Full of boozy goodness

High on life.

I like to drink. Rarely to excess, but frequently. Often to be social, but more often alone or at least keeping my own counsel. I love the warm smell of whiskey, the sharpness of a really cold martini (gin, very dry, two olives with all the brine shaken off them first), the drying bitter tannin of red wine, the sharp but sweetish bubbles of champagne. A cold craft beer on a hot evening, or with a veggie burger and a load of fries. Mulled wine on the stove all New Year's Day. Egg nog with spiced rum and sprinkled nutmeg, in a crystal glass clinking with ice cubes. Tequila shot with a friend, for the ritual of salt-shot-lemon, and for the warmth and aftertaste of the drink itself, its sense of devil-may-care. Whiskey sour when I'm feeling Dorothy Parker-ish. Tom Collins when I'm feeling J. D. Salinger-ish. Seagram's Wildberry cooler when I'm (extremely rarely) feeling highschool-ish. A Dubonnet Manhattan (two cherries) after Miss Baby goes to bed and Pynchon has lit a fire and we're setting up the Scrabble board.

As I say, I like to drink.

This was an acquired habit. I had to learn how to drink. My birth father was an alcoholic for years and years before dying suddenly of a heart attack at 57: it was like he committed suicide in slow motion. My stepfather, still in his twenties when he took up with my ten-years-older mother, was for much of my childhood a weekend drunk who was sometimes found on the kitchen floor in his underpants on Sunday mornings. On the very fringes of the incrowd in highschool, alcohol seemed to me to make people into vomiting morons who spent vast sums on illicit booze only to end up passed out in the shrubbery, or driven home by the cops, or, in one memorable instance, sent to the hospital for a stomach-pumping. I was an avowed teetotaller; not hard to imagine how I remained on the far fringes of highschool society. In university, too, booze did not seem to bring out the best in my acquaintances, and Toronto was expensive enough without buying drinks with money I could instead spend on black lipstick or an asymmetrical haircut at House of Lords.

For me, to learn to drink socially or even at all was a real mark of maturity: it meant regretting my father and stepfather while not so forcefully rejecting them, and it meant not judging my friends by the standards of these problem drinkers. I was learning to live and let live, and that other people's indulgences were their escape. I also had to learn to abandon a little bit of the high moral ground the teetotaller can believe herself to occupy, and to learn to give up a little bit of my precious control--maybe I might get silly and fall asleep with my makeup on. That might be okay. I learned to drink wine with dinner, to enjoy a gin-and-tonic when out on the town. When I started my PhD, I even learned to like beer, because a bar diet of gin-and-tonics can quickly bankrupt a girl.

The summer that I studied for my candidacy exams (three, three-hour written exams on the topic of "What Really Smart People Should Know, So You'd Better Study Your Arse Off For Five Months, Imposter") I joked to my friends that if I was going to drink alone, at least I would do it in style. I bought a cocktail shaker and a bartender's guide. Every payday, I bought a new kind of alcohol: gin, vermouth, triple-sec, whiskey, Dubonnet, bitters, rum. I tried new cocktails: margaritas, sours, collinses, mint juleps, manhattans, cosmopolitans. It was great fun. I had one drink probably three nights a week. It was great. I learned a lot about spirits and mixology and the history of the cocktail. I tried to match my drink to whatever novel I was reading. I bought cocktail glasses, old-fashioned glasses, highball glasses. I came into fancy beer steins and pint glasses. I received gifts of thrift-store crystal tumblers, of the tin cups for mint juleps. I came to adore the rituals, the smells, the tactile pleasure of mixing a drink, seeing it in the perfect glass, and enjoying its taste. The buzz, of course.

I like to drink. So this week, I bring you, a week of alcohol: one drink per night, with photo and recipe where appropriate, and a story about booze.

Tonight the drink is red wine--'le petit sommelier', or 'wine in a tetra-pak', bought because Pynchon doesn't drink red wine, and I can't finish a bottle before it turns to vinegar. It is served in a massive wine glass, our 'wedding crystal' that came free as part of our Carribbean wedding package. Enjoy!

Do not put wine on your computer. Notice the gazillion year old Dell in the background.

Glass shown 1/10th actual size. If you fill it, you will fall over.

Names, part two

You may already have read that Miss Baby is named for her maternal great-grandmother, 'Hortense', and that it took some time for her (well, me, really) to grow into this name.

Names: they're complicated, as anyone who has ever been married or divorced, or the child of remarried divorced people, or later-married people well know. Last names, of course, are usually what's at issue. In my case, I carry my stepfather's last name, as does my mother, largely because in the small town where we lived, to have my father's last name would always link you to him--and you'd never be able to write a cheque anywhere, or get phone service hooked up. I remember getting teased a lot at school, in grade 3, when my mom remarried: it was so unusual then to have a divorced mother, a remarried mother, and then to take a new surname! I guess we didn't want to look like a 'weird' blended family. Nowadays, everyone is surprised that I have my stepfather's name. Still, when I got married, I kept this name, 'my' name, because I've lived with it for more than 20 years, have a passport proclaiming it my own, have published and created a professional reputation under its banner. Pynchon has his name; I have mine. Miss Baby has Pynchon's last name--doesn't bother me a bit. It's her name. Anyhow, she is named for my grandmother, and she also bears my middle name, so it's not like I've left her unmarked by me and 'mine', if you will.

But that's not what this post is about! (Thought the length thus far might make you doubt ...)

This post is about Miss Baby's given name, and how I've somehow turned into my mother, and made the curse of my name her own, in a second generation 'whoopsie.'

Here's the thing. I also have a french given name, something antique that no one francophone has named their kids for about 65 years. So it's french but not cool with french people. Also, it has an anglicized pronunciation--in fact, there is an English version of my name. But it is also pronounceable in French. This means (sigh) that no one who hears it pronounced can spell it properly, or even recognizes the French spelling as a reasonable variant. On the flip side, no one who sees it spelled can figure how to say it properly, which often leaves me in the awkward position of re-anglicizing my name when well-meaning people call me by the french version--which is, of course, the way my name is spelled.

Confused yet? Basically, I have an old-fashioned french name, that is by convention (my mother's) pronounced in English.

I have bestowed this linguistic mess on my daughter: she has an old-fasioned french name, pronounced (following the practice of her namesake) in English. So no one who sees it written pronounces it correctly, and no one who hears it spoken can spell it.

I always hated the awkwardness and confusion of my name, and the inference from confused interlocuters that it was somehow a sub-par 'made up' name, and now, goddammit, my daughter will never get found in the database at the hairdresser, will always have to spell her name twice for people who don't pay attention the first time she starts to speak it, will be described as 'ununusal' and will be explaining to francophones why her french name is to be pronounced in English. Mangled addressed admail. People trying to avoid addressing her directly until they hear the pronunciation. And it's not even the same name as mine! And I never saw this coming! And it's confusion and awkwardness all around!

At least, unlike my name, Miss Baby's does not feature any accented characters. The hell of that will be described in a future post. Likely entitled 'Names, part three'. Stay tuned. Let's just say I'm developing a strong sense of linguistic nationalism because the bureaucracy of this country can only partially cope with a paltry, innocent little é ...

whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP

You may recognize in my title the telltale sound of the breastpump: three times a day, for ten to twenty minutes at a go, the whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP ties me to my Miss Baby, now at home with Pynchon while I pick up the pieces of my academic life at the office.

whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP, whup-WHOMP.

Initially, I looked on the pump askance: I considered it a mommy-replacement device, likely because my desire to have Miss Baby drink from a bottle owed largely to my increasing desperation to get a little distance from the milk vampire, in ways I simply couldn't when she was eating every 90 minutes every day. The pump, that is, was marking me as a bad mommy, because it indicated my desire to get away.

Soon, though, as my return to work loomed nearer and nearer , I rethought my attitude to the pump: now, since it was unavoidable that Miss Baby and I be separated for eight or nine hours during the day, was it not a testament to my motherly love that I would still work hard to provide her with Mommy-Milk in my absence? In this case, the pump marked me as a good mommy, one who sacrifices personal dignity and time to hook herself up to a milking machine for the benefit of absent baby daughter.

This was all fine and good for most of the first week back at work.

But I keep forgetting to pump.

Here's the thing: I have no reason not to pump. I have a private office, with a door that both closes and locks. My schedule is my own to devise, and I come and go and set my own day as I please. The pump is sitting right beside my desk. And yet. It's usually a throbbing boobie or a call from the home front that actually makes me lift up my shirt and set the whup-WHOMPer in motion. So now I'm all worried about messing up my milk supply, which is a practical concern. Less practical is the return of all the guilt and anxiety and self-recrimination: how could I so totally forget baby daughter as to allow myself to get caught up in my own thoughts? Her Bad Mother describes a gruelling scene of similar selfishness, and while not waving back at your baby is much more heartwrenching than developing sore boobies, both cases promote in the unlucky mommy a real sense of shame at her own selfishness.

Here's what I'm not supposed to admit: sometimes, at work, I get so caught up in what I'm doing--reading, or writing, or completing petty paperwork, or organizing ideas--that I forget all about my baby. It's at once so obvious and normal, and so guilt-provoking and heartcatching. Sometimes I forget. But I always always come back to remembering.

Sigh. It's astonishing how I can find stuff to feel guilty about, non?

Drug bust next door?

On Sunday morning, Miss Baby cut us some slack and snoozed her way to a 100 minute nap, so I thought I'd get all festive and start on the Christmas cards, leading to the following scene at our dining room table.

Note all the requisite elements scattered around the little space I've left myself to scribble: snowman decoration, coffee in Xmas mug, address book, stamps, assortment of cards, multi-colored pens. The breast pump component up in the right corner might seem overkill, but hey--I had a lot of cards to do, and who knew how long that nap was going to last? :-)


However, I soon became too distracted to work. Because when I turn my head to the left and look out the window, I see this.

Yup. Two squad cars. There's another one you can't see. These were soon followed by an ambulance, and the spectacle of three officers and two paramedics warily circling the building, and then finally disappearing into it after about half an hour. Eventually, the paramedics reemerged with a really drunk guy, whom they drove away in the ambulance. We're still pretty sure it was some kind of drug bust because, well, we've seen it before. In the house across the street. If you look at the top of the rightmost pane of my dining room window, you'll see a house with a purple porch. Grow-op! Busted last year. Squad cars aplenty, and a police trailer to haul away evidence. And, best of all, a sandwich board announcing the shutting down of a drug house. During the bust! Is nothing advertising-free?

Anyhow, thought you all might like to share in this weekend's excitement, and figured I ought to offer something good, having been offline for so long. (Computer now fixed. Hurrah!) And Merry It's Almost Xmas Time!!!!

Powerbook is sick! Woe is Mimi!

Hello small band of actual returning readers ... My computer, a beloved 15" Mac Powerbook is in the shop, because I updated the software, attempted to reboot ... and got ... nothing. So now I'm on Pynchon's gazillion year old Dell and all my thinkings and stuff are on the Powerbook. Please direct your collective thoughts towards the speedy recovery of the Silver Bullet.

Oh dear. And this has made me much behind on my blogging:
* I went back to work on Friday!
* Pynchon's a stay-at-home Daddy!
* I have a post about my feet to share with you!
* I have photos of the drug bust next door

(Alpha Dogma, this last is for you -- there's another photo of the interior of my house, and its lovely wavy-glass original windows ... overlooking 3 squad cars, an ambulance, and the Sketchy Triplex Next Door. To help you love your seventies burb :-) )

More soon, Steve Jobs willing ... sigh ...