More Notes from the 18th and 19th Centuries and Back to Our Normal Programming

I cope by running to the hills with appropriate poetry. Here's some:

The world is too much with us

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers --
Little we see in Nature is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

William Wordsworth
(1770-1850)

And if you're tired of it all, the whole damn mess, I'll take you back to my regular programming. You can even lick the frosting from the bowl -- or my fingers. Take your pick.

First there was this:

Then there was this:

And then, this:

And after, this:

Oh, and finally this:

If you're an old doddering fool, there's this:

Optimism

Here's a joke that never fails to make me laugh. I first heard it from my best and oldest friend. Thank you, dear Moye.

Two twins were identical in every way physically, but there was one major difference -- one was an optimist; the other a pessimist. For one the glass was always half full, for the other half empty. If the temperature was just right for the one, it was just wrong for the other. One found every day beautiful, the other oppressive. Clothes fit “perfectly” on one, too tight or too loose on the other. 
    On the girls’ birthday one year, the father of the twins decided to try an experiment. While his daughters were at school, he filled the room of the pessimist with toys and games, and filled the optimist’s room with horse manure. When the girls came home, they went to their respective rooms and found their “birthday presents.” After a few minutes, the father stopped in to visit each.      He found the pessimist sulking amid the heap of toys and games. “What’s wrong?,” he asked. “There are so many directions, so many pieces to assemble, and so much trash to throw away” she moaned. “And all my friends are going to hate me with jealousy.” When he went to the optimist’s room, he found his daughter happily digging and kicking her way through the manure. “Why do you look so happy?” he asked. She answered, “There’s got to be a pony around here somewhere!"

Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails

Are you starting to think that I'm being driven to drink as my post yesterday and now, today, is about alcohol? A few comments yesterday expressed concern; I believe there were even subtle suggestions that alcohol isn't the answer.

I want to allay your fears. I'd make the point that I've never been a drinker and can't imagine becoming an alcoholic at the age of 48. I guess you never know, but like I explained yesterday, drinking doesn't make me do anything other than feel sleepy, and I don't really enjoy the sleepy feeling. I'd also add that I'm a very social person, and when I drink I become increasingly not-so-social (again, the sleepiness) and would rather disappear -- to bed, preferably. Alone.

So. If you're new to the blog (and I have gotten some new readers who are very welcome!), you might also think that The Husband has a Mistress. I have gotten comments expressing wonder, astonishment and even admiration that my tolerance is such that I can joke about The Mistress. I'll allay your fears here as well. The Mistress is my husband's Job. He is a chef and literally works 12-20 hours a day six days and sometimes seven days a week. The Mistress is demanding and The Husband has little to any sway over those demands. 

So, we've cleared those things up.

What about the title of this post? It's the title of a book that my son Henry gave me for Christmas. It's very cool, and he was very proud that he got it for me from my favorite bookstore, helped by my favorite bookstore maven, Liz. Here's a little excerpt from the book:

Cocktails were morning drinks. Drinking in the morning often means getting over what you were drinking last night, and that kind of behavior is what they used to call dissipated. If that wasn't sufficiently nefarious, cocktails contained bitters. Bitters may sound benign to modern ears, but at the dawn of the nineteenth century, they were medicine. Adding them to cocktails was the equivalent of dousing one's beer with Nyquil. No one knows for sure how the cocktail got its name, but I am certain it was because these were your wake-up call -- like a rooster heralding the early morning light. And the plumage? Those spicy bitters... If you drank a cocktail, you were a little dangerous, and therein lay the seeds of its fame.

I have to admit that I love both of these words, both as descriptors and for themselves:

dissipated and bitters.

Since I've talked about alcoholism and mistresses, dissipation, bitters and my own tolerance for all of them, including a bit of Tolstoy love yesterday, I think I'll also include a recipe from the book for a drink that might really rock your world. Here it is:

Shake the following otherwise bourgeois ingredients in a cocktail shaker, and strain into a cocktail glass:

1 ounce gin
1 ounce orange juice
1/2 ounce cherry brandy (Cherry Heering is recommended)
1/2 ounce fresh lemon juice

What about the photo at the top of the post? Well, that's my paternal grandfather, an Italian immigrant who owned a bar and grill in Harlem. That photo is one of my favorites and causes the most ruckus when I ask the viewer to pick out my grandfather in the bunch. While you might be tempted to think otherwise, there is no alcoholism that I know of in my family.

Coping Strategy #1

Let Dinner "Go"

Menu

Cheese Dip made with processed cheese and a can of Rotel

(think about college boyfriend, love of life while melting in pot on stove)

Tortilla Chips

Spinach Salad with Crumbled White Stilton and Cranberries, Candied Pecans, Croutons and Vinaigrette

Chocolate Milk

Result:

Children are flabbergasted: This is dinner? Awesome!