Naked lobster at the elephant table.
I have returned from Massachusetts after celebrating HMOKeefe’s birthday. It was a wonderful time even if I did give him a cold for his birthday (or tried to). The champagne was Veuve Cliquot, the lobster 2 lbs and the discourse was without distraction.
I regret I spent much of my formative years ignorant of avocado.
Minoan Blue Monkey Fresco
It’s been suggested that most folk choose their wine based on the bottle. While I’m not immune to the charms of a nice bottle, all other factors being equal, I am usually more interested in what’s in the bottle. I veer towards the Chileans. You can’t buy a bad bottle of Chilean wine. The price is beginning to reflect that, but it used to be you could have a damn fine wine dirt cheap. Most of the Australians are good as are most of the South Americans if you’re looking for affordable yet decent wine.
With all that said, my palate is not that sophisticated. I’d recognize the label, but I’ve become partial to a wine sold at the Kroger – a nice cabernet IN A BOX with an 87 rating from Wine Spectator. It’s hard to burn a candle in that puppy once I’ve drained the last glass of wine, but I buy the stuff to drink – not to decorate.
Tom Robbins Wine
Or at least that’s mostly true. I do have some wine bottles scattered about the house because I like them. My favorite is a long, lithe cobalt blue one that used to house a crisp pinot grigio. And then there’s the Tom Robbins bottle. (I’ve also got a tequila bottle that HMOKeefe drained on the Mexico trip – tequila? I don’t touch the stuff. But that bottle sure is pretty and HMOKeefe buzzed on the worm was a sight to see.)
Those of us of a certain age will remember chianti bottle candle holders. In fact, I used to buy chianti just for the bottle because all the cool girls had candles and, well, I couldn’t be left out could I?
That color!
As I perused wine at the Drug Emporium (no kidding – one of the best selections around), I was dumbstruck in the Italian section.
I’ve been in the throes of painting and as I finally whittle down the number of rooms in need of painting, my thoughts turn to the dreaded hall that houses the stairs. This area is going to be horrible to paint and I have to get the color right the first time. If I manage to complete the stairwell in my lifetime, it will be the last time that area is painted. The color choice is complicated by the open floor plan and getting the exact right color is critical. Critical, I tell you. The fate of the free world hangs in balance.
Isn't that just luscious?
I’ve been flirting with the idea of a pinky peach – or peachy pink – that color where fuchsia and tangerine run away to Morocco for illicit sex under a slow-turning ceiling fan. The color your eyelids turn after two strawberry daiquiris on a beach blanket. The color that is the sound of passion. You know. That color.
So. There I am in the Drug Emporium choosing a wine when this chianti bottle leaps off the shelf and into my basket. I’m not really a huge fan of chianti, but this bottle is kicker. The straw casing weaves fuschia and tangerine together and produces that color. While that hallway will most likely end up a matronly forest green, I do now possess a retro-trendy chianti candle holder for my soon to be completed study.
Blue Monkey
And if the chianti bottle wasn’t exciting enough, I was stopped dead in my tracks at the clearance shelf. Indeed, I gaped in astonishment.
Most folk don’t know it, but at one time I was the world’s foremost expert on Minoan blue monkey frescoes. Really. For all I know, I still am. I haven’t kept up with the research. But I wrote the best research paper of my life on the mystery of why the Minoans, living on an island in the Mediterranean, were provoked to draw blue monkeys on their walls. I didn’t actually answer the question, but I had a lot of fun ruminating. You may, as I did, find it curious that people have been including photos of the blue monkey frescoes in anthropology, history, and art books for decades and decades without ever addressing the question as to why a bunch of proto-Greeks were decorating with a monkey motif.
The no-longer-lonely other blue monkey decorative item.
So, I’m admiring my chianti bottle and considering taking it to the paint aisle at the Lowe’s, when I discover the blue monkey wine. It’s a zinfandel and I’m not a huge fan, but, really people, it’s in a BLUE MONKEY bottle. Serious. How could I not buy it?
So. I now have two bottles of wine I bought simply for the bottles and which will become decorative items in my study. God help me, I’m decorating with wine bottles plus I’ve spent $30 on wine that I don’t particularly like. It’s a big old goofy world and I’m the leading lady.
La Cerveza Mas Fina
I’m not much of a beer drinker – never was – not even when The Ex and I were home-brewing. I do enjoy a beer now and again and I particularly enjoy a nice bock. If I’m in the mood, Guinness is good. When in London, I fell in love with dogbolter.
Tonight, it’s Corona Extra. The label tells me it is la cerveza mas fina. Perhaps. Personally, I think Negra Modelo es la cerveza mas fina. But I’m not going to quibble when Corona is the only beer in the house.
There’s nothing like hard labor to bring on the desire for a beer.
Normally, wine is my drug of choice. And tonight, while painting and planning the celebratory beer, I puzzled over why it is that collapsing in a chair, grungy and exhausted after hard labor, my first thought is to grab a beer and not a nice malbec. It’s a testament to my normal slothdom that the only beer in the house is two bottles of Corona left by a dear friend following my birthday bacchanal. I don’t collapse grungy and exhausted from hard labor nearly enough.
People don’t crawl out from underneath a car after an oil change and grab a pinot grigio. Nope. Beer is for manual labor. [If I tell the story about taking apart the carburetor, washing it in Joy dishwashing liquid and reassembling it while sipping a fine merlot, I will contradict myself so that story will have to wait.] Cleaning out the gutters doesn’t provoke a German white or a cheeky sauvignon blanc. Nor does housecleaning, dog bathing, raking, or car washing. Beer is to manual labor what champagne is to New Year’s Eve.
While embroiled in the bowels of home maintenance, the evening has also been one of comfortable solitude.
Just about this time of year, five years ago, I became the only human living in this house. Having always been one who required more than the average amounts of alone time, the specter of living alone was a friendly ghost. I craved solitude. And quiet. Dear God, I needed quiet. My life was noisy and frenzied and stressful. Solitude sounded like a wonderful thing.
I have a decent stereo system, but I don’t believe in music as background noise. If I’m going to listen to music, I’m going to sit and intently listen to music. I do, however, tend to listen to music while attending to mindless tasks – tasks like painting. Tonight, though, I wanted the quiet. I painted and listened, intently, to the quiet. I heard the roller’s slight squeak as the paint spread over the wall and I heard the squeak of the floorboards. They were nice sounds.
Even after 5 years, I enjoy the quiet and I enjoy the solitude. My life is still noisy and frenzied and stressful, but the house is as calm and quiet as I choose to make it. Right now the house is quiet and the tapping of the computer keys sounds especially loud. There’s a train off in the distance and its faint noise highlights the quiet. It’s nice. I’m a fan of quiet (and trains).
The beer is about gone and I should go to bed – I’m tired, but I’m loathe to go. I’m enjoying my thoughts and the quiet as well as feeling virtuous that I’ve finally applied a fair amount of paint to the study walls. There’s something to be said for solitary, hard labor and a cold beer.
W. Va. Fur and Root 