The Tim Horton’s travel mug that I bought on Canadian Thanksgiving a couple of years ago when the Biatch and I made a pilgrimage to the Tim Horton’s in Fall River has been at work for the past 6 months. I decided that it was time to bring it home in order to use it again to drink hot tea on my morning commute, but I was met with a surprise. The entire 6 months that the innocent mug lay on a shelf at work, it was almost completely full of what had once been Red Rose tea. After 6 months, the tea bag had rotted off the string, sinking to the bottom to become one with a pile of a sludgy putrescence. It smelled like… have you ever been walking through the woods and come across an old tire filled with ancient rainwater and rotting leaves? That’s exactly what it smelled like, and, when you think about it, what it pretty much was, only these leaves had the advantage of having had milk added to them to make their aroma that much tastier.

Because I am stubborn, I decided to bring the mug home anyway and attempt to clean it out so I can use it again. Currently, it has sat filled with a bleach solution for over 24 hours. It smells less like a swampy armpit, but the odor of death and decay is definitely still present. Alas, poor travel mug. Luckily, there are now over 40 Tim Hortonses in southern MA/RI, way more than there were a couple of years ago when I bought my mug. Perhaps a road trip is in order.

I’ve looked for other travel mugs without much luck. I’ve found some really expensive ones with coffee ground plungers and USB connectors and other unnecessary things, but nothing comparable to good old Tim. There were some chintzy yet overpriced (and ugly) ones at CVS, but before I could contemplate whether or not to buy one, I got distracted by the shiniest toy dinosaurs I ever saw and had to make a couple fight each other because they all had wide open mouths and big teeth. Plus, they were super shiny. I could practically see myself in the T-Rex’s side! I left when the lady next to me’s standard funny looks turned to ones of alarm and fright.

maybe my lovely brown Tim Horton’s mug will air out and be useable once more! We can always hope.

There’s me holding my trusty travel mug on the day I first adopted it.