The other day my friend Dakota (hi Dakota!) came over for purely scientific reasons to help me test a new box wine.  This photo is fuzzy and for that I apologize.  Also, heads up, if you ever come to my house you will have a cat on your lap in about three minutes.  If you’re allergic it’ll probably happen within two minutes.  They sense these things.

Okay so!

This stuff is goooooooood.  I got it for $19.99 at a liquor store and I’ve seen this brand everywhere and it’s usually around $20 a box.  Frankly, $20 a box is a little steep for me, but you guys.  This wine was pretty darn good!  Dakota said it tasted “grapey” which she also told me was a way she described wine once at a restaurant where she had a waitressing job, not realizing that wine was made from grapes and calling it grapey was pretty much like calling it winey.  Also, she didn’t know wine was made from grapes.  Sorry to throw you under the bus like this, Dakota, but that’s pretty funny.  And adorable.  What did you think it was made from?

I forgot, Dakota also said that it tasted like black cherry jello, which I liked.  It’s dry but very drinkable.  Ugh I hate super, super, tongue-smackingly dry red wine, yuck.  This was dry with a hint of black cherry jello (haha) so it had nice balance.  If you’re feeling baller enough to buy a $20 box of wine, I’d recommend this one without reservations.  A.

Sidenote: I really like the outfit I was wearing that day.  Flash forward to me stealing all Billy’s button-down shirts, which he wouldn’t even care about because he only wears them when I say he has to for fancy dinners and going to see plays with me.  I have all the hand.

1.  I was very pleased when a Jewel song showed up on my Dar Williams Pandora station just now.  I have a similar reaction when I hear Natalie Merchant and Sarah McLachlan songs.

2. I truly, honestly, and simply adore the TV show Smash.

3. When a song by Dave Matthew Band comes on 92.9 FM while I’m cooking I am happy and I sing.

4. I look forward to a new issue of Us Weekly being available for me at the gym.  I enjoy reading about the Kardashians.  I’m still pretty embarrassed about this one, actually.  I’m almost deleting it.  But no.  You should know the truth.  I’m really pulling for Khloe and Lamar’s marriage to work out.

5. I like pop music and folk music.  I do not like most of the bands that Pitchfork Media likes.  I like Carrie Underwood sometimes.

6. I like merlot, reisling, and rose wines.  I’m not talking about Franzia white zinfandel, I mean real versions of these wines.  Merlot can be delicious if you’re not drinking it out of a Carlo Rossi jug.  Off-dry reislings TASTE AMAZING.  I don’t like pinot noir.  I SAID IT.

7. I thought Friends With Benefits was a really good movie.

*Or, from another perspective: A List Of Things I Wouldn’t Have Admitted To Five Years Ago, But I Am Secure Enough Now To Not Care

That’s Robin.  She’s our bird friend.  I actually have no idea if it’s a boy or girl bird, but I’m making a lot of assumptions based on the fact that she is sitting in a nest.  But I guess the boy birds have to sit somewhere, too, right?  Does anybody know how you tell a boy robin from a girl robin?  Is it the red breast?  Don’t they both have that?  I have a lot of questions and literally no way to find any answers.  Just kidding, I’ll google it.

In other news, I’ve been spending a bunch of my free time lately looking at design websites for ideas about how to decorate our condo next month.  Do you guys have any suggestions for websites I should check out?  I regularly visit Design Crush, Design Sponge, Pinterest (this sort of doesn’t count but it sort of does), and Country Living.  Shut up, Country Living is surprisingly not awful.  I initially thought that it would include lots of articles about how to decorate your suburban house with roosters.  But then I accidentally read an issue in a doctor’s office a few weeks ago and it had a piece about Neko Case’s Vermont farmhouse and I swooned.  But speaking of IRL magazines, one I was thoroughly disappointed in was Elle Decor.  I can’t afford that shit.  And everything looks sort of washed-out and too-masculine like a Restoration Hardware catalogue.  So, what else should I check out?  Leave suggestions in the comments!

Our wedding anniversary is on May 16th.  This year it’ll be two years.  Hooray!  We would have gone for fancy dinner on our real anniversary but Billy’s going to be traveling for work that week.  So we switched our reservation to last night.  We could only get an early slot so we started drinking rose at 5:30 and continued steadily until 8:30 or so, when we got home from the restaurant and decided to watch a romantic comedy and eat popcorn.  What a great idea that was!  We were going to go with You’ve Got Mail, the old standby, but we flipped through Netflix streaming just to see if there were any other options and Billy revealed that he had never seen Mystic Pizza.  Unacceptable.

Mystic Pizza deals with lots of hard-hitting issues like how sometimes you don’t go to Yale and, like, racism against Portuguese people (?).  Anyway.  Good movie!  Made me miss my girls in Connecticut.  Also Julia Roberts is so pretty it’s hard to look at her.  Can we bring big hair back?  Also Matt Damon is in it for a hot second playing the rich guy’s little brother.  It’s fun to notice things!

Last line of the movie:
Jojo: What the hell do you think Leona really puts in that pizza?
Billy: Oregano.  It’s oregano.

Conclusion:  This movie is really fun to watch!  Everybody’s tee shirts are too big and there’s nice east coast seaside town atmosphere.  Watch it with someone you love and make fun of Vincent D’Onofrio for insisting on being billed as Vincent Phillip D’Onofrio.  Silly.  Who uses their middle names?  LOSERS.  (Me.)  A-, if only for the fact that this movie includes a racist grandmother saying the line “You can’t teach these Portuguese girls anything!”  Come on.

For weeks now, every time we’d clear this crap off the steps it would be back there the next time we walked through the door.  I blamed teenagers.  Initially.  Then, Billy noticed something.

What do we have here?

OMG.

It’s a little tiny birds nest!  And it has sparkles in it!

Just thought I’d share this reminder that the world is magical and sometimes birds build their nests out of branches and sparkles over your front door.

In other news, things are going pretty well!  Upcoming events of interest include an acting gig later this month, a reading of my newest play The Circus at New Repertory Theatre Company in Watertown on June 10th, and a reading of Girls Sports with Fresh Ink Theatre at some point in June.  Oh, and Billy and I are buying a condo.  Everything’s coming up Milhouse.

Happy spring, you guys.

Double gold?  Compared to what?

Fish Eye Pinot Grigio, $19 at the place we went, but these are everywhere and I think you can get them for less than that at one of the bigger discount liquor stores

Please ignore the water marks on my $3 Ikea wine glass

Giving it a taste

It’s wine!

It’s okay.

Sort of.  It is wine, that much we can be sure of!

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  This wine was $19 which, when you compare it to the $10 box you can get at Trader Joe’s, just doesn’t seem worth it.  It’s a relatively inoffensive Pinot Grigio, but all Pinot Grigio is pretty inoffensive, and honestly it was almost more flavorful than I’d like for a Pinot.  I want Pinots to be refreshing.  This one is a little sharp and a little heavy for my taste.  Maybe because it’s from Australia?  But I like Shiraz?!  I don’t know, I’m not an expert, I’m just telling you what it tastes like.  And it tastes like it needs an ice cube or two.  Verdict: It is indeed wine.  Not worth the not-even-very-high sticker price.  I like the Bota Box Pinot Grigio better.  Don’t let the flashy jewel tones distract you from the mediocre product!  C+

Secondly, Billy and I are possibly buying a condo but everything is kind of going wrong so I’m not going to talk about it because then it will most definitely fall apart.  We are maybe not buying a condo.  Also, word to the wise, buying a condo is kind of a part-time job.

Speaking of part-time jobs, I have one, nannying.  It’s really fun and we had a great time yesterday playing outside in the delightful albeit unsettlingly unseasonable warm weather.  How’s that for a band name?  Unsettlingly Unseasonable is playing at the Bowery Ballroom, did you get tickets yet?  Or like a non-profit group that fights climate change.  Or something.  I’M JUST SPITBALLING HERE, HELP ME OUT.

More to the point:  Billy and I have Strep Throat Type G, which this website explains dubiously.  It goes on to say that Type G Strep usually only has a negative impact on people with, like, full blown AIDS.  So who knows?!  Definitely effects people with full blown AIDS and people who are trying to buy a condo and can’t sleep because of it.  And are also acting in a play.  Isn’t it great when you get stressed and as a result your body shuts down and your immune system becomes utterly ineffective?  Isn’t that always the best time to not have a functioning immune system?  When you’re really busy?  THE WORLD IS THE BEST.

And finally I am teaching a class.  Playwriting Workshop I.  For retirees.  It’s really fun and enlightening and I actually love it.  It doesn’t pay, unless you count happiness dollars, which, lately, I do.

And finally finally, please check back tomorrow for a review of a box of wine that I found to be very underwhelming.  How’s that for a hook?  ”Can’t wait to read the review of the underwhelming pinot grigio tomorrow.  Oh if only tomorrow were today!  I cannot take the agony of waiting for tomorrow!  Tom Petty was right, the waiting IS the hardest part.” –You.

Oh haha, I almost forgot.  I just got back from the cat vet, where I had to take Oscar because he has such bad cat acne on his chin that he was bleeding profusely onto my arm earlier and I panicked.  So the vet gave me some antibiotics to give him because his face is infected and pusing all over the place.  This is why we can’t have nice things.  Also, because I get paid in happiness dollars and happiness dollars don’t buy oriental rugs.

Aaaanyway, hi you guys.  I missed you!  Things are busy but good over here, in case that wasn’t clear from the above disjointed diatribe.

This dress.

Springtime picnic dress!

Shayla.

This picture is from Petfinder.com and it’s weirdly stretched, but you get the idea.  I took Shayla for a special snuggle break at the MSPCA this morning.  She’s a big fat pit bull mix and she’s very sweet and she LOVES squeaky toys.  She likes to kill them.  It’s cute.  She doesn’t bite fingers though!  Just stupid ol’ squeaky toys, which deserve to die anyway.  We would play Kill The Squeaky Toy on our picnic.

This headband.

It looks weird on the model there, but trust me.  It would be cute.  With hair all wavy and pinned up and stuff.  With the dress????  Yes.

Red lipstick.

What’s that?  I already have like four red lipsticks?  This one is the same but it’s $32, which is like $28 more expensive than necessary?  WELL, THIS IS MY FANTASY, BUTT OUT.

Other things I would bring on a picnic: a baguette, some cheese, a bottle of off-dry reisling, and a best-seller from the library.  No, wait, this is fantasy.  A best-seller from a BOOKSTORE.  And TWO bottles of off-dry reisling that were more than $6 a bottle.  Ha!  Pretending to be rich is fun.

As a red head and a person of at least one quarter Irish heritage (that we know of – one of my great grandmothers was adopted and her heritage is thus shrouded in mystery, but we think she was at least a little bit Irish, so I’m probably like 3/8 Irish) I have always been fond of Saint Patrick’s Day.  Therefore, in honor of Saint Patrick’s Day tomorrow, in keeping with my New Years Eve post, let’s talk about some Saint Patrick’s Days that I remember and some I’d like to forget.

2005 – This was the first Saint Patrick’s Day I celebrated in earnest.  I went to the parade in South Boston.  I remember standing on snow that numbed my feet and feeling like I was going to be trampled like what sometimes happens in Calcutta.  It was very intense.  I think the parade was followed by drinking at somebody’s disgusting college apartment with too much direct, overhead lighting.  Do you ever think about college and then think “ugh, the rampant, unapologetic use of overhead lighting alone makes me not miss it.”  No? Just me?

2006 – This was the year I celebrated Saint Patrick’s Day in Ireland.  (Pause for impressed gasps.)  I know.  And can I just say?  Boston takes Saint Patrick’s Day way more seriously than Dublin.  But it was really lovely nonetheless!  The parade in Dublin was more akin to a suburban Flag Day parade than anything else.  Lots of homemade floats, lots of children.  It was very earnest and very much not drinking-related.  We found a way to drink, though!  I remember this being a bit of an epic day/night that might have been interrupted by a fitful contacts-in nap that did not make me feel any better.  I can remember going to at least four bars that day, but it could have been more.  Or less.  I don’t know, I’m not a scientist.

2007 – The above photo is from Saint Patrick’s Day, 2007.  That’s me with really long hair, encouraging my friend Mike to chug his Guinness like a good boy.  We’re in my brother’s utterly disgusting college apartment in Mission Hill.  I remember acting as resident Impressive Older Sister Who Spent Last Saint Patrick’s Day In Ireland In Case Anybody Has Any Questions Or Whatever.  Very nonchalant.  No bigs.

The rest of them were boring.  I got to be a grown up really quickly after graduating college, meeting my husband, and getting an office job, so pretty much all my funny stories happened in the years between 2004 and 2006.  Isn’t it fun recognizing that your funny stories will now be relegated to talking about your husbands farts or whatever?  Cool.  #MyLifeIsOver.  Just kidding, Billy!  I’m totally just kidding.

Also, I really enjoy the element of danger inherent in posting a blog about my own misadventures on Saint Patrick’s Day when I was in college.  Here you go, every Human Resources department in the world!  I made it easy for you.  You’re welcome.

What was your guys’ favorite Saint Patrick’s Day?  2005?  2011?  TO THE COMMENTS!

On Monday it was like 70 degrees.  Yesterday I don’t think it got to 50 and I don’t think it will today either.  This March was in like a sheep, then it turned into a lamb, now it’s like a mean house cat, maybe it’ll go out like a lion.  It’s supposed to be out like a lamb!  GET IT TOGETHER, MARCH.  Maybe March needs to get on a different birth control.  Maybe March is going through some family stuff.  Maybe March had a hard week at work and just wants to unwind and needs a little alone time.

Maybe instead of getting mad at March, we should run March a warm bath and set an aromatherapy candle on the toilet and let March close its eyes for awhile.

And some things to keep in mind:

It’s not as cold as January.  It’s not as hot as July.  There’s hope in the air, of better things to come.  It’s not as depressing as late August.  It’s not as exhausting as December.  The expectations are low, so we get to be pleasantly surprised.  It’s good running weather.  It’s good wine-drinking, TV-watching weather.  It’s good cloudy-day mix CD weather.  And it won’t last forever.