TheBanyanTree: Day 2 of the Alone Project

[Monique Colver]

I have begun a project which entails me living on my own for days at a time.
This may not seem very challenging, but I've grown accustomed to having
charming husband around on a constant basis. We both work from home, so
we're always tripping over each other and whoever's not trying to work is
making so much noise the other person can't think. We happen to like it this
way.

Alas, he is now working in Seattle for several months, and this means, given
the distance between here and there, that he'll only be home on weekends.
While I realize that many people go for long periods without seeing their
significant others for a variety of more pressing reasons, this is
different. You have to know this much: we are madly in love and the mere
thought of being away from each other for a night is unbearable. (Do you
like how I just put us in a special class while managing to denigrate the
relationships of countless others? We're special all right.)

So yes, people do this all the time, for much longer periods, and I figure
if they can do it for long periods, I can do it for five days at a time. I
am, after all, chronologically a grown up.

Unfortunately, there are a few things I am unable to manage on my own. I've
come to rely upon charming husband for certain tasks, being rather the lazy
sort that I am. When I have a bottle of wine to open, I hand it to him, and
he opens it. This morning I was reminded of my limitations, which came as
quite a shock, since I like to think I have none.

(Are you thinking I'm starting to drink wine early in the morning and
proceeding throughout the day?)

I decided that I would set a precedent for responsible behavior and
undertake the task of feeding myself as if I matter. I have a reputation for
forgetting to eat, and then, at the last minute, deciding any old thing will
do, such as popcorn. Yesterday I stopped at Taco Bell. Can  you believe it?
That can't possibly be good for me. Fortunately I had a board dinner to
attend last night and there were scads of vegetables, so I was in luck. I
decided that today I would make a stew, and last night I stopped at the
store to pick up a few things. I found six dollar wine on sale for three
dollars. Who can pass that up? I mean, it's not like I'm going to drink it
or anything. But there's nothing like a red wine, good or not, for dealing
with the fond after the meat has browned. (I don't always take care of
myself well, but I can cook. We take turns around here. We're enlightened
and all that.)

This morning while browning the meat I cut up some vegetables in nice big
chunks to match the meat. Then I tackled the wine bottle. You would think,
for that price, they'd just put a screw top on it and forget about it. But
no. The thing has a cork. I used to use, back in the days when I did my own
wine decanting, a simple handheld corkscrew which would invariably get me a
mutilated cork, but access to the wine. I'm not that big a wine drinker so
it was never really an issue, and I have strainers to strain out the cork
that gets into the wine. Really. This is how I cook. Stop shaking your head
-- I never said I was perfect.

But my reliable corkscrew, which is simply a corkscrew and not much else, is
nowhere to be found. This is probably because charming husband has his own
versions of corkscrews. I found one, a lethal looking contraption, and put
it over the top of the bottle and then . . . nothing. There must be a trick
to these things that I'm unaware of. I could not figure it out.

I looked around a bit more, and found some sort of vacuum pump corkscrew
still in its original case. This looked promising. I wondered why it was
still in the original case, and then realized it was still taped shut. How
could this be? And yet, it had been opened -- one of the little rubber tops
for opened bottles was gone. Charming husband is probably so fond of his
exquisite corkscrew that he tapes it back up when he's done. It looked as if
it would know what to do all by itself, without needing any help from me.

I opened it, put the thing around the top of the bottle, and then became my
normal clueless self.

What the? I'm sure it's simple and easy and any five-year old could figure
it out, though I hope five-year olds aren't figuring it out in order to
drink wine. But I am technologically challenged at times, and I can't see
how things work. I can see how people work quite well, but things? Not so
much. I gave up on the wine, and substituted other liquids, none of them of
the spirit variety. I am well accustomed to substitutions.

When charming husband is home on the weekend I shall have him open the wine,
then stick one of those rubber thingies in the top of it. Those I can figure
out all by myself. I'll be set for week two.

-- 
Monique Colver