It’s that time of year again. I’m a wine widow. Sure, other people have to deal with the football season, but for me? It’s harvest. Rob has spent the past week putting in long hours at Westrey Winery — recommended, by the way — and will probably be there for another couple of weeks as they get fruit in. Basically, I will see him when he comes home to shower and drop into bed. He gets up around 5am to start the day again.
Except this weekend, he’s out of town altogether doing some work for City Winery, where he worked for in NYC. They get fruit from a vineyard in Oregon and Rob drives it down to California in a reefer truck — refrigerator truck — where it joins the shipment of California fruit and heads across country to Manhattan. He doesn’t do the cross-country drive. Last year he had to make the California trip three times and this year they were able to arrange picking so he only had to do one.
When we set our wedding date, we timed it so that he would be finished with harvest AND so that the stains on his hands would have time to fade. This time of year, the pinot noir stains the palms of his hands almost black. Of course harvest is so late this year that I’m not sure he’ll be finished by the time our anniversary rolls around.
I have amused myself this weekend by spending an evening at -e-‘s house with her charming family. I also have been working my way through the first two seasons of Castle, which I’m now hopelessly addicted to. I had some hand-stitching to do and it provided a very pleasant distraction.
How was your weekend?
Blessings on -e-‘s house and all who dwell there and blessings on Oregon ‘wine widows’ too!
We had house guest on Friday night. Alan Jabbour and Ken Perlman played at the Barking Legs Theater on Friday night and did a workshop at the Folk School of Chattanooga on Saturday morning. They spent the night in the log cabin. We stayed up talking until the wee hours and it was great fun. I first met Alan in 1967 in Chapel Hill NC while he was working on his PHD in medieval poetry at Duke.
I’m a marathon widow this time of year. 2+, sometimes 3 hour training runs each weekend, another longish run on the OTHER weekend day. It’s finally coming to an end, the marathon is less than 2 weeks away (NYC this year, so we get a cool trip out of the endless hours without husband/daddy — any recs for must-see sights? Have never taken the kids to NYC and haven’t been there myself in 10+ years. Staying in Chelsea…) But yes, this time of year gets tiring, because it’s not just the long runs, but also the long recoveries and the tired/crankies and the icing of various body parts and other things that make me wonder why. Admirable as the goal of running 26.2 is, I’m still scratching my head at the pain and discomfort that goes with in the final few weeks of training. Wouldn’t running 15 (which doesn’t cause my husband this sort of pain) be just as great?
Ah, well, we can whine (pun intended) together.