August 19, 2011

Kindred Spirits

Day 9 of U.S. life.

Still in limbo-total (which sounds cooler when said with the Portuguese pronunciation).

I was speaking to Roberta this morning, discussing the various motivations for my anxiety. Now, dear reader, you must know that Roberta and I jointly believe that a healthy ingestion of wine can alleviate, even prevent, many ailments--and it will be no use to argue us on this point. We are steadfast. Resolute.

During our banter, I suddenly realized that I had only ingested 2 glasses of wine in these 9 days, over one Italian meal with my parents this week.

Well... no wonder.

So I bought a bottle of wine at the CVS pharmacy (thank you, U.S.A., for that delectable irony), while I nipped in to pick up Dad's prescription.

Bear in mind that I am living in the home of Lorraine--my step-mother's mother, recently deceased (a mãe da minha madrasta, recentemente falecida). I already had mixed feeling about that, for mixed reasons. But tonight I went looking for a wine glass in the fully-stocked kitchen.

None.

A few martini glasses.

A couple liqueur glasses, of the cordial variety.

Not-a-one wine glass.

How can that be?

Ninety-three years old and not one wine glass?

I stole one from my Dad & Kris' kitchen, just upstairs, poured my merlot, and sat on the porch to reflect.

I could imagine two possible scenarios:

1) She never much cared for wine and therefore never needed the stemware, in which case we had nothing in common.

2) She broke them all, the last one being... well, forget the details... the point being, we had everything in common.

August 12, 2011

Mind over Body (Anecdote from the journey home)

I went to join the gym down the street yesterday and, naturally, they made me go through all the physical fitness evaluation stuff... yeah, like I don't know that my lifestyle contributes to less than stellar fitness. Anyway. The guy said that, according to his funky program calculations which are most certainly devised to exacerbate the negatives of one's condition in order to sell a membership, my "physical age equates to that of a 58 year old" - to which I rapidly retorted, "yes, but what your machine doesn't tell you is that, there is no way that a 37-year-old has the physical attributes of someone 20 years older without having the mental age of someone 20 years younger... therefore, I have had enough fun to earn that condition and I'm proud of it."

Salesman laughed, "good one."