From the Redneck Diva:

I am a life-long Okie. I just thought I’d get that out of the way before we got any further because it explains my next sentence: I am addicted to sweet tea. Now, I realize that sweet tea addiction is not limited to Oklahoma, nor are all Okies born with a propensity to crave what some call “liquid diabetes,” but this Okie? I don’t wanna go to rehab. I like my tea strong and tremendously sweet, thank you very much. I want it sweetened with sugar and lots of it. If I don’t feel like I might possibly need to chew while I drink, then it is not a perfect glass of sweet tea.

I, like most of my generation, grew up on Kool-Aid.  We didn’t worry about sugar, calories, or dyes back them. We drank that sugary, colored soft drink from sun-up to sun-down, and that was that. I rarely remember drinking juice, probably because juice was expensive compared to those 5¢ packets of powdery goodness. I have a very strong recollection of class parties where Kool-Aid was served, made with sulfur water because most of us were rural kids and the majority had well water, not rural water like some of the high-falutin’ folks. It didn’t matter about the strong sulfur smell, though, because when paired with Hydrox cookies or cupcakes, it was all just sugar; sugar that conglomerated into a big ol’ sugary mosh pit in our stomachs.

I was about 12 or 13 when I was finally allowed to drink sweet tea instead of Kool-Aid. I was on the verge of adulthood! It was the beverage equivalent of finally being rescued from the kids’ table at Thanksgiving. There was always a pitcher of tea readily available on the counter at our house. At around 14 or 15, Mom taught me how to make sweet tea and the secrets of the universe were then opened up to me, and it was borderline cosmic. OH, THE POWER!

Over the years I have mastered my very own special recipe for the best sweet tea. Well, aside from Sonic’s sweet tea. There is no beating Sonic when it comes to sweet tea. All I can figure is that they must employ magical pixies to make it, and I just don’t have those resources. Mine is very close to it, though. Just ask people who have had it. Seriously. I not even joking or being arrogant. I was awful at science when I was in high school, and chemistry nearly caused me to have a nervous breakdown, but I am the Mr. Wizard of sweet tea, the Mr. Miyagi of non-carbonated beverages. Pour yourself a glass of tea, sit at my feet, Daniel-san, you have much to learn.

The first thing I do every morning is make a pitcher of tea, fill an Eskimo Joe’s cup full of iced tea nirvana, and begin my day. My husband calls my Eskimo Joe’s cup my pacifier. He probably isn’t far from wrong. Okay, really, he’s not wrong at all. My sister has joked more than once that I have so much caffeine coursing through my veins that when I die it will take two weeks for my body to stop moving so they can bury me. I tried to curb my sweet tea addiction when I was pregnant, but decaffeinated tea just isn’t the same. When we were expecting our oldest daughter, for those very brief nine months and a few months afterward, I drank caffeine-free Coke. Decaf tea just seemed so…wrong, like I was cheating on real tea with a secret beverage and real tea would smell the decaf on my breath and I would be SO busted. With my other two children I just lowered the amount of sweet tea consumption and carried on. Looking back now I see why those two didn’t sleep through the night and their older sister did.

It’s January, a month notorious for resolutions and life changes. I have fallen prey to this many times, and every time I fall flat on my face. I have this “Go big or go home” mentality where I end the year with a belly full of fatty foods, my veins running amok with caffeine, only to wake up January first with a rice cake and water bottle in hand, befriending such people as Denise Austin and Jillian Michaels, expecting the world to be different and better. Instead, what invariably happens is that I starve myself and withhold what I crave, depriving myself to pieces and eventually come to hate those muscled women glistening in perspiration while I sweat gallons on my living room carpet. I give up. I berate myself. I get frustrated. And go back to bad habits, waiting again for the next year to start so I can endure two weeks of misery and flop again.

This year I have decided that instead of “Go big or go home” I am going to “Go medium and hopefully hang around awhile.” I am taking a daily vitamin, doing yoga (Okay, so I haven’t actually done any yoga yet, but I will—soon—I think), and I am drinking water. I haven’t given up my sweet tea, and I’m not going to; I am just drinking it in moderation. I feel pretty good about it and am more confident than I’ve ever been regarding a healthier lifestyle and my ability to stick with it. My body isn’t quite sure what to do with all this clear liquid I keep pouring down it all day long and, at one point, I think I heard one of my kidneys whisper to its sister, “What’s up with this stuff? I feel like I’m not being used anymore. This clear stuff just goes through so…so….fast. We don’t have to do ANYTHING!” The other one replied with, “Maybe if we ask nicely she’ll stop. This just doesn’t seem…right.”

Tonight my youngest daughter caught me at the kitchen sink, chugging down ten ounces of water right before dinner in an attempt to fill my stomach and make me eat less. She stopped as she rounded the corner and looked at me strangely. She cocked her head to one side and asked, “Are we out of tea? Why are you drinking WATER, Momma?” I shook my head mid-gulp, took a breath and said, “No, we’re not out of tea. I’m just drinking more water.” She took a step back and said, “Momma, you’re scaring me.”

I think I heard my kidneys laugh.

Diva

Kristin Hoover is the Redneck Diva. A local blogger and stay-at-home mom, Kristin has won Okie Blog Awards for her humorous take on the rural life of a natural-born diva who married a redneck and produced three offspring. Visit her blog at http://www.theredneckdiva.com.