Losing It

One week from today, the big moving truck will arrive to pack us up and put all our things in storage for the foreseeable future. It is starting to get a bit nerve-wracking. The build-up, the lead in, the waiting starts to wear on me. My stomach is in knots, I wake up early in the morning and cannot get back to sleep, etc.

We had a great anniversary weekend, but Saturday at brunch, it became obvious that things were starting to affect me. Either that or I was still a little tipsy from the night before, or maybe it's just that my version of a hangover involves my behaving a little strangely.

To be honest, i don't actually think I was acting all that weird. Our waiter, however, thought I was completely insane. First off, I didn't want wine with lunch since I had drunk a bit too much of it the night before, so i asked him what else he had to drink. He started to offer me a cocktail, but when i told him I wanted something non-alcoholic, he mentioned they had sodas.

I then asked him if they had Dry Sodas. This was when I received the first of the many deer-in-headlights, this-woman-is-crazy, looks from him. He repeated the phrase "dry soda" to me while his eyes rolled around in circles as he tried to grasp what the hell I was talking about.

In case you also are wondering what the hell I am talking about, allow me to explain: Dry Sodas are sodas made with less carbonation and less sugar than regular soda, and they are infused with different lovely flavors like vanilla, lavender, lemongrass, etc. They are delightful, and I was under the impression that they were kind of a Napa thing which is why I asked him if they had them (we were having lunch at Bottega Restaurant in Napa Valley, did I forget to mention that?)

In the end, I ordered a ginger ale.

Not long after that, I was using this little teeny spoon to spread some tapenade on my bread. I finished doing so and put the spoon back in the tapenade dish. Our friend Mike who was having lunch with us suddenly started laughing and asked me: "Did you just put that spoon in your water cup?"

The cups this restaurant uses for water are these very cool copper ones, and I picked mine up to discover that yes, in fact, I had put the Tapenade spoon in my water. I then had to ask our waiter, who was still trying to figure out why I wanted powdered soda, to bring me a new cup of water, because mine had a tapenade spoon in it.

My grande finale came when I ordered a glass of Tawny Port which, when it arrived, looked to me an awful lot like a Ruby Port. I of course, motioned him over to ask if he had brought me the right drink. He had. The embarrassing part about this was that I was wearing my sommelier pin (because I am always hoping that someone will see it and will give me something to drink for free).

I can just imagine this guy telling the other wait-staff about the nut-job-sommelier at Table 12 who wanted a powdered soda, stuck the tapenade spoon in her water and couldn't tell the difference between a tawny and a ruby port.

Like I said, I blame the stress...