It’s OK to grieve what’s lost.
I grieve for:
- Trying out new restaurants
- Sitting at a bar with X with a couple of interesting beers waiting for food to come
- Montreal
- Boston
- Planning a vacation
- Cirque du Soleil
- Our annual bike down the St. Jean Richilieu
- New York
- Extreme Beer Fests
- Getting my eyebrows done
- Hitting downtown Burlington and being able to enter places & pick a restaurant at whim
- Seeing my mother-in-law in North Carolina for the holidays
- Having Tgiving at Ruth & John’s
- The Route 66 road trip I was supposed to take with Maggie
- My High Holydays at sheep & wool
And I am grateful for:
- Food. Lots of it. The good stuff.
- That I enjoy cooking
- Takeout
- Books
- The library & Phoenix bookstore are still functional
- Fiber to make beautiful things with
- Healthy goats who don’t even know what’s going on
- Vermont – never been more grateful for you than this year
- My health
- My marriage
- My home
- That I have always worked from home and can continue to do so
Alcohol purchases are up something like 10-20% in Vermont, I think I read. FB is full of memes about how drunk we are all getting. But in fact I’m drinking less than ever. Without going out, I don’t find myself sitting there with a tempting draft list waiting for food to come. I was never big on drinking at home in the first place. I’ve cut back now more than ever. For me, the pleasure of alcohol is how it makes me happy in a social situation or a one-on-one. I particularly like wine on an empty stomach with some carbs – i.e. red wine at an Italian restaurant with your bread basket waiting for the food. The booze + carbs is a good combo for me. And I just don’t indulge that way at home. I’d rather eat calories than drink them. I’d rather have a good dessert. Because drinking doesn’t make me feel good per se, or let me really forget any of the problems of the world. So why do it? I have less and less reason.
Tytania 