March 29: 7:56-8:27 The Moment I Knew My Husband Had Taken to the Hot Tea Ritual

We’re the world’s biggest YouTubers.

And by YouTubers, I don’t mean the kind that make videos and upload them, exposing every detail of our lives in the process, right down to how we organize our underwear in the drawers of our camper that we sold at the beginning of the month like some adventurers do.

I mean the kind that pretty much every weekday evening are checking for the latest posts from the people we follow. So when my slicing time from 7:56-8:27 rolls around, I’m usually just finishing the Wordle and getting ready to start the latest video from Keep Your Daydream or Turner Max Adventures or Randi’s Adventures. I’ve already watched and rewatched Plant Vibrations With Devin Wallien right when I got home and finished taking the dogs out and watering plants (Devin’s recent Houseplant Tour – 125 is my current favorite, and I’ll watch that one on repeat practically).

Seriously? A favorite word and it took five tries?

We have our fixed routine about it, too, like most other old people. We come in, change into t-shirts and pajama pants, empty our lunchboxes, figure out what’s for dinner, and then one of us will start the teapot for our evening hot tea during this time of the day. We decide together what kind of tea we want, and rarely do we have two different kinds. Usually it’s green tea, but sometimes we go all out and have black tea or white tea. On nights when we really feel like getting wild, we have spiced tea.

I’m always the tea fixer, but either one of us might hit the button to start the electric kettle after we decide which kind to have. That’s important because we need to know whether to hit the button for green tea at that exact temperature, black for that temperature, or white for that temperature. It matters.

My husband empties his lunchbox in the kitchen

Honestly, I wasn’t sure when I switched us over to drinking more green tea whether my husband would buy in, but he has.

Want to know when I knew it for sure? It happened one afternoon when I’d started the evening tea ritual a little earlier than usual because I was feeling chilly. He hadn’t even emptied his lunchbox yet, and already I was stirring the honey in his tea.

I heard him mutter something about meaning to cut something back. He took his tea and disappeared through the garage door. Next thing I knew, I heard the tractor coming from the barn and looked out and saw him coming across the yard – – with his tea! On the tractor!

And that’s when I knew I had a serious tea drinker on my hands.

I laughed so hard. It brought back memories of The Art of Racing in the Rain when that French racecar driver was in a race sipping on his espresso like there was nothing to winning a race. Here was my backwoods country husband still in his work clothes, on his tractor, sipping his evening tea, and here I stood laughing from the living room window and loving him so much because this is the life partner I’ve always wanted to be surrounded by trees with. In a house on a farm on the backside of nowhere where there is so much simple life to count on and celebrate at the end of the day.

Today is our anniversary,

and I’ll tell him

just what I tell him every day: that I love him.

and what I love most is knowing

that at the end of it

we’ll be right here in our chairs

sipping tea together

Living life on the edge!

Cheers!

Happy Birthday to My Husband

Here’s a great big Happy Birthday cheer for the love of my life. We share life, we share dreams, and we share challenges. I’m grateful that the good Lord sent him to be my husband. He’s a keeper, and I cherish him. 

We recently visited my brother and father in South Georgia for Christmas, and when we arrived, Ken was outside blowing off the back porch. It looked like the leaves and debris were headed clear down to Florida, as powerful as this blower was. 

My brother left shortly after we arrived for an appointment, and as soon as his car was out of the driveway, Briar picked up the blower and walked out along the path in the back yard to test it out. 

Briar’s blower might be able to blow out one candle on a birthday cake on a full charge, but Ken’s blower could peel twelve layers of pine pollen off a porch screen. Both blowers are battery operated, giving full range of an area without a cord to trip over.

It was one of those moments when I paid attention when I needed to. Rarely do I get a gift as right as I felt this one would be. And I realized even more that I’d nailed it when I’d had to stop by Home Depot and Lowe’s the weekend before his birthday so I could get chalk paint and wood stain for our kitchen table. While I was looking for just the right color wood finish, he said, “I’m going to be in the tools for a minute. I want to see if they have that blower like your brother had.” 

I did my best to give a quizzical look of confusion and vague memory.” Oh, yeah, that blue thing you were playing with out in the back yard?” 

There was already one of those blue things in the back of my car under a blanket even as he looked around for it, so close that I’d had to jump ahead of him with the buggy to load our bags of paint and be sure he couldn’t see his birthday gift awaiting him.

Happy birthday to the man who likes everything clean and always helps make sure it stays that way! 

Gratitude for My Husband on his Birthday

My husband spent his 50th birthday sleeping in the cab of a truck in an unheated warehouse a couple of miles from the Atlanta Airport after being stuck there during Snowmageddon of 2011. The entire city was paralyzed. Children spent the night in schools, and motorists trying to get home were stranded on interstates. He ate a survival dinner from the vending machine, grateful for the coins in his pockets when exact change was required for a package of miniature donuts and a can of Coca Cola.

Even in challenging times, blessings of gratitude abound. Warmth. Food. Shelter from the storm. Caring people who restore our faith in humanity. Life.

We celebrate his 62nd birthday today. I’ll celebrate with him tonight in the warmth of our home with our 3 Schnoodles, dinner, and cake. We’ll celebrate again with other family members during our regular gathering night later this week.

Most every Thursday night, we have dinner with his father, his brother and sister-in-law, and one son who lives nearby. Sometimes we eat at Barnstormer’s, an airport restaurant near our home in Williamson, Georgia, where I recently ordered coffee to stave off the shivers – and smiled when the steaming cup arrived. Here’s the cup:

I’m grateful today and every day for my husband, who shares life and adventures with me. He loves the simple things – the beauty of nature, sitting around the campfire, chatting over spiced orange tea, listening to the rain, walking the dogs, taking spontaneous drives down country roads listening to John Denver sing about them. He is rarely angry over anything but is a gentle peacemaker and a solution-finder to problems – – especially wonderful dispositions not only as a husband but also as the Chairman of County Commissioners for our rural county where few people ever agree on anything.

In The Power of a Praying Wife, Stormie O’Martian writes beautiful prayers that wives can offer for their husbands. Here is one for today, for Briar, for whom I am eternally grateful:

Lord, teach me how to pray for my husband and make my prayers a true language of love...help us to pursue the things which make for peace....I pray that our commitment to You and to one another will continue to grow stronger and more passionate every day.  
      - excerpts from The Power of a Praying Wife by Stormie O'Martian

Happy Birthday, Briar Johnson! Thank you for being you.

Briar, June 2022, in Tracy Arm Fjord near Juneau, Alaska

Snowmageddon 2011

Special thanks to Two Writing Teachers for empowering writers!