To get me through the mid-morning slump, I take green tea. The matutinal ritual gets me up out of my chair to clean my mug and allows me to see the hustle and bustle of life outside my office suite. This particular day, I ran out of sweetener that I keep along with the tea bags. Searching the other drawers, I found old packets of sweetener. Excelsior!

Enjoying the brew, I noticed that there was a strange fruit quality to my tea. Was it some kind of chinese additive? It tasted of jasmine and orange when it passed over my tongue. As I exhaled I tasted some strange chinese-white-flowers essential oil and curiously frankincense. The tea was bizarre but familiar at the same time. It was like drinking from inside a ladies purse. I know there are korean confections that have a definite floral/perfumed flavor, but I wasn’t eating gum or candy, this was tea and sweetener.

At this point, I’ve started to stress and sweat over what I could possibly be consuming, so I go back to the drawer where I found the sweetener packets. I notice an empty plastic atomizer with a brown viscous stain inside. It smelled of chinese-white-flowers and frankincense… it was my travel bottle of J. Peterman 1903. Somehow the contents of the bottle permeated into the packets of sweetener. I’m drinking cologne, am I going to die, or have I stumbled upon a new food trend?

As I write this, I’m still taking sips of the tea…