On Not Drinking Wine

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I still had that GERD that I contracted while in India from being on Doxycycline for three months straight (to combat Malaria)? I was physically unable to enjoy my favorite beverage, red wine. In fact, the very thought of drinking made the bile rise into my throat. That led to a month-long period of alcohol abstinence that was only broken after I went off the antibiotics and allowed my system to get back to normal. (And I still developed a bad reaction to red wine; for two years afterward, I had sneezing fits after two glasses.)

I long for that handicap now. For now, I've decided to stop drinking without the aid of a biochemical adverse reaction. Dumbass.

I’ve had acupuncture, purchased little suck-me candies, promised myself vats of diet soda (but not taken myself up on the offer), tried meditating, doing work, walking, cleaning, and now blogging. And I still want a bleeding glass of wine. Or three.

Yeah, yeah, I’m trying to get pregnant. Yeah, yeah, I’m turning 40 in two months. But here’s one thing I know: Little French and Italian and Spanish writers-trying-to-start-a-family-at-40 types like me are not wasting their time not drinking wine. They’re enjoying life. I feel like a big Yankee Worrying Jerk.

I don’t even care if it’s wine. I’ll be happy with a vodka. Really happy. Like, so happy I’d stop this blathering and maybe go visit my husband downstairs who’s been away at work all day but who opened a well-deserved can of Tecate to drink with the dinner I made him and I had to leave the room before I burst into tears.

This trying-to-get-knocked-up-when-you’re-old stuff sucks. Sure, drinking is no good for anyone trying to get pregnant, regardless of age. Thanks, Dr. WebMD. But apparently the few eggs you have left in your basket when you’re pushing 40 are more easily pickled if you, say, continue to live the life you’ve enjoyed for the past 20 years (minus one month).

What am I doing? Shouldn’t I take up an age-appropriate interest like needlework or napping? Or crashing an AA meeting? Oh. I can’t: I gave up caffeine and smoking so I could get pregnant. That pretty much rules out fitting in at AA…

How about a punch in the face. Can I have one of those?

Photo: RAP and oldest friends, Patience Smith and wine [Credit: Patrick Smith, 1990]

The Mania of Owning Things

So much going on since Obama's Big Day.

1) Still unsettled about where we will be living since the Great Housing Bubble of 2008-20??. Put a bid on a condo in Brooklyn almost a year ago...still not closed. Not sure we will (or can or want to) now.

2) Trying to start a family at my "advanced maternal age" of 39.

The main question is what do we want in this life? We're almost 40 and we've been sold a bill of goods about what it means to be successful in this society. Much of it is crap. Why? Because much of it simply requires us to buy things, participate in the economy. Even marriage is an economic construct. (Ask Paul how much of a deduction he gets this year on taxes because we got hitched.)

The housing market is crashing...yet we're still entertaining buying. There's the balance between the mania of owning things (thank you, Walt Whitman) and the very human desire to have land that we can walk out on in bare feet. The desire not to live in a large box several dozen feet above the earth with views of concrete, steel, and glass.

I love New York. Anyone who knows me knows that my blood is part East River. I breathe the refrigerated air of the insides of delis. Don't get me wrong. But is this how humans are meant to live? So far removed from nature? I say, sure! The wild energy of the city has certainly propped me up when I was feeling lost. Still does.

But... But...

I have no idea. I just spent the morning looking up attorney jobs for Paul in Santa Fe. I've made the move out there once before. I wasn't ready to stay then. New York kept calling me back home. Am I ready now?

Or do I just need a holiday from real estate and fertility centers?