I changed my blog template. I don't know how much I like it. I figure I will try it on for size, see how it fits and, most likely, return to my "classic" layout.
I may try on many templates - at least that will give me a reason to post something on this blog. Seeing as I don't have anything to write about. Or, more accurately, I have very little that I still feel like writing about once I finally get a chance to sit down and write, and most of that gets left on the cutting floor because I imagine it isn't appropriate for the audience.
The background of this template was filed under travel. I'm not sure why, I guess it is thanks to its cottage dans le pays look. My own travels have taken me to Santa Clarita, Cali, baby and last ... excuse me i took a twelve day break from writing this entry...Monday, in particular, my travels took me to Lee's Wine Bistro for the Westridge Mom's Club "Mom's Night Out." Feel free to file this one under turns I never expected my life to take.
For those of you who know me like that, I am not much of what you would call a "joiner." Don't get me wrong, I still love people to love me and I want to be the most popular girl in town (although at 33 i SUPPOSE girl is used QUITE a bit loosely) I just want to march to the beat of my own drum while being admired and beloved for my enviable individuality and moral fortitude. Ironic?
Instead of chasing my tail, tale, (hare, hair) down that rabbit hole, I'll bring you back to Lee's Wine Bistro on Town Centre Drive in Valencia. Because, thanks to the excellent salesmanship of my good friend JB, I was prevailed upon to join the Mom's Club.
And, speaking of rabbit (rabid, no really, I'm sorry, I 'll stop) holes let me tell you about the Voignier I drank that night, and why I drank it. I picked up the much neglected - thanks to five recently free of a cumulative eleven (sorry girls, it might be ten or twelve, you'll have to forgive the iffy math) children, kvetching about said children and leurs autres genetic donors - wine menu. At a glance, halfway down the menu, the word honeysuckle jumped, literally leapt, out at me. Images of the privet hedge between our home and the neighboring Streits' rental cottage flooded my brain, drowning out the otherwise captivating conversation bandying about me. Darting in and about, at once parasitically stealing prized nutrients from the carefully manicured boundary plantings and surreptitiously making off with the would-be viticulturist's instinct to pluck the invader by its roots, weaved a fragrance so unforgettable, so beguiling, so fresh, so pure, so innocent, and yet anciently complex. As the fragrance drew you in, it led you, inevitably to its source, the sweet nectar at the base of the corolla. I remember, as if time travel (backwards, of course, by about 25 years) were possible, and I was there at this very moment, pulling the blooms off the vine to reveal only a drop of the nectar, licking it off the honeysuckle and running down the "no right of way" toward the Great South Bay. A ceremonial kiss to greet the summer day.
Now that I live in California, I so NEARLY relive those moments every time I smell Jasmine...so nearly, and yet so far. In the first fraction of a second, upon smelling the white, lesser, cousin of the honeysuckle of my childhood...BOOM!...and fast on the heels of that report is the knowledge that something is missing, wrong, incomplete, one-off if you will. That knowledge brings with it some sense of loss that I never have the time or energy to fully define. So when I read that this glass of Viognier would taste of honeysuckle, I closed the menu, read no more and determined to spend my night drinking from that cup.
It was delicious. In the immortal words of my all too mortal mother - "deloushe lautrec."
...stay tuned for the next installment of this evening entitled "On Why Being Nice Is Overrated, and In Fact, Is Not Nice At All."...
