You've Got To Be Kidding

So I woke this morning feeling a little blue about my baby having to fly back to Louisville today, (he works retail and has to be there for Black Friday) but it was still a treat to shuffle past his bedroom and see his giant, 6 foot frame snuggled under the covers of his bed, sweet bearded face and puffy as hell afro resting upon his pillow. We had Thanksgiving dinner at the in-laws last night so he would in fact be able to have a home cooked holiday meal, not MY holiday meal but still one that he grew up with…we always did two, one with the hubby’s family and then one at home with the sugar dusted rolls and our buttery stuffing.

So as a result of a nasty chest cold, (horrific coughing that is of course worsened by my smoking) I have pulled some muscles in my ribcage, so yeah the cold is gone but I’m still jacked up. The rib thing just blows, every move, every cough, even a deep breath sends mind bending pain along my side and around to my back…super fun I assure you. I’m sure a couple of days keeping still would right me but um…yeah, retail wine shops are like busy and junk around the holidays. Taking time off was not an option so I have just been nursing my wounds and making other people do all the heavy lifting and wheeling about of cases.

This morning as I walked past the kid’s room I noticed that my ribs felt better than they have in 3 days, I was thrilled and found myself almost giddy while reaching for a coffee cup and feeling no pain…Yay! Yeah well, fate was tempted by my excitement, he turned around a bitch slapped me. Bzzzzzz, scrape, scrape, bzzzzzzz, freaking gardeners where out with their blower dealies this morning and then it started. The eyes began watering, the nose running like someone turned on a faucet and then….the sneezing. Now sneezing and jacked ribs, not so much friends, bit of an oil and water thing actually. Within 40 minutes I looked liked one of those first day of school kids, eyes dripping, clear snot streaming out of my now red nose and I was doing that huffing thing because of the ice pick in the ribs pain, yeah super hot. There was however some good news, I didn’t have to take the kid to the airport….because I was working, dag-nab-it.



Sailed into work 15 minutes early, traffic was insanely light and I was waiting for a very important email so I was doing a bit of the pedal to the metal thing, that and sitting in the car is not the best position on the ole ribcage. Lugged my purse and computer bag out of the car and that’s when the, “Ahhh ahhh ahhh” started, the fucking almost sneeze, all the side splitting pain of a sneeze without the gratification, sweet. I swear I looked so pathetic, bright red, drippy nose, watering eyes smearing my makeup and clutching my side like someone having a heart attack. Got the lights on, the music on, read my email and went to turn on the registers…. “Your system has encountered an error” well of course it has. Shut down and restart did nothing, our machines were out, on Thanksgiving and the one person that might be able to fix it, (my hubby) was on his way to LAX to drop off the kid, awesome.

So how does a store control inventory and ring up sales when they have no registers, they hand write everything and use a calculator…oh and they must remember that wine is taxable food is not, sigh. I was working with Merritt who is highly capable but my other helper, new guy, just started last week and knows nothing about wine, and I am talking not knowing which name on the label is the important one kind of knows nothing. Sweet kid, hard worker and willing to learn but today, kind of useless. Phones ringing, (new kid can’t really answer much more than, “what time do you close today”) people needing wine help and lines at the counter while we wrote out each and every invoice…so yeah, when you have your head down and have a runny nose…first day at school kid.



“Sam there’s a person on the phone and I don’t really know what they want”…new kid, “This is Samantha, how can I help you?” my standard intro, “Yes I was wondering if you carry the raspberry Champagne?” I’m standing there watching the lines get longer, line two starts ringing and the new kid looks like he had been thrown in the deep end without his floaties… “No, no we don’t have any raspberry Champagne” I respond, “Oh why not? BevMo carries it and I would go there but they are closed today so I called you to see if you have it. I like the peach but I thought the raspberry would go better with turkey so I figured since BevMo was closed I would try you guys, can you get it?” Runny nose, watery eyes, the “ahh ahh” not “choo-ing” causing me to suck in my breath real hard and try not to yelp, and now I have this raspberry Champagne issue. We went round and round and once the caller heard that I would not be able to pull the requested, “raspberry Champagne” like out of my ass for them today, they said they would come in later and talk Champagne with me…wicked cool.

After two hours, some serious hand cramps, a couple, “excuse me” moments where I had to rush off to wipe my nose, a few, “OUCH oh my gawd oh my gawd” mind piercing side pains…oh and may I just throw in a couple panicky trips to the ladies room, because of course today was the day my uterus decides to behave like some demonic Pez dispenser….and the hubby was able to revive our system and things were back on track. I spent the remaining two hours in utter disbelief of the day started; it was like a cartoon with me playing the role as the gimp….but things were starting to look up.



Got home, got my bird in the oven, took a brief cat nap and had one of the most deliciously sweet dreams about a man I have never met…woke up with my heart pounding, my ribs feeling better and I was aching for a glass of wine. Walked into the kitchen, gingerly this time…not ready for another slap from fate, and opened the fridge to find….a bottle of H. Billiot Cuvee Julie, payment from Randy for the hubby’s saving our collective asses, shitty day? What shitty day?

Ending this day with an icy cold glass of Billiot Cuvee Julie, (was my pick for Champagne of the year by the way) the way the fruit exploded from the glass, the way the massive weight enveloped my palate, the way it left me tasting baked apples, toasted bread, Sherry and this sexy snap of apple skin…and it kept going, the flavors danced across my palate long after the wine had been washed down my eagerly awaiting, wanting…needing palate, unreal. The sheer power of that wine was unreal. Ended the night spinning in the hubby’s office chair with my adorable neighbor in my lap….giggling, we were both giggling.