Yesterday I did not touch the pomegranates at all. Instead I got up early and dressed up pretty and picked up a friend and then she and I headed down to San Francisco for the bi-monthly tea. This time it was in a little tea house which was right across the street from the Botanical Gardens. We were rather glad of its proximity to the gardens because we ended up hitting absolutely no traffic at all on the drive into the city, and even after making a brief detour to browse through a weaver’s estate sale (where I exercised great self control and only spent $11 for an amazingly large pile of yarn of indeterminate type), we arrived about an hour early. Heck, not only did we not hit any traffic, but we also found a place to park within one block of the tea house, after only circling the block once, and even more amazing, it was free. Perhaps all that pomegranate shucking and tree wrestling on Friday convinced the gods that I needed a break – who knows.

The tea house did not even open until noon, which was when we were actually supposed to arrive, so to pass the extra time we decided to go wandering around in the Botanical Gardens. I’d never been there and she said it had been years for her, so it was a (mostly) new experience for us both.

That place is huge! I can see that we would have needed a lot more time to wander the whole thing; as it was we barely made a dent in the gardens and I fell in love with half a dozen trees and shrubs and flowers whose names I promptly forgot and which I probably could never grow in my area anyway. And then we spent the remaining fifteen minutes or so sitting on a bench in a tiny little courtyard, watching people walk by, before we returned to the tea house, and eventually met up with the rest of our group.

It was a slightly smaller group than last time, but still just as lively and fun. As I expected, even after a two month reprieve, I was still the only one who had actually read Anna Karinena, so I think the book club part of the tea group has officially fizzled away. We each got a different type of tea – mine had delicious overtones of spearmint, which I adore – and munched our way through an assortment of the usual type of tea sandwiches.

Now for the not-so-fun and a little scary part of the adventure. While leaving the estate sale earlier I was sneezing pretty badly, and figured there was probably something there I was allergic to. So I ended up taking an allergy pill – one of the Zyrtec samples my doctor gave me when I went in for the allergy testing. By the time the tea was over I was feeling pretty tired, but luckily everyone else was ready to head out so we found the car and headed home. And by the time I had reached our little town and dropped off my friend it was all I could do to remain focused and alert. I drove home, parked the car, staggered inside, mumbled some kind of greeting to Richard, and then went upstairs and promptly fell into bed. I got up a few hours later to have dinner, but I was still pretty drained and gave up and went back to sleep shortly thereafter. It wasn’t until this morning that I started feeling more myself again.

So maybe I will avoid taking the Zyrtec allergy medication again – at least if I am going to have to be driving, or even remotely coherent at any point during the next 24 hours. In the meantime, I probably needed the sleep, and curling up into a big soft comfy bed, surrounded by lots of warm and snuggly cats was not so bad a way to end the day.