parenting

Bearing humiliation—a day in the life

Pretty sure four-year-old Miss V did not read my post about colonoscopies yesterday.

And yet…

 

PASO CREEK ZINFANDEL (2010)—Restoring you after, if not during, that playdate

My Fellow Inebriates,

Miss P has a friend (A) over for a playdate, so we animals are mimicking that famous ET scene and playing statues. This might be overkill; at 6 years old, she and her friend would probably eschew stuffies anyway in favor of some vapid online game whose object is to “make the nerdy girl pretty.”

My mum doesn’t know how this evil game came to P’s attention, although she suspects a particular classmate, friend B—the one who introduced Justin Bieber (“Beaver”) and who wants P to join her after-school cheerleading and beauty pageantry groups. This is the reason friend A has been invited over but not (“never!”) friend B.

OMG! OMFG!!!

My parents are realizing, though, that whatever control you exert over your kids’ friend choices when they’re tiny drops precipitously with the onset of school. As soon as you start doing drop-off playdates—and unless you’re a saint you know you want to—you consign your kid for several hours at a time to the unknown. Who knows what the hell those crazy people are feeding your kid, telling your kid, asking your kid, showing your kid, saying in front of your kid…

And that, no doubt, is what friend A’s mother is asking herself after dropping her child at our messy house, with its yardful of random unidentifiables, its imposing kluge stereo which, for all she knows, could have live wires sticking out everywhere, and my mother answering the door with an apology for not having vacuumed because V won’t let her (for a month—is that even credible?). Never mind the wild bears playing statues on the bookshelves, our hairy asses blocking her from reading worrisome titles.

Ken’s not playing statues; he wants you to see his junk.

But at least we’re not drunk. True, it’s only 4:00pm, but in some households (and if I had my druthers) we’d be throwing up already. With hard-thrumming rain like today’s, a nice hearty zin like PASO CREEK (2010) would be perfect. I don’t know if friend A is used to her parents breaking out the booze immediately after school, but who knows? You just never know with playdate kids. Maybe it would make her feel at home if we pulled the cork right now. At 15% alcohol, this Zinfandel has “playdate” written all over it—or at least recovery from same.

The label features a freaky-looking little owl, the kind that can do a 360° head spin. This is a boozy wine with a bold nose. You might want to decant it to give that owl a chance to settle down, if you can delay gratification while being overcome by earthy redolence. Swish this deep garnet liquid around and you get berries, plums, and black pepper. Waiting half an hour does pay off with this wine; the flavors are deeply concentrated and need a bit of oxygen to fully strut their stuff.

By the time you finally sip PASO CREEK you may well be having conniptions, what with three little girls screaming around the house playing dress-up and this voluptuous wine seducing you from the decanter. The sip is big and robust, delivering lush berries and plums while maintaining good balance. Weighty and palate-coating, PASO CREEK has a lengthy finish, much the way little girls’ happy shrieks echo in your ears after they’ve gone to bed. It’s boozy, yummy, and worth the $18.

ENGLISH BAY PALE ALE—Good for frogs, bears, and wildlife in general

My Fellow Inebriates,

The kids went to Frog Search today, where they scooped tadpoles and salamanders out of a swampy pond, inspected them under microscopes, sorted them into categories, then sang a song to them as they released them back into the water.

What you lookin’ at?

I asked the frog who lives at LBHQ what he thinks of Frog Search.

He said something unintelligible.

I asked him again.

I think he said ribbit.

The frog who lives here doesn’t have a name. Despite being cuddly and soft he’s not, er, an A-list animal; the kids haven’t bothered naming him, nor do they notice what he’s up to.

Pollywogs who haven’t learned to cuss yet

I asked him again what he thought about dozens of kids plunging empty bowls into his habitat, capturing whatever was unlucky enough to whoosh into the bowls, and then bothering the organisms for several hours before chucking them back.

I thought he said ribbit again but when I queried more closely I realized he’d said motherfuckers. I know, the two words couldn’t be more easily distinguishable, but I was hammered, my fellow inebriates, and for all I know he said antidisestablishmentarianism.

Turns out he did say motherfuckers. He took pains to clarify for me: Goddamn motherfucking nature-walk assholes pluck my tads out of our fucking habitat—what the fuck do you think I think of it, you stupid bear?

So then I felt a little bad. I’d thought maybe it was a bit of an adventure for the ’poles—like the time I woke up with that skull-shaped vodka bottle and drank it all at once.

Did he realize, I asked—the kids sang a song to the tadpoles before tossing them (mostly underhand) into the pond?

The frog told me to go and beat off. (I know, right?! Holy shit, that’s what happens to animals who don’t get loved enough.) So I decided to split a GRANVILLE ISLAND ENGLISH BAY PALE ALE with him. Don’t ask how we managed to get it open; frogs are resourceful enough creatures that they can switch gender; opening a beer must be child’s play.

We used to buy ENGLISH BAY PALE ALE all the time until my mum decided she liked SLEEMAN HONEY BROWN LAGER better. The two beers share similar characteristics; both are highly accessible mass-market-yet-purportedly-micro-style beers that give consumers a bit more than the high-pitched metallic assault of a typical macro brew. They are, if anything, transitional beers that pave the road between craft and macro styles. More expensive, higher quality, but not precious, and not odd. Very mainstream.

I thought the frog would like our beer. It pours a lovely copper-amber on the slightly translucent side, with healthy white foam that dissipates fairly quickly. The aroma is earthy yet toffee-like, following through with a lovely malty, honeyed taste with lingering but mild hoppiness. With moderate carbonation and satisfying mouthfeel, ENGLISH BAY PALE ALE is generous and appealing, although it might not be interesting enough to have a session with. I didn’t want a session and the frog sure didn’t (he said it didn’t taste at all like flies and was therefore just okay). It did make him stop cussing, so it was good for me in two senses.