Status Update

Seattle, WA

I'm super glad that Thanksgiving is over. I dislike the contrivance of it, that forced gratitude thing. I've never really liked Thanksgiving, except for the sides, to tell you the truth. Speaking of, you know what side I'm on. I am here this morning on the left side of the country and ever so grateful to be here. My political views are opposite to those of some of my closest relatives, and I was filled with dread about the night. There've been awkward Thanksgivings before, but never like this one. I told one of my friends that I was taking it on as some sort of karmic thing. I was intent on being, if not Zen, than at least a tad Stepford-like. I figured that would be at least in keeping with the Drumpf's bride. Last night I posted on Facebook that I would drink a glass of red wine for every Trump supporter at my Thanksgiving table. I posted this picture of myself along with it:

I'm not a big drinker so I anticipated the night being epic. Here's what happened. Everyone behaved. No one mentioned anything at all about Drumpf or his band of crazies. It was ok. That was a bottle of Montepulciano, and it was delicious. I drank one small glass of the wine, served the food dutifully and cleaned up as dutifully. Then I lay down on the bed next to Sophie in a sort of comatose state with a splitting headache and eventually went to sleep.

I guess we're going to have to get on with it. Keep resisting in our own way.

Here are my divine children for whom I'd do anything.

The New Sheriff in Town

She drinks wine while cooking dinner.

I slapped a Jimi Hendrix stamp on the mortgage payment this morning and felt cheered. Take that, I muttered, with a circus mind that's running wild. I also carried on a very long text conversation with a friend across the country. Sexy Norwegians, truck-stops, Jesus Christ and manifestations were involved. 

Little Wing

Friendship, Drinking, Teenagers and Healing

Last night I walked around the corner and met two girlfriends for happy hour. I had the above drink -- some spicy concoction of ginger beer, vodka and lime juice. I had two of those -- a rare second drink kind of evening. We also ordered food -- mussels, french fries, arugula salad with fennel and parmesan, a grilled artichoke with aioli and some seared tuna with a sesame crust and shaved raw zucchini. We sat and talked about the daily grind -- what it's all for, whether it's mid-life crises -- and speaking of, why the hell are we not in menopause, yet? We talked  about our children, The Teenagers, about social media and sexting and their curiosity about our own teenage and college years. When does all that start? my friend with younger children asked my other friend and me. We told her that it starts now, the curiosity, the questions. I told her that earlier that day at Target, as I perused the aisles with my older son who recently got his driver's permit and now believes himself to be mature, asked me, When's the last time you got drunk, Mom? He's been asking me questions like this a lot, lately, out of earshot of his younger brother but enough to make me realize that it's happening, he's getting older and curious and what I say is as important now as it's ever going to be. You know, Henry, I said, sometimes your questions are a little too personal, and I want to say that it's none of your business, but I actually haven't gotten drunk in so many years that I've forgotten. I was never a person who drank enough to get drunk. Maybe I had too much to drink in college every now and then, but the feeling the next day was horrible enough that I never really kept at it. I see that he literally digests what I say and chews on it. My friends and I agreed that it's more difficult today to be a teenager with social media, with the threat of complete and irrevocable exposure hanging over you. We agreed, too, that our children are so much more open with us than we were with our parents and that that's a good thing. We discussed our boys and the #YesAllWomen campaign, how nervous it all makes us. We agreed that the relative boldness and ease of young women today compared to when we were young was both positive and a tad scary. We agreed that our boys are both dopey and clever. We laughed a lot. After a few days of horrible news and attendant anxiety, much of it self-inflicted, I'd venture to say it was a healing night for me, that I'm somewhat righted -- shored up.

Onward, as one of my writing teachers used to say. Onward.

Oliver's IEP

Manhattan, straight up with Italian Maraschino Cherries

Easy peasy and really nice.

I brought doughnuts. The team was sensitive and efficient. Oliver was there for most of it, advocating for himself, somewhat shyly, but smiling his beautiful smile throughout.

I'm grateful for this school that he goes to -- it's not perfect, but it's pretty damn great, and I look forward to continued improvement for Oliver's experience with fingers crossed.

I'm feeling drained in general, though, for various reasons. If you'd like advice on IEPs or you're a reader that has a child with disabilities and new to it all, please feel free to email me. And don't read the sentence that follows this one.

Tomorrow is Sophie's IEP which is an entirely different ball game. For that, the drinking begins now. (See above photo).

Respite, Day 6, Solo Drinking and Walking

So, I woke up today and spent it alone. I walked all over the city, did a little shopping, ate a little pizza, drank prosecco at lunch, staggered to a spa where I had a scheduled massage, possibly the best massage I've ever had by a guy named Carey (maybe the best massage I've ever had by any guy named anything), walked over to the Empress Hotel, elegantly and almost absurdly colonial, sat in the famous Bengal Lounge, ordered first a drink called the Empress 1908, consisting of Empress tea-infused vodka, lemon juice, simple syrup and egg white -- my god, it was good and totally not sweet but perfectly weird and tart. It came with a tiny little scone because of the tea thing, and I ordered a pint glass of tiger shrimp and cocktail sauce and then a beer! Oh, and the waiter brought me a finger bowl while I ate the shrimp. I finished at around 7:00 and since Javier couldn't meet me, I staggered home in the bright Victoria sunshine (it's the first day of sunshine and for these Victorian folks it was as if the heavens had opened and Jesus himself had descended such was their joy), and now I'm waiting for the sun to start going down which will be in another couple of hours (north country fair) so that I can walk over to the water and offer up my gratitude to the universe that made Heather McHugh for this week.

Yakety Yak

Me and my yak

Have you ever had one of those days where you talked and talked and talked, so much that it was too much? I had one of those days, and while every conversation was a good and deep one, I'm talked out. Today I talked about my children and I talked about medical marijuana. I talked about dyslexia and I talked about gratitude. I talked about how difficult it is to receive things gracefully. I talked about marriage and I talked about divorce. I talked about turning fifty years old, and I talked about losing weight. I talked about the books I'm reading and the jobs I'm looking for. I talked about advocacy for children with special healthcare needs, and I talked about my family. I talked about others and I talked about myself. The only thing I didn't talk about was drinking.

That's why I'm grateful to my baby sister Jennifer for directing me to this website called Thug Kitchen and this particular post. If you're at all offended by cursing, avoid it. Otherwise, have fun.

Now I'm going to stop talking and go make myself a Blackberry Bourbon Fizz.

Then I'm going to chill the  ------ out.

Silver Linings Playbook

You must be picked up by one of your very oldest and best friends in the world who has been out of town for months and you must park on the roof of the theater and run around scaring seagulls, exclaiming at the skyline and the dark clouds over the city and then watch the movie and laugh and cry in the movie and then walk in the light rain to a nearby bar, drink a glass of rubies (Zinfandel), eat some sweet potato fries and some spicy tuna on lettuce leaves and some of his macaroni and cheese and then drink a Blue Moon with a wedge of lemon while listening and telling secrets before walking back in light rain to your car and drive home.

You really must.

Gin Dreams

A day or two ago, I woke up with a start and sat straight up, my heart pounding in the darkness. Hanging from the ceiling were streamers and spiders, a swinging baby, an elephant's trunk. A door banged before I knew it was a dream and everything receded, the ceiling returned to a pale, cracked blue and I lay back down and closed my eyes.

This morning, I stood at my back door and looked at the silk floss tree flowers that litter the grass, their decaying pink melting into green. A bird flew by as if I were expecting it, a bird of prey lighting on the top of the trampoline, its yellow legs. I held my breath and got my phone to snap his picture, a buzz-saw in the background startled both of us in its insistence to cut through the silence, and he flew away.

I read today about tiny cherry tomatoes lined up in a serving dish, sitting in gin. Roll the tomatoes in the gin. Pick them up with a toothpick and roll them in sea salt. Drink a martini.

The Exorcist, The Rich and Stephen King

This was the only scene in the movie that REALLY freaked me out

I saw The Exorcist last night at the movie theater. I had never seen it, other than a clip here and there since it came out forty years ago. I went to see it with my friend D, and I had a gin martini with lime and simple syrup, straight up beforehand, along with some moules frites. The drink made me just this shy of buzzed, so I felt no anxiety -- I hate scary movies and never watch them -- when I sat down to watch in the sold-out theater. I have to say that the movie didn't hold up all that well, even on a big screen. I don't know if this is because we've become so accustomed to slick productions that the technical "wizardry" of 1972 seemed really lame or because the movie is such a part of our cultural lexicon that it didn't surprise me. I enjoyed Ellen Burstyn and her fantastic clothes, and the priest with the sad, dark eyes was wonderful as were the interior shots and some of the foggy Georgetown exteriors. Man Von Sydow was amazing as usual, but he was old in the movie and that was forty years ago! I think he's still alive now, so that sort of distracted me. The director and various others related to the film were there to answer questions afterward, but it was an earnest, fawning crowd, so we left. I think my favorite part of the evening, actually, was that gin martini. It was so perfectly tart.

Anyway.

Speaking of demons, have you read Stephen King's fantastic piece in The Daily Beast? It's called Tax Me for F@%&'s Sake, and it'll make your head spin around a whole lot faster than Linda Blair's. Read it here.

Beverly Hills Baseball Field Signs (this is not a joke)

You see? In Beverly Hills, you have to be admonished not to drink martinis and smoke cigarettes while watching your son play baseball. And let's not even talk about the poor grammar (am I right that "is" should be "are?")

Damn.

The only thing to do after fifth grade math, giant seizures and a tomato soup recipe that is abysmal

(otherwise, it was a fine day)

Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails

Are you starting to think that I'm being driven to drink as my post yesterday and now, today, is about alcohol? A few comments yesterday expressed concern; I believe there were even subtle suggestions that alcohol isn't the answer.

I want to allay your fears. I'd make the point that I've never been a drinker and can't imagine becoming an alcoholic at the age of 48. I guess you never know, but like I explained yesterday, drinking doesn't make me do anything other than feel sleepy, and I don't really enjoy the sleepy feeling. I'd also add that I'm a very social person, and when I drink I become increasingly not-so-social (again, the sleepiness) and would rather disappear -- to bed, preferably. Alone.

So. If you're new to the blog (and I have gotten some new readers who are very welcome!), you might also think that The Husband has a Mistress. I have gotten comments expressing wonder, astonishment and even admiration that my tolerance is such that I can joke about The Mistress. I'll allay your fears here as well. The Mistress is my husband's Job. He is a chef and literally works 12-20 hours a day six days and sometimes seven days a week. The Mistress is demanding and The Husband has little to any sway over those demands. 

So, we've cleared those things up.

What about the title of this post? It's the title of a book that my son Henry gave me for Christmas. It's very cool, and he was very proud that he got it for me from my favorite bookstore, helped by my favorite bookstore maven, Liz. Here's a little excerpt from the book:

Cocktails were morning drinks. Drinking in the morning often means getting over what you were drinking last night, and that kind of behavior is what they used to call dissipated. If that wasn't sufficiently nefarious, cocktails contained bitters. Bitters may sound benign to modern ears, but at the dawn of the nineteenth century, they were medicine. Adding them to cocktails was the equivalent of dousing one's beer with Nyquil. No one knows for sure how the cocktail got its name, but I am certain it was because these were your wake-up call -- like a rooster heralding the early morning light. And the plumage? Those spicy bitters... If you drank a cocktail, you were a little dangerous, and therein lay the seeds of its fame.

I have to admit that I love both of these words, both as descriptors and for themselves:

dissipated and bitters.

Since I've talked about alcoholism and mistresses, dissipation, bitters and my own tolerance for all of them, including a bit of Tolstoy love yesterday, I think I'll also include a recipe from the book for a drink that might really rock your world. Here it is:

Shake the following otherwise bourgeois ingredients in a cocktail shaker, and strain into a cocktail glass:

1 ounce gin
1 ounce orange juice
1/2 ounce cherry brandy (Cherry Heering is recommended)
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice

What about the photo at the top of the post? Well, that's my paternal grandfather, an Italian immigrant who owned a bar and grill in Harlem. That photo is one of my favorites and causes the most ruckus when I ask the viewer to pick out my grandfather in the bunch. While you might be tempted to think otherwise, there is no alcoholism that I know of in my family.

Drinking and Anna Karenina

Tolstoy

I've been drinking more lately. I'm one of those people who has never been a drinker, despite the pleadings of some of my friends who insist that drinking a glass of wine a night would be good for me. When I took them up on the recommendation, I wanted to go to sleep at around 9:00 and therefore discovered the secret to why I am able to write and read into the wee hours of the morning, as opposed to my more "exhausted" friends. The other day, I bought a bottle of Kahlua at Trader Joe's because I remembered how good it tastes, but I haven't opened it up yet. Two nights ago, I had a pomegranate mojito before dinner, a glass of sauvignon blanc with my moules frites and a shot of vodka at my friend's house after dinner. Last night, I had a glass of wine with my dinner and contemplated a Blue Moon when I got home. I saw a movie, too, last night -- Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. I remember reading the book in my late teens when I was totally into Robert Ludlum and John Le Carre spy novels. I don't remember being confused when I read the novels, but last night I was completely befuddled by the movie and so was my really smart friend Shannon. We laughed about it over our wine and dinner, and I even looked up a plot summary online afterward.

Oh! Now I understand!

I'm reading Jeffrey Eugenides' book The Marriage Plot, and while I was so excited to open and read it, I'm now in that exasperated slog phase when I should just give up and put it down, bored to tears, but I feel obligated to finish it. This seems to be happening more and more lately -- I feel like I haven't read a novel in years that I connect to with joy and wonder. The last really great book I read was the memoir The Boy in the Moon. A fellow bookworm told me that I should re-read Anna Karenina, so that's what I'm going to do.

Remember the famous opening lines?

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Who is writing like this anymore?

Would it be too much to add a shot of Kahlua to my morning coffee? Or should I start reading Tolstoy with a shot of frozen vodka?