In the Land of the Nectar of the Gods

First off, thank you to everyone who weighed in on my deodorant dilemma. I so greatly appreciate your concern with my malodorous armpits. Thankfully, there were no stinky incidents on the trip.

Secondly, please bear with me through this post. My brain cells (I just typed sells instead of cells) are still a bit blotto from the weekend. Even with a daily nap, it seems I never quite got enough rest to rejuvenate my drunk little neural pathways. So I think many of them are shut down right now.


The weekend was fantastic. Mostly just because everything connected to wine is beautiful and decadent and timeless. Driving through rolling hills dotted with oak trees and flanked by striated vineyards is sort of like crawling across a big beautiful patchwork quilt. It’s comfortable and you appreciate the care and craftsmanship that went into creating it, and you really want to just stop and take a nap on it. Seriously, I think there’s a reason they named it Napa up there…


Then there’s the whole process of swirling the wine in your glass and watching it catch the light; holding it to your nose, trying to pick up fragrances of green apple or earth; swishing it around your mouth as its buttery flavor coats your tongue. It’s an indulgence for every sense.


We went to about a dozen wineries and tasting rooms. La Crema, Kendall Jackson, Seghesio, Simi, Lambert Ridge, Rosso & Bianco (Coppola’s), Cosentino, Miner Family, V. Sattui, Merryvale, Rubicon (also Coppola’s), Opus One, and Silver Oak. At a couple of them, we just wandered around a bit an enjoyed the scenery. At all the rest, we sipped and poured, trying to determine how badly we wanted to add a bottle to our purchase list.


We ended up shipping 12 bottles from about 5 different locations. And Mr. Wonderful joined the wine club at our favorite spot which I’ll write about in a separate post.


I’m wearing a grey shirt today, which pretty much sums up how I feel about being back in LA. I was so depressed last night I cried after I left Mr. W’s house. There’s something about getting so high on the taste of olives and cheese and Cabernet and kisses then having to come back to the daily grind. Quite a downer. At least I can smile every time I look down at the type across my new grey t-shirt…it reads “pinot envy.”

We’ll Have a Stinkin’ Good Time

Mr. Wonderful and I are headed up to Napa this weekend for four days of drunken, naked debauchery. Okay, we won’t be naked the whole time, but we will be all wined up and we’ll definitely be debauching. Maybe. Or maybe we’ll be really snooty and speak about “legs” and “bouquets” in British accents.

Anyway, I’m particularly excited about this trip because I’ve never actually been wine tasting in Napa. When I was a wee 23, my college boyfriend and I were all set to take a trip to Calistoga…and he decided to break up with me. Right before Valentine’s Day. Don’t worry, we got back together about a month later…and then broke up again the following year. And then spent several years being each other’s bootie calls… But I digress…

So for weeks, Mr. W and I have been counting down the days until our trip. Just last Sunday after returning from a hike up Temescal Canyon (which I totally meant to blog about) we were sitting on his bed, discussing the details of the trip, joking that we wouldn’t ever want to come back again.

I laid down on the bed with my arms splayed overhead, dreaming of what it would feel like to become a professional grape stomper. Mr. W toppled down next to me and when he scooted closer, he scrunched up his nose and said, “Whew!”

Enter: mortification.

Apparently his olfactory receptors had come into range of my smelly armpit. Sure, we’d gone hiking—but I put on a bunch of freakin' deodorant. I should not have been a stinkfest.

“Why do I have to always be the smelly one?! Does the other pit stink?”

We both leaned in toward the other pit and decided it wasn’t as bad as the first one. “You probably just need to change the brand of deodorant you use,” he said. Or I'm a rancid freak who should run away and join P.U. Barnum's Circus.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that I stunk up the bathroom on our last wine tasting trip and farted on him in my sleep (oh, you guys don’t know that story yet…) now I’m the girl with the putrid underarms. I’m seriously beginning to develop a complex. And it doesn’t help any that he always smells good and seems to crap peonies and spongecake.

So yesterday I went to Target and I bought new deodorant. It’s some coconut-scented Secret stuff. I held the clinical-strength Degree for about 5 minutes before deciding that I was not in fact a special stench-case who required near-prescription strength anti-venom. We’ll see how it goes. It’s supposed to be 90° up there during the day. Add in a lot of alcohol consumption and my propensity to get hot and bothered around Mr. W and it could just be a recipe for disaster. I’m going to hope for the best though—and maybe if Mr. W’s nose ends up in my pit somehow during the heat of passion, the new scent will make him smile instead of dry heaving.

What kind of deodorant/antiperspirant do you all recommend?

Angels in Soot-Covered Helmets

I’m wearing a NY Fire Department t-shirt today. I wore it last year on this day. And the year before. And the year before that. It only seems right to me.

9/11 was such a surreal event. Actually, event is the wrong word. Event has positive connotations. 9/11 was a surreal disaster. I will never forget watching everything happen on TV and feeling this overwhelming desire to be in New York. To do something to help. To hold the hands of people in that state and band together with them to heal.

I did not know anyone who was lost in the towers. But I listened to their names at the memorial and cried and cried. What struck me the very most through the whole tragedy, though, was the loss of the firemen. Report after report noted that while everyone else was running out, the firemen were running in. And it’s for them that my heart breaks the most.

My brother is a fireman. He’s been working in the field for about 17 years, with years of volunteer experience before that. Right now, he is an engineer, so he drives the truck and operates it while the other guys run into burning buildings. For this, I am lucky. But there will most likely come a time when, again, he is one of the yellow coats rushing in to rescue people.

And I hope that when that day comes, the men who I'm wearing my shirt for today will watch over and protect him.

A New Breed of Rescue Society

Chihuahuas are being saved. Pit bulls are even finding new homes. But my neglected and/or downtrodden girlfriends?
They have no place to go.

If I had enough money, I’d start an Unhappy Wife/Girlfriend Rescue and Refuge. It’d be a place for gals to retreat when their husbands or boyfriends were treating them like crap—not respecting their wishes; not looking out for their best interests; not caring how many tears were being shed.

I’d buy acres and acres of land, and build quaint little cottages for the girls and their kids. We would grow vegetable gardens and raise chickens and goats (to make goat cheese, of course). I’d get an on-site therapist to help them work through their “stuff.” I’d make Fridays “mani-pedi night” where we all sat around doing our fingers and toes, wearing our jammies, watching Footloose and Grease. I would encourage the girls to follow their dreams, despite financial setbacks. I would build them back up after their men had knocked them down.

And if they decided to sever the ties to their past, I would help them set up online dating profiles and design manifestation collages to attract men who were committed to honoring, cherishing, and listening to them. I would rehab them into daters that knew when to trust their instincts and recognize when they weren’t receiving the treatment they deserved.

Like the canine rescue programs, I would hope that after living under my roof, I could send them out to better (or drastically reformed) homes, where they would enjoy long, happy lives rolling in the grass and driving with their heads hung out the window.

Blogger’s Guilt

Hi readers. As you may have noticed, I’ve been slacking a little on the posts lately. I haven’t been responding to your comments…I haven’t been reading your blogs as diligently as I was…I can’t even seem to find time to reply to sweet people (like Semicharmed) who send me emails. And despite the lack of actual indicators that I regret my behavior and want to change my ways, you should all know that I feel extremely guilty for not fulfilling my bloggerly duties.

This little web site and the people who read it really matter to me.

It’s tricky when you get tangled in a fishing line of weddings and freelance work and family time and errands and boyfriend time and appointments. As I sit here, I’m eating my lunch with a half-numb face from the dental procedure I had done this morning. Yes, I got a mirror to watch myself eat. And yes, every time I chew, I look like a crazy bag lady who is missing half her teeth. But that’s not the point.

The point is, I’ve been backburnering this blog and I feel bad. So in an attempt to rectify things, I decided to FINALLY post my pay-it-forward list of new bloggers I like. However, when I had to choose 7 people for it, I found myself feeling guilty yet again. Because all of you blog writers deserve an award. Heck, all of you who don’t have a blog but write thoughtful comments deserve an award!

I have to thank Nilsa for not only giving me this blogger award, but for writing this fantastic post that discussed the very guilt I’ve been feeling. She rules. Speaking of rules, here are the rules for the Brillante Award:

1. The winner can put the logo on his/her blog.
2. Link to the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs for an award.
4. Put links to those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs for the people you’ve nominated.

And here are my winners:
Anita Stylist
Charlotte Harris
Just Run Just Live Just Be
My Life and Random Babblings
The Coconut Diaries
Variety is the Spice
Skrinkering Hearts

Thank you for the therapy session. I will send each of you $100 in my heart…

My Parachute

There are times—lately it seems like they’re popping up quite frequently—when stress and anxiety wrap around me so tightly, I think I’m going to suffocate. No matter how much yoga breathing I do, no matter how loud I crank up the Xanadu soundtrack, no matter how many M&Ms I stuff in my mouth, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m literally going to have a heart attack. I get so overwhelmed by obligations or anger at someone’s terrible wrongdoings or my own lack of downtime, I feel I could crack. Like looney farm crack.

Running always helps, but unless I take to just constantly jogging in place at work and home, it’s inevitable that the stress is going to get me again. And again.

So I vent. And thanks to the wonders of technology, I don’t need a blinking, breathing human being in front of me. I can vent over IM. All day. To Mr. Wonderful. And then if I see him in person later, I can spew out some more.

And every time, the most incredible thing happens: He pulls me out of my tailspin and lands me softly on solid ground.

I’m not one of those girls who only wants to vent to vent. I actually don’t mind having someone suggest to me what I should do to fix the problem. So when Mr. W says, “How about trying this?” I find myself feeling grateful.

A couple weeks ago, he and I went to dinner and I was very out of sorts. I was worrying about several different friends; I had a long day at work; I was overtired. And there across the table, he listened to each of my gripes, even saying, “What else, pumpkin?” when I’d finish one story. He offered advice and rubbed my neck. He cushioned what could’ve been a painful fall.

And he does this every time I turn to him.

When I was about 18, I was in my parents’ backyard filling the bird feeder or watering plants or some other inane task, and my mind was wandering to daydreams of travel and how great I thought my life would be when I was older and worldly. When suddenly something clicked. I realized that maybe that was why people got married. Because the fun stuff is even better when you have someone to share it with. I know, I know, I should’ve figured that one out by that age, but I was a late bloomer.

What I realize now, is that it’s not just the fun stuff that's better. It’s the hard stuff, too. The right person is there for you, at your back, willing to take over your descent with one yank of the ripcord. Because they don’t want to see you crash. And that's pretty amazing.

Discoveries

Seems like, no matter how old we are, there’s always something new to learn. Or something old to relearn. As if discovering the joy of, say, a spa day and a facial (I had my first facial ever on Saturday and it was fantastic!) weren’t enough, we have to learn things that make us look at life or ourselves a little differently.

In my last post, I called myself a man pack rat. Yet, upon combing each and every email I had been saving from the ex, I discovered that I really didn’t need them. I deleted all except a couple early ones and a few that contained poetry I had written. Although it seemed scary to just up and trash the entire folder, once I examined its contents, the deleting wasn’t frightening at all. I wasn’t losing any part of my history—I was letting go of old pain. And that’s a great thing.

Another surprise that came with this whole process was the realization that the ex reads this blog more often than I may have thought (see comment 22 on my last post). No matter how many times I tell him I forgive him—and that I’m truly happy everything turned out the way it did—he continues to apologize. He probably needs to delete my email folder, too…

I was reminded this weekend, how important it is to experience moments of true happiness every day. Whether you’re sorting through past relationship pain or buried under a mountain of personal obligations and freelance work (uh, that would be me…thus the infrequent comments on your blogs), it’s critical to take time out for little things that make you smile. In between writing my cousin’s resume and editing for my client, I found time to eat Cherry Garcia ice cream, watch a little Tori & Dean, go running and take a very relaxing hike.

I even rediscovered one of the elements of hiking I love: the way that hikers are sort of “all in this together.” It didn’t matter that I was hiking alone. The people I passed on the trail were my people. They smiled and said hello as we crossed. One guy even waved to me as I swatted at a bug—thinking I was actually greeting him. It cracked me up and made me so thankful that I had chosen to take time out for myself.

Mr. Wonderful was away for the weekend, and I found that it now feels very strange to spend so many days without him. We’ve gotten into a routine and I like it that way. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing the routine creep into a bigger routine…but we’ll figure that out when the time is right. Because I’ve discovered there’s no rush.

I also learned that Nilsa gave me a blog award that I must pay forward to 7 others. Instinct tells me this post is already too long (it's my 200th, by the way. yay me.), so I think I’ll save that one for next time…besides, it’ll give you all time to bribe me…

Happy September, everyone.