Cheese and wine. Minus the cheese.

My Hubs and I text often.  Usually it's something inane like BRING HOME FOOD.  Sometimes it's racy.  We like to keep the spice.  This last weekend was no different.  Except I was in a foul mood and my texts were nothing of the normal sort. 

I had just spent a really horrid day with my kids.  I was trapped in my home as all our cars are broken and was bereft of transportation.  Should I have had a working vehicle, I wouldn't've left the house anyways as our farm was rapidly becoming the setting of Noah's hood post-Ark construction.  That's flowery language for IT RAINED A WHOLE LOT.

Which means my children were practicing in How To Make Mommy Go Hoarse And Later Cry In The Kitchen With Her Face Buried In A Hand Towel.

So. 

My Hubs texted me to let me know he was leaving work and would be home shortly.

And I texted back BRING ALCOHOL.

I've said this before to him. Usually he brings me Diet Coke. Because he knows BRING ALCOHOL is usually code for MY DAY HAS SUCKED ROCKS BRING ME A PRIZE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. 

Only this time, he took me seriously.

So it was with great surprise that I watched my Hubs trudge up the stairs to our abode laden with plastic shopping bags from Publix containing that night's menu.  And a large blue bottle.

Let me give you a brief aside:

See, we're not drinkers.  I've had the occassional sip of boozy drink over the years.  Once it was a "Quick, my parents aren't home, let's mix up a Screwdriver" in 9th grade, once this one random wine cooler from 10th grade whilst midnight-sledding, a sip of a Margharita last year...just little "let me taste it" moments.  But my Hubs has never drank anything stronger than orange juice after the expiration date.  We're both pretty square. Pretty conservative.  Pretty vanilla. 

We've often perused the Wine Aisle at Publix, inspecting the hooch, reading the foreign language of wine with confusification: CHABLAIS, BEAUJOLAIS, SOAVE, BORDEAUX...lots of words.  All we see is BLUE BOTTLE, GREENISH BOTTLE, FOIL COVERED BOTTLE, EXPENSIVE BOTTLE.  And then we'd slink off to the Frozen Food Aisle feeling ignorant and dorky. 

Until Saturday, when my Hubs braved the Booze Aisle, texted a friend who knows his wines and had a text-versation I suspect went something like this:

HUBS:  Dude.  I'm in the Booze Aisle.  IDK what the crap I'm doing.  What kind should we get?
HUBS' FRIEND:  Get a weird blue bottle.  It's goooood.
HUBS:  Thanks.

So.  It was with mixed emotions I watched him crack open the Weird Blue Bottle, pour the yellowy mixture into coffee cups, because sadly, we're fresh out of wine glasses, and carry the potent liquid to the couch. 

We sat and looked at each other and took a deep breath and said "Here goes!" and took a swig.

I wouldn't recommend swigging a strange brew, especially when you can barely read the words on the bottle and it smells like old juice.  Nevertheless, swig we did.  It was...gross.  I did not feel any sophisticationish vibes nor could my mouth ease from the pucker it immediately drew up from Taste One.  By Taste Seven, I was swallowing as fast as I could and trying to hold my tongue in suspension, so as to avoid taste or sensation of any sort. 

For 15 minutes, we nursed our coffee mug wine and would say to each other "do you feel any different?  I don't feel any different.  Am I drunk?  What does drunk feel like?  Is your throat burning?  Maybe this is like rubbing alcohol and we won't get sick this week, I definitely feel some germ burning.  This is gross.  I don't think I could ever like this.  Why do I feel guilty?  I'm 34 years old.  I'm allowed to drink wine.  How much was this? Ten dollars? Dang. We could've bought a cheesecake for that. "

I couldn't even finish mine.  I felt like such a failure.  And way more vanilla.  And really craving cheesecake.  Perhaps I wasted my teenaged years when I could've learned to appreciate gross drinks. 

I shall steer clear of all blue bottles with foreign words.  Unless Diet Coke makes something in a blue bottle.