My niece, The Chicken, gave me the little plaque above for my birthday, much to my delight. I do so love wine. Her dad, my brother, presses a bottle on me every couple of months, and I buy the occasional litre myself. I don't drink wine to get drunk. I drink it because I love, LOVE the taste. It also puts a sparkle in my eye (okay, I haven't seen it but I feel it, which is proof enough). It sharpens my perception, enhances my enjoyment of every nuance of conversation, beauty, wit. Especially my own. (Hah!)
It's easy to delude yourself when you love wine. If I eat a bar of chocolate I feel guilty because I imagine the thousands of calories, the sugar and fat entering my blood stream, caking the insides of my arteries and increasing the dimensions of what I euphemistically refer to as my waistline. Wine, on the other hand, has no calories. Seriously! The sugars are natural so they don't count - right? And it's fat free. As a matter of fact, I'm convinced that wine burns the bad stuff out, so it has negative calories, sort of like carrots. Plus, it's good for your heart.
So, what has brought on these facetious musings? It's been one of those days. The machine at the supermarket declined my card. I trotted off to the ATM. Yes, funds are there, but they're not available. WTF? Go to bank, bursting with righteous indignation. Stand in long line. Teller who looks not a day over 11 tells me that the other party to my joint account is behind on a loan instalment at another branch, so they put a hold on my funds. The two accounts, by the way, are in no way related. Why does the bank do that? Because it friggin can! I walk across to the drugstore and buy a large bar of chocolate, stand in the sun for half an hour waiting for a taxi that's willing to go off route and deliver me to the corner of the little valley where I live.
Finally get into one. Shrink into myself as I observe the dirty, stained seat covers, the unkempt driver who looks like an escapee from the local jail, the general decrepitude of the vehicle. At least there's good music on the radio, that lovely theme from Flashdance: "She's a maniac, a maniac on the floor, and she dances like she's never da..." Driver flips switch and some heavy thudding soul comes on. Sounds like a big greasy guy rumbling on and on about how much he loves me. Gross! Then the car pulls into a gas station. Why don't these drivers fill up on their own time, I ask myself for the millionth time. Taxi almost disembowels itself on the turn on to my lane on account of a small bump I've never even felt in my mom's car. Home at last, Allah be praised! Strip, flip open my laptop (which hasn't left my bed in months - our passion never wanes) and begin to wax philosophical. Philosophical, of course, in the sense of 'ridiculous'.
Out comes the chocolate, massive guilt following closely on its heels. Man, I could use a drink right about now.
