Saturday morning.  Kids and cartoons.  And beyond that what else do I narrate.  No coffee in house, already thinking about Tuesday, back in the office and charging at business and prospecting, prospective clients like some bull or lion or rhino with sharp vendetta swarms.  Saturday, get something done.  No spending, today.  At winery tomorrow, and Monday something with family.  Had the idea of having lunch somewhere, but would love a drive.  Shit, just remembered I need to take that despicable Prius in for an oil change.  Not in the mood to run, not just yet.

            Wine, in head, and on literary plate or plain, something.  Keep writing about wine I tell myself.  What I had last night, nothing impressive.  At a pizza parlor, so what do I expect, what did I expect.  Seeing all these videos and still captures of harvest, shoving me closer to the vineyard, my own, some story where I’m making wine.  Yes, making it.  And I don’t have time to go to Davis, or even some winemaking certificate program—think that would still be Davis.  More than excess, a heaping and formidable wave of thought and to-do lists in head.  Stay in the tasting room, with my writing.  All the people sharing what they know about wine, what they like to drink.  And, those that are so intimidated, for some reason.  Why…. Why … it’s just wine, I think to myself.  But I’m not them and I can’t relate to that coming from out of state sight and feeling walking through tasting room doors.

            Telling self, again, yes AGAIN…. Write about wine.  Even when you wake up in the morning and know you should have risen earlier but you had one more splash of the GSM blend.  I remember that happening one time, and maybe a few others. Not that I was hungover, at all.  I never drink enough to feel that.  But I do aim to rise at 5 or 4, and that second red pour puts a wall up in front of that stage.  What if I were a winemaker, or grower, vineyard manager and I had to meet a crew on a hillside block in Mendocino somewhere, and I had to wake just before 3am to get there on-time with all the swirling one-lane unpaved, hillside roads where you can’t see shit even with your headlights on.  Exactly.

            Tomorrow, pretending it’s harvest.  Waking at 4 or a touch before.  When up, write.  About wine.  What if before Day HUNDRED of this project I could finally have my wine manuscript DONE.  And have it be borderline narrative nonfiction, and novel.  Why not.  Why not, I again say seeing the fog over a Pinot vineyard in some shot a friend posted somewhere.  Walking a vineyard, my own, one day.  Watching the harvest, helping where I can but letting professionals handle.  I’m just a writer, and sipper, a sipper and scribbler.  Wine, so much past what’s sipped, or even what’s grown. It’s all this… work, projects, creative, aims, mornings like this with family where the only commitment is the room and ones you love.