i still think kat would like tequilla in her iced tea.

my neighbor lucas stopped in tonight to use our computer to fulfill the online portion of a class he's taking this summer. while he worked, i busied myself with laundry and bills, stopping for a second just to see if he needed anything to drink.

what do you have? he asked.

i opened the refrigerator and yelled out to him in the family room. i've got water, orange juice, some of kat's iced tea ...

iced tea, i'll take it, he said.

i'm not an iced tea person - even if kat does make hers of the southern style sweet tea variety which is essentially more lemonade than tea. there's still tea in there. and i don't like that.

but for some reason, i still felt inclined to pour myself a little glass, just to see if perhaps my taste buds had changed in the past few months. it was surprisingly thirst-quenching and sweet at first, but once the liquid left my mouth and descended down my throat, i felt a bit of a burning. this, i thought, is exactly why i don't like tea.

i gave lucas his glass and asked if he felt it burn a bit. no, he said, it just seemed awfully sweet. she must have put in way more lemonades than tea, he noted.

later, after a good long conversation about first boyfriends/girlfriends, first loves, break-ups and dumpings, he surprised me by heading to the fridge for another glass of this sweet, sweet iced tea.

as we chatted, he scrunched his face and insisted that kat spiked the tea. it burns right here, he said, pointing to his lungs. wow, yeah, this has GOT to be spiked.

a few minutes later, lucas headed downstairs to finish work for class and i began work on creating new playlists until erin got home. i laughed, telling her that kat must have done something REALLY weird to her iced tea because ...

"kat doesn't have any iced tea in the fridge," erin said. "that's my cleansing diet drink. it's a lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper concoction."

we laughed. i told lucas over IM what we had been drinking. ahh, if it's working to clean out erin's intestines and colon, we're hoping for the same results.

and maybe i'll try iced tea again in a few months, once this burning has left my lungs.