We dressed up the kids and took them out to dinner tonight. After spending $1100 on our car yesterday, I was prepared to go to the grocery store and buy a supply of white bread and peanut butter, but my husband had a nice, big gift card to my favorite restaurant. We went out and pretended that we always order wine, calamari, filets and ginger-crusted salmon that melts in your mouth and tastes like perfection in a superb, pink package.

I digress.

My son ordered for himself off of the children’s menu, but instead of saying that he wanted, “crab cakes” he looked at the poor waitress and just said, “I want crabs”; which is something you pick up at an entirely different type of place.

But, other than that, he was on his best behavior and was quite charming.

And, that right there? Got the whole family free dessert.

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This is a table in the corner of our basement where my husband makes his own wine. It is a step-by-step process that I will, someday, outline here for all of the people who have asked. Probably right around the time that I take that trip to Tahiti. Which is to say, don’t go holding your breath.

Winemaking isn’t difficult, but it is time consuming. It involves letting very gross stuff happen to your fruit, then straining and wringing that gross stuff through a basketball jersey (WAY classier than cheesecloth and less likely to fall apart), mixing in sugar water, capping it and, as my father-in-law says, “letting it work” for a while. Months, actually.

See that sludgy looking stuff at the top of some of the jugs? That’s “working”. I promise that you don’t drink chunks of fuzzy fruit. Have you ever seen someone syphon gas? There’s some of that involved to separate the liquid. I don’t do that part, just in case those puffs of sludge travel through the tube. *shudder*

If you’re going to make wine, you have to be patient and not vomit at the sight, smell or feel of fermented fruit. This is why I will drink the peach wine, but I will not help make it.

My husband learned how to make wine because his parents taught him and every day they have a glass in the late afternoon. I love knowing that when my husband and I are their age, we can toast them with an old family recipe.

Of course, that one glass they have is equal to about three glasses of “regular” alcoholic wine. The homemade stuff is quite strong and I’ve had more than one batch that tasted like nail polish remover. But, boy do you sleep! Plus, you can just breathe on your nails and the polish comes off. Bonus!

We once had to walk a friend home after she had a few glasses. She will always be quick to say, “I walked TO your house!” but she forgets that she didn’t need help getting here. Every time my mom has half a glass of our wine, she starts to cry. So, we have that going for us.

I wonder if she has noticed that we keep “forgetting” to bring it to dinner.

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So, you know how you pick up your son from Cub Scouts and he’s crying because he’s so hungry (because God love his amazing Scout co-leader, but she’s a busy mom and she left the bag of snacks, in a bag, ON HER DRIVEWAY), but that’s okay because you were proactive and ordered a pizza while you were waiting for your son, but on the way to the pizza place he’s saying, “My stomach HURTS BAD, because I’m starving”, and then you get to the pizza place and pull out your credit card and they say, “Oh, we only take cash or checks”, and you have to drag your hungry kid back to the car and then to the bank, and when you restart your 14 year old car at the pizza place for the SECOND time it starts making a hissing sound, and doing this lurching thing, so you call your husband, but he’s busy with the repair guy who is looking at your chimney because it’s so water damaged that it’s getting ready to collapse onto your roof and when you finally get home, you find out the quote to fix it is $7000?

Yeah, me too.

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It is 9:50pm on November 1st, which technically means that there is still enough time for me to tell you that I am planning to participate in Nablopomo.

What is Nablopomo? Well, as French as it sounds, it’s really just short for National Blog Posting Month. It is a challenge for bloggers to post every day for the month of November.

Why would I do this to myself when I can’t even get the laundry done? Because clean clothes are overrated and I think I need a swift kick in the old-age-blogger-pants. This will force me to come back to this place I love.

See, I have been blogging since June, 2007. That’s an eternity on the internet. Shoot, that’s an eternity, period. Four years ago, my daughter was eight. EIGHT! Sigh…

So if you want to stop by, I will be here. I am not promising stellar content, as evidenced by this post. Sometimes, it might just be a picture. Sometimes, it might just be a sentence. And, there may be a short time when I am out of town, which means I’ll have to use my fancy scheduler thingy. Which, in fact, means you may see nothing at all.

Wish me luck. Also, next time we run into each other, please smack some sense into me. Thanks.

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