Because I’m two sashays from becoming a full blown food hippie, I bought dandelion root tea. No, not a from local co-op where the owners don skirts of wheat and have an aversion to underarm deodorant, but I’m getting closer to frequenting such establishments. Anyway, dandelion root tea, according to the the pastel-colored box, helps with digestion. It won’t make me a patient, understanding person, but it should give little high-fives to the healthy bacteria in my gut. And if my gut is happy, maybe I’ll be happier too, possibly more understanding of the drivers who aim for my car at ramming speed. It’s okay, I’ll swerve. Don’t worry, you can have both lanes. I’m drinking dandelion root tea, I’m one with the earth!

But am I? Of my many first world complaints, one is the war I’ve lost with the weeds in my brown lawn (we’re having a water shortage too), mainly the dandelion. At first I tried willing the weeds away, much like I’ve tried willing handsome men to my doorstep. Each venture resulted similarly. Next I tried plucking the weeds one by one with a three-bladed contraption on loan from my dearest dad. While I enjoy blades and violence against vegetation, I noticed the longer I tore plants from terra firma, the more dandelions there appeared to be. The broad-leaf plant overlapped others, growing multiple dandelions in a single patch, much like arm pit hairs sprout three and four to a follicle.*

So abundant are the dandelions in my lawn, the only green remaining is from the hardy, boastful weed, its blooming yellow flower the botanical’s way of flipping a middle finger. And yet I purchased dandelion root tea.

A true woman of resourcefulness (a club to which I thought I belonged) would’ve mortared and pestled the hundreds of already uprooted plants and defused them in some sort of tea defusing apparatus, which I’d have discovered after a cursory Google search. Alas, in addition to lacking even a slight sense of resource, I’m also—apparently—lazy.

God forbid a zombie apocalypse befall us. While I could dazzle the survivors with tales of rhyme and wit, I’d be unable to provide sustenance from a weed which grows in great abundance. Our gut biomes would deteriorate much like my self-esteem, and the future of the human race would be in jeopardy. I take solace in knowing that at least I could raise a fallen I-beam from someone’s crushed knee, for physical strength I have in spades. Hmm…perhaps that’s why the handsome men do not come a-knocking…

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*Arm pit hairs, like dandelions, are fighting for survival and blossom in greater numbers than before. There’s a chance that this little tidbit of information could’ve been too much for your reading sensibilities. If that be the case…well I’m not sorry. We all have arm pit hair and we all know how it grows; the similarities between dandelions and unwanted body hair were too convenient and poignant to omit.