If we were sipping a glass of wine: Day 25

If we were sipping a glass of wine together I would tell you this is my favorite quotation from a movie: "You gotta be brave before you can be good," from Hearts Beat Loud. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend it. It's a story that will leave you feeling good. And don't you need that after a day of scrolling Facebook and reading rude, stupid, incendiary texts shit out of a disgusting orange goat fart? Watching a movie about good people heals hope. You can watch it free on Kanopy if your library offers it.



If we were sipping a glass of wine together I would tell you I have discovered the most delicious way to eat leftover turkey .... OK, I didn't discover it. My friend Chicken Grrrrl told me how she does it. Whatever. She said she mixes leftover cranberry/orange relish with mayonnaise and spreads it on good white bread. Then she adds leftover turkey and a leaf of crisp lettuce. She said it's delicious.

I don't eat much bread, so I made mine in a big lettuce leaf. I squirted on some mayo, spread cranberry/orange relish over that, then piled on some leftover turkey. It's divine. Much better than it should be. Maybe even better than the original turkey dinner. If I were making these for company, I'd add some chopped toasted pecans, but it's highly unlikely I'm going to share. Try it either way. You'll feel positively gourmet.

If we were sipping a glass of wine together I would tell you Coraline wants to take karate. She's 7 and what she really wants is someone to teach her how to protect herself and how to take somebody who's bigger than she is down. She's not worried yet about boys or men trying to force themselves on her. Thank you, Jesus. But she does have a good friend, a sweet boy, who is a year older than her, and who is bigger and stronger. He plays a lot of sports. And they like to wrestle. She wants to learn some moves so she can compete  better in their wrestling matches. It's not that he's too rough nor is he mean or aggressive. He's just physically stronger and used to being tackled in football.

I'm guiding her toward jujitsu. Might as well get a start on self defense. Every woman needs it, much as that makes me want to throw up my glass of wine. I wish I'd taken my daughter to some kind of martial arts class. Lesson learned.

If we were sipping a glass of wine together I would long ago have offered you some Lays Classic potato chips or some lime tortilla chips or some peanut butter-filled pretzels. I don't know about you, but I like some salt with my wine. And that's why I've decided I have to join Weight Watchers.

I hate to admit this here where you only see my words, but I am fat, and now it's not all in my head, damn it. Elvira says I'm not really fat, but she's wrong this time. Sweet, but wrong. I feel like I'm wearing a fat suit, and it gets in my way. And the fatter I get, the less I want to move around like I used to. I used to put 100 miles or more on my bike every week. Now it just sits there and I haven't replaced riding with anything other than eating more chocolate and drinking more wine. I'm disgusted with myself.

A few of my friends have done Weight Watchers and it worked. So I'm going to do it too. I may wait until after the first of the year. Or I may be repulsed enough by myself to start during the food-filled winter holiday season. Ugh. If only there were a magic pill. Or a magic glass of wine.

I suppose we'll have to drink tea next time.

If we were sipping a glass of wine together I'd tell you Miss Serendipity visited today. As I was getting ready for the day, blow drying my hair and putting on mascara and such, I was thinking about Facebook and how much of my precious time it takes up. How I'm like a rat in a maze trying to find the lever that will give me a like or a heart or JACKPOT! a comment. And how I need to get off it for a while and get back to doing some of the things I used to do. This isn't the first time I've had this come-to-Jesus meeting with myself, and it was probably triggered by an artist friend who often takes breaks from Facebook -- even disables her account [shudder] -- so she can focus on her art and on her inner life. Whatever the reason, I knew I had to do something about this addiction.

And then I went to the church up the street from us, and the minister's sermon was about paying attention. And about how we don't pay attention because we're paying attention to our screens. And how Facebook is not a replacement for real, FTF interactions with other people. It's like she was talking right to me, because I'm pretty sure I'm married to Facebook and I never even got the ring.

I felt a text vibrate my phone in my back pocket during the sermon and it was all I could do not to grab my phone and immediately open it. I waited until the offering to surreptitiously glance. I didn't answer it until I got home though, so I think I get half a point.

I wish I could do both. I wish I could cruise Facebook for hours every day and still play my guitar and make art and write the fucking book nobody will buy already. But I can't. Not only that though, I'm not paying attention and it's affecting my attention span, which is almost nonexistent these days.

So I'm going to make a list of the things I'd rather be doing than Facebook, and then, once this month of NaBloPoMo is up, I'm going to stop carrying my phone around and checking Facebook every spare minute of my day. And just for good measure, I'm going to delete solitaire from my Kindle. I'm going to pay attention in December. It's possible nobody will pay attention to me because they'll all be on Facebook or Snapchat, but I'm going to give it my best try.

If we were slugging down the dregs of a bottle of wine, I'd have to tell you goodnight now and either push you out the door or make up the couch so you could sleep here. Then I'd let the dogs out, start the dishwasher, check the locks, tuck you in if you're still here, and head on up to bed. 

Good night. Sleep tight. We don't joke about bedbugs here in the 'hood.