Random Notes from a Crank

In a recent visit to my local CVS, I scanned the clearance liquor/wine rack. To my surprise, I found bottles of Manischewitz Blackberry wine for $2.77. It's a sweet, kosher wine that I sold at my dad's liquor store way back when. In fact, if I remember right, a Lutheran church bought cases of the Concord grape variety for communion wine. 

I'm a sucker for clearance booze racks, which reminds me of Colonial Party Mart. 

Colonial Party Mart was a liquor store back in my undergraduate college town of Kirksville, Missouri. They went out of business sometime in my junior or senior year. They were selling booze cheap as hell, probably at cost, and boozehounds  descended upon that establishment and got lots of good stuff at great prices. Unfortunately, when my friends and I got there, all that was left was mixing liquor and off brand stuff. I do think we bought some Ouzo though. I can't remember if it was the cheap stuff or one of the good Greek brands.

!Opa!

Figuring out how to spell that exclamation above led me to this interesting article: "What Does the Word Opa Mean Exactly?"

And that expression reminds me of the Norwegian expression of "Uffda." My mom had a plaque of that expression hanging on our back door. I need to use that expression more often. 

Lack of New Year Traditions

Yesterday Daiva Markelis on her blog The Adventures of Mighty Bear Woman provided a post about a past tradition for New Year's Eve when, as part of the title, says, "...I was old enough to stay up late but not old enough to get drunk."

I got to thinking about my own lack of traditions associated with New Year's Eve. While I've been known on occasion to howl at the moon (metaphorically speaking), I don't really care for New Year's Eve much. After close to forty years on this earth, only one New Year's Eve celebration really stands out, and that was a big blow-out for the millennial New Year's Eve at "Chuck's Place" in O'Fallon, Missouri. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to midnight that night. But for the most part I turn a jaundiced eye toward the holiday since it is a hollow one for me.

As my dad told me when I was younger, "Life is a struggle." And Virg knows something about that since he grew up on a farm in rural northeastern Missouri during the Great Depression. Since life is a struggle even though some English professors will try to sell you on the "life is a journey" metaphor provided by The Odyssey, New Year's Eve is just like any other day: another day closer to death.

When I think about my own family's traditions around the holiday, well, we didn't have any that I can remember. Back when I was old enough to stay up late but not old enough to get sloshed, I think I probably just brainlessly watched the New Year's celebration TV shows with my parents as my Dad read the Waterloo Courier.

When I was really young, my dad worked as a meat cutter for National Tea and then got laid off. He then sold insurance for a few years, thankfully got a small business loan to open up his own small grocery on the East side of Waterloo, and once he "retired" from the grocery business, he got bored and started a liquor store near the grocery store he sold to my brother.

I worked at both the grocery store and the liquor store. And December 31st was always a day when we were wonderfully slammed with business. Hours flew by because you were busy. The date is a gold rush for liquor stores as you can imagine. By the time I got off work at 10 or 11 on those New Year's Eves during high school and later when I worked over breaks during college, I was tired and tired of drunks.

But as we said in both stores, New Year's Eve is "amateur night." Rather than serving our regular customers who wanted half-pints, fifths, or Texas fifths (1.75 liters) of "bumpy face" (Seagram's gin), "Mad Dog" (Mogan David 20/20), "Erk & Jerk" (E&J brandy), and all manner of hard liquor, we trucked more in various cheap champagnes and spumante. Andre champagne or Cold Duck (one of my favorite names for a libation) for $5, people. And for whatever reason liquers sold well then but more so around Xmas. Nothing says booze like the holidays. You can even get your beloveds gift sets of booze with glasses and whatnot: liquor as gift ~ a gift that gives and gives.

I also dislike how New Year's spawns resolutions, but maybe that's just because, like most people, I rarely keep them. I've had better luck setting goals and working toward those goals irrelevant of the time of the year.

So why do I still lurch toward making New Year's resolutions though? Damn you socialization.

Lately, I've been drawn to something I read about in Brian Haycock's Dharma Road. As the author details in Chapter 18 "Thank You, Thank You," "Most of us have much more than the bare necessities. A Mahayana Buddhist practice is to make a list of everything we are given in the course of a day--not cab fares, but the small blessings that come our way. A tasty snack. A song on the radio. A water cooler with really cold water. They add up. If we keep a list, we can look back at the end of the day and realize just how lucky we are. And we can be thankful for that."

"Much of Zen practice is just to develop an appreciation for everyday life. Whether it's a glorious sunrise over the green hills of Texas or a frantic street scene anywhere in the world, we should take it all in and see the beauty behind it. And we can appreciate that and give thanks for it. Wherever we are, we're lucky to be there. We're lucky just to be." (120-1).

As he details in the paragraph after those two, "[t]he hard times are valuable as well" since "[w]e can be grateful for the trials we face, the obstacles we have to overcome" (121).

Okay, I admit it. I almost made a resolution to do exactly what he details above: listing the everyday blessings or positive negatives that happened in my day. But I didn't. I'm mulling it over. For a short while a few years ago, I was writing a daily tanka, which was usually fun and interesting but sometimes it just turned into work. And I got enough work. I got enough.

I may just do the list like I do my tankas, when I feel like it. But I'm drawn to the discipline of a daily practice.

For example, for today I could note how Hannah, who starts back at first grade tomorrow, held my hand as we went to and from the mall today. And I could also record how my first attempt at making Swedish meatballs didn't go so well. They came out more as Swedish meatblobs. I failed to remember a lesson I've learned before: adhere strictly to the recipe on your first try making a dish. And Mrs. Nasty joked with me about whether I'd write about that dish.

Well, there you go. I did. Duly noted.