Do you ever wonder to yourself what your year might have looked like without COVID, or in a world where COVID was aggressively contained starting in January? This is a thing I contemplate sometimes.
Alternate Reality Jamie has submitted five papers, not three, in this sabbatical semester where her kids go to school five days a week, but she still hates revising for anonymous peer reviewers and she's a little worried about getting the revisions done for all five of them. She's also a little stressed about hosting Thanksgiving. Tonight she and Elwood pop down to a little restaurant they both love for cocktails and kvetching.
Alternate Reality Jamie ponders the cocktail menu. She doesn't know who comes up with the specialty cocktails in this place, but whoever it is seems to have a window into her brain. Last year they had a winter cocktail with beet puree and artichoke amaro. I mean, really: if you were going to design a cocktail with widespread appeal, would you come up with beet puree and artichoke amaro? Perhaps not, am I right? But pre-COVID Jamie looked at that description and said "SOLD!" Alternate Reality Jamie can't wait to see what's on the cocktail menu this winter.
While she waits for her drink, Alternate Reality Jamie wants to talk about Thanksgiving. There may or may not be a difficult Thanksgiving guest this year. (Would like to tell you all a story or two, but...it would be a bummer if this particular guest read the post. Unlikely, but it's a small world.) Will the turkey be big enough? Is it weird to keep serving Penitential Cranberry Sauce* to people outside the family? Where should Alex sleep now that the bunkbeds are gone?
*Penitential Cranberry Sauce: cranberries boiled in apple cider, pinch of cloves, pinch of salt. No added sweetener or the kids will howl in protest. We love it here but I think my kids have developed the cranberry sauce version of Stockholm syndrome.
Instead the little restaurant is closed indefinitely and its cocktail menus are only a memory. There will only be six of us here for Thanksgiving, not a dozen. Alex will be sleeping in his NYC apartment. Maybe I will mail him some Penitential Cranberry Sauce.
Maybe it will be better next year.
(Huh, you know that thing in yesterday's post about the reviewer who said I shouldn't use "it" as a subject? This post contains five clauses that have "it" as a subject. Wonder if my undergrad alma mater will revoke my English degree.)
Recent Comments