Waiting for the water in a tea kettle to boil tends to lead one’s mind down all sorts of pathways. Add to that the coming of Summer, the Memorial Day Weekend, and cookout fever. This led me to start thinking about how odd some sizes are, primarily in packaging.

A classic example is the hotdogs and buns dilemma. Hotdogs come in packages of eight (most brands that I know of, that is) while buns come in packages of 10. What do you do with the extra two buns? You can open another package of hotdogs, but then you’ll need to put away the extra six. So you open another package of buns, and then you’d have four buns left… urgh! If you’re the one bringing hotdogs and buns for the company or church picnic, you need to do some complicated math formula to figure out how to get the hotdogs and buns to come out pretty close to even (and then you show up and see that someone brought brats and no buns, so the extra buns would have been needed after all).

Another odd size is bath towels versus towel bars. Bath towels are one width and the bath towel bars are at least 3-4 inches narrower. So, if you drape the towel over the bar so that the towel is not folded over, the sides get crumpled. Certainly not earth shattering, but certainly ponderable while that kettle is getting close to its boil.

When it comes to tea, there are all kinds of “misfits” where the size of one thing is not in line with the size of another. My tea kettle holds six cups of water, so my 4-cupper teapot is usually set aside in favor of my 6-cupper. Lainie Petersen pointed out in one of her articles on this blog that most tea-for-one sets have a pot that holds more than the cup holds, meaning that you end up with an ounce or two of tea in the pot, and it ends up getting cold while you sip the tea in your cup.

I’ve even written about blending those few spoonfuls of dry tea leaves left in the various tea pouches. Somehow, there always seems to be a bit of Nilgiri and some Assam and a bit of Kenyan and so on — not enough separately for a full pot but certainly enough if combined.

Well, the kettle is boiling and my Nilgiri-Assam-Kenyan blend is ready for steeping. May you have a great tea day and no odd sizes!

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