handling then will have no bearing on care)… You need to get the kits back on the teat. Try sitting next to “her” (preferably their birth mom), at feeding time, and put them on her back teats (closest to the tail)… Keep her distracted somehow…pet her, or keep giving her other kittens to clean… Don’t let her bump them off until they’ve gotten some milk in them. My guess is that once they’ve had a good meal, she’ll start feeding them again.

Personally, if you can’t get her to let them nurse, I’d put her and those three in a separate room for awhile… If the other kits aren’t available when her teats are full… She’ll feed the “outsiders”.

If you can’t get them back on soon.. You’re going to have to get some kitten formula and start bottle feeding, or they’re not going to make it.

A dog! I like cats but Dogs are a lot more fun and I love them! I wish I could have one but the Apartments will not allow us to have them not even if we pay but maybe when I move! I want to look for somewhere where they will allow me to have one and then I can look for one on that site!

You can catch them, and call animal control, they should come and pick them up. If they won’t then maybe you can put some rags outside if you know where they sleep at night, and put some food out there for them. Then you can put up fliers in the area saying that there are cats that hang out there, and if an owner is looking for one, they just might find it there. You could also try to find them homes if they are tame enough. Hope this helps.

I would like to have their gang name as stylo Rockies. Yous too, seems to be cool one.

I have not, but my uncles cat went into the garage to get food and a skunk was in there and sprayed, a week later we could still smell it, my uncle thought it would be a good idea to shoot the skunk to get rid of it, that was a VERY BAD idea…. You could smell it for miles and the smell was even in their home, so bad that they had to stay at grandmas for awhile.

The best place will most likely be like an amusement park. Like Bush Gardens or Disney World.