You know that feeling, when you’ve been going along, feeling smug about something, and then all of a sudden you run smack into the fact that you shouldn’t be smug at all?

Yeah. That’s one of life’s least satisfying feelings.

My husband has always been a coffee drinker, and he spends, like, $8.99 for a 10-oz… bag? sack? container? why cannot I not think of the appropriate word here?… vessel of coffee at the grocery store about every week. I don’t really know how many cups he drinks each day, or how much coffee is required to brew a cup of coffee anyway, but he needs a new bag almost every week. So that’s about $1.28 per day on coffee.

I, on the other hand, would order a box of 24 Keurig pods of English Breakfast tea for $11.99. And I use one K-cup each morning. That’s about $.50 per day.

Smug superiority.

But then for Christmas, my husband got me this awesome little thing called an “IngenuiTEA” which brews loose-leaf tea… and then it has a special mechanism that allows you to put it on top of your mug and the tea comes out the bottom, into the mug, leaving the leaves behind. It’s AMAZING. So amazing that we put the Keurig away, possibly forever.

Alongside the tea brewer, my husband got me a cute little tea sampler with a bunch of different types of black tea and a tea called “mango tango” and an Earl Grey that smells so floral and sweet that I want to wear it as perfume.

I drink two cups of tea every morning. Let’s go back a second: I didn’t do that with the Keurig. I simply set it to the largest brewing size, which was probably about 12 ounces, give or take. Maybe closer to 14 ounces. I don’t really know, the machine did it for me. (I’m going to be one of the first people who starves to death when the robot resistance begins, aren’t I?) So in terms of K-cups, I was only drinking one cup of tea per day. But now, I brew the tea according to the directions, which are “one heaping teaspoon per eight-ounce cup.” So I use TWO heaping teaspoons to get to the actual amount of tea I require to feel human each day.

And now that I’ve tasted all these little samples, I am so excited to try all sorts of things. Oolong! Rooibos! White tea! There must be other types! (My previous experience with tea was limited to English Breakfast, chamomile, chai, and Throat Coat [by Traditional Medicinals – this is not an ad, I am simply obsessed with this tea when I have a sore throat]. Occasionally, I have enjoyed some green tea. Especially when it is mixed with lemonade, by a barista at Starbucks.)

So recently my husband and I had occasion to go to the mall, and we stopped at this tea place. I was aware of this place because it typically had a staff member prowling the hall outside its door, holding a tray of tiny cups of tea for passersby to sample. I had never been inside. It’s the size of a closet, but has so many teas I was promptly overwhelmed. I don’t know the first thing about buying tea! My little sampler had fooled me into thinking I had some sort of Tea Cred, but lo – I have no cred at all!

Luckily for me, there was a little table with some tea samples on it, and I tried some, and smelled some others, and thought, okay, I could see myself drinking this tea… Or, no way would I even shampoo my hair with this… Or, blech ptthhh pttoooey.

I talked myself into one of the teas, and then picked up a package… and. Oh. It was $12.50 for two ounces. That’s $12.50 for about six my-size cups of tea. That’s more than $2 per morning drink. That’s… Crazy.

(Turns out tea is one of my starling expenses ^{TM Swistle}.)

(Along that line: I really wanted to get my husband a… what is WITH my brain today? I can’t think of ANY WORDS. Let’s see if I can talk my way to the correct name of this thing. I really wanted to get my husband one of those little kits that has nail clippers and a nail file and a cuticle pusher-backer-thingy [that’s a word I’ve never known]. I’ve been thinking about it for at least a year, and occasionally when I would be in Nordstrom, I would think about it. And I even went so far as to ask one of the Nordstrom salesclerks whether they had any – this was some months ago – and they said, oh we typically get those in around the holidays, they’re really a nice stocking stuffer. Which is exactly how I was envisioning this kit: as a little add-on, not a big gift on its own or anything, just something fun but practical. So when it got to be Decemberish I went into Nordstrom and started poking around, and lo and behold there was one of these little kits in the Men’s Vanity Section. And I picked it up and… it was $125. Um. No. I am not paying THAT for that.)

(Never did figure out what the word was. Manicure kit? Why does my brain insist that the word/phrase I’m looking for starts with an S?)

After this parenthetical interlude, we are now back to the Tea Saga:

So I put THAT package back on the shelf and was fully prepared to walk right back out of the tea closet and rescue my Keurig from its lonely place on a shelf in the basement.

But my husband encouraged me to just try something! Don’t leave empty handed! Hadn’t I been yearning for some jasmine green tea? Perhaps the store sold THAT.

And indeed! The tea store had rows and rows of little cupboards – kind of like the little boxes at a post office – containing other teas, all lined up in the wall behind the counter. (Which I found very awkward and stressful, to be honest. Because you are trying to read all the little names and prices while looking over the shoulder of the teenage salesperson who wants to ring you up and nudge you on your way so she can get back to gossiping with her friend about Manda’s new tattoo.) I got really flustered, trying to acquire as much information as possible without taking too long or looking tea-stupid. And jasmine green tea was indeed one of the options! It had a terribly, ridiculously high price stamped on it. But I imagined that was for a POUND of tea, and I was so flustered and uncomfortable, I didn’t want to ask any questions to clarify that point or anything. To sort of hedge my bets, I guess, I asked the salesclerk for the smallest amount of tea possible. Which turned out to be two ounces. Which turned out to be the exact price stamped on the jasmine tea cupboard. $15. For two ounces. Of beautifully perfumey tea, all furled up into little pearls.

And then it turns out you need someplace to KEEP the tea – the tea from the little wall cupboard doesn’t come in its own tin, as it does when you buy an entire tin at the grocery store. So I had to pay an additional $5 for a little thing called a “macaron” (because it indeed looks like the cookie of the same name) and then I slunk out of the tea closet with my “my morning drink costs less than yours does” smugness shattered forever.