My new teapot

This is my new teapot, hand made by my nephew Steven. I love the way he made the leaves and berries around the top. The color is great, too. It goes really well with my dining room. I love a cuppa tea.

I've made a lot of kids laugh because if anyone has anything wrong, I almost always try to cheer them up by offering them a cuppa tea. And for the most part, there are very few kids who want tea. (At first. I've gotten a bunch of them to like it, lately.) There's nothing more cozy than a nice warm cuppa tea with milk and lots of sugar. Very soothing.

I always had tea with Gram. When she stayed with me, when the kids were little, after the morning rush of getting people out the door, once things got calm and quiet again, she would always put the kettle on. The first cup of tea in the morning was to get moving, and drank while standing and organizing and doing whatever it was I did in the mornings when the kids were little. Getting out the cereal, finding a better pair of socks with no holes, mediating a dispute. But the SECOND cup of tea, THAT one we would sit down and drink quietly. She would tell me a story. She was a great story teller. Or we would read the newspaper. That was back when people had the newspaper delivered to the door every morning... do tell! Can you imagine that, the newspaper, made out of paper, and read every single morning?

Now, my first cup of tea IS my second cup of tea, because I don't have to get anyone organized or out of the house. Gram is gone, and so is the newspaper. I stopped getting it once upon a time when it had nothing worth reading, but it was costing money, and it was a pain to remember to recycle. Now, I take my cuppa - and my new teapot - to the computer, and read the news and status updates and blogs and stuff online. I think about Gram's stories. I'm going to start writing some of them down, along with her recipes. I don't want them to be lost forever.

My life has changed a lot over the years, but a lot of things remain the same.