Some alcoholism is relative. Some alcoholism... not so much.

                What to write about on this day?  I am sipping on a glass of wine.  No, wait.  I just finished my first glass of wine and am going to get up at the end of this sentence to get a second.  One moment, please.  Okay.  I’m back.   I just cut a piece of Gouda cheese with black pepper embedded within it, and some Ritz crackers.  Yum.  I’m experimenting with cheeses, and Gouda is tasty enough, but it doesn’t quite come close to my love of Brie.  I think Gouda as essentially a bourgeois version of cheddar.  I can’t really taste a difference as I chew and contemplate it now, and with exception to its color being a milder yellow than the cheddar orange, it is for all intents and purposes an expensive form of cheddar to me.  Oh, and I’ve never had cheddar cheese that comes with black pepper embedded in it.  A global conspiracy perhaps, to sell cheddar at a more expensive rate…  Those silly capitalists!  What will they think of next?

Wine… what kind, you ask?  Well, it’s a Shiraz tonight.  More specific?  Does it really matter?  It’s the $5 bottle kind, wine snob!  I’ve learned long ago that there are good wines out there that are costly, but there are good wines out there that aren’t so costly, too.  But it is good to share information, so I will divulge the make of this wine, or shall I say vintage?  I don’t even know if that’s the right terminology, really.  But I can say that this maker (or grower) has provided me consistent pleasure to my palate.  It is called Jacob’s Creek, with a perfectly unassuming, banal label.  White back with black letters, no fancy font necessary.  If you see this brand, I recommend it.  I can’t claim to be a wine connoisseur; however, this make has done me good for the past year or so.  I am very pleased that I get it in the $5 bottle bin at the closeout liquor store I frequent.  I go there so regularly the manager knows me by name, and commends me for reusing the same box that I fill with the wines that I purchase.  He even started putting slashes on it to count the numbers of times I’ve used this particular box: 15 and counting.  Damn, that’s a lot of wine.  The box holds a case of wine, which is twelve standard 750 ml. bottles.  I typically purchase 10-bottles instead of 12, so as to spend only $50 instead of $60.  Don’t ask me why, I just do it that way.

Speaking of wine, I heard on NPR the other morning that even wine rating professionals don’t consistently rate the very same wines.  They talked briefly about some blind-test of well-respected wine raters, and only something like one out of ten raters managed to rate the exact same wine at the same rating.  I couldn’t tell you the specifics about it.  Point being, the self-proclaimed professionals don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.  And that gives me the green light to claim that a certain wine tastes good, and yet have a fallback to admit that I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about without losing face.  If you don’t like the wine I suggested, you can go suck an egg, motherfucker.

Tonight was trash night.  I am an avid recycler and the trash I accumulate is minimal, with the majority of the trash coming from my two pet cats’ cat litter, both in bulk and definitely in weight.  I think it would take me about three to four months to accumulate enough trash to fill up a standard trash can, not including the recycling, of course.  I bet I could go three-weeks, maybe four, before I fill up one paper grocery bag full of unrecyclable trash.  Anything that can be composted goes back into the earth, you see, which removes any stinky trash from the kitchen, and it enriches the soil for my garden come spring.  The gardening process, admittedly, is still a work in progress, as is the wannabe farmer in me.  How cool would it be to be self-sufficient enough to produce the majority of the vegetables one consumes?  And let us not forget my most favorite vegetable-wannabe-fruit: the tomato.  Or is it tomatoe?  (Was Al spelling potato or tomato?  Tomato, tomahtoh, potato, potahtoh, let’s call the whole thing off…)

When I was collecting the recycling from this past week’s accumulation, I was proud to find only two 12 oz. beer bottles awaiting entry to the recycling bin.  That might be a record.  I am not too proud to admit that I have a semi-drinking problem.  I drink every day, almost without fail.  Now I don’t drink a tremendous amount, perhaps one, two, or three drinks throughout the evening of cooking and writing/reading.  However, it is a daily event, unless I am sick or under the weather.  It’s a rare thing that I am “drunk”, but I do drink every day with exception to the abovementioned circumstantial illness.  So, just two beer bottles in the past week!  Now that’s pretty good.  And I rarely go out drinking, and could probably count on one hand the times I have in the past year.  So I actually only consumed two beers this past week.

Whoa, hold on one second, you say.  You’re drinking wine as you write this.  Unless you were sick in the past week, you must have polished off a bottle of wine, right?  Wrong!  I polished off four bottles!  What’s this, a math genius investigator knocking at my door?  We got a gen-u-wine Sherlock Holmes here.  As a matter of fact, I just happened to have poured out my fifth bottle for the week.  What now, motherfucker?  What?  You self-righteous son of a bitch!  Why don’t you get off of your antidepressants before you come at me with that bull shit!  Yeah?  Well, go fuck yourself!

I am afraid that I know I drink more than the average person, or at least, I know I drink at home more so than the average recycler in my neighborhood who drinks at home.  I jog six-days a week, and when I jog on Friday mornings, I like to glance over at others’ recycling bins.  It is a rare thing to see more beer bottles or wine bottles in others’ recycling bins when compared to my own.  And I live alone and never have people over to drink with me!  Thus, my conclusion is, I have some form of drinking problem. 

Maybe my neighbors go out to drink more often and don’t have as many bottles to show for their alcoholism.  An equally likely explanation is that they not only go out and hit the bars, but they then come home and continue to drink at home.  They just aren’t eco-conscious enough to recycle their bottles and cans.  That’s why those drunk bastards’ trash bins are so goddamned full week after week!  I’m not terribly worried about my drinking, so I guess it’s not a problem after all.  Fuck it.  It’s not a “drinking problem”.  It’s just a fact.  Yes, I drink.  How often?  Every day.  How much?  Not enough to have a drinking problem.  So there.

Okay.  Enough of that.  I’m gonna open my sixth bottle of the week now.  Actually, it’s the first bottle of the week.  That’s the advantage of recycling weekly.  I just need to remember to put the fifth bottle in the recycling bin before tomorrow morning’s collection.  Then, it’s a whole new ballgame.  It’s a clean slate.  I’ve had no bottles of wine.  Just the one that is about to be opened and will be ¾ to ½ full by the end of this night.  Not bad.  Not bad at all…