Quit Cryin’ in Your Beer Friday Round-Up

I love sports talk radio because, in between talk of draft picks and playoff odds, one or the other of the talking jocks says something right out of my dad’s lingo list, like “quit cryin’ in your beer.” This is the most perfect phrase, on the one hand, recognizing that you are entitled to a beer and, on the other hand, seeing that you might ruin your beer (or at least dilute it) by crying in it. We’ve lost the art of telling people to just drink their beer without crying or to buck up (another of my favorites) because we try so hard to be empathetic. Personally, I’d rather have someone tell me to buck up. It’s simpler and saves time and ends up being what I need to do anyway.

Every day we come down the driveway with our two dogs on leashes and every day a bunny leaps out from wherever it has been hiding in the bushes and hops down the driveway in front of us. Then, every day, we turn to look in the bushes to see where the bunny could be living but we quickly lose interest in finding out and keep walking to the truck. As the pandemic stretches into eternity, there are more and more moments like this which, despite their total predictability, are oddly comforting. We’re here. The dogs are here. The bunny is here.

Our United States Senator, Ron Johnson, who is a multi-millionaire and a conspiracy addict, decided to oppose a $1,200 stimulus check for people hobbling through the pandemic. It was all over Twitter today, him standing up in the Senate, worrying for the first time about America’s enormous deficit, waving away people’s screaming need for financial help. When Senator Johnson talks, I know his hands are soft and doughy and that he has never so much as carried his own bag to the car. But I don’t dislike people because they are rich. I dislike rich people who are stingy and who, as my mother would say, “look down their noses” at everyone else. That’s our Ron.

My husband’s Christmas present came yesterday and was so large and heavy that it took the two of us to bring it into the house. He right away asked me if it was an air conditioner and then went chapter and verse about how we don’t need an air conditioner because we have one, which is only partly true, because we have one but it doesn’t work. Neither of us like air conditioning anyway. But it isn’t an air conditioner. It may, however, be a mistake.

Hanukkah is over so we are gliding into Christmas. This will be our first Christmas, just the two of us with no kids or kids’ kids, so we are trying to figure out how that will work. Our planning so far has consisted of buying a frozen duck. Oh, and we did make a fruitcake last weekend with dried fruit that we are rum-basting every few days, so there’s that. Duck and cake. And the air conditioner. That’s pretty much it. Maybe a little cryin’ in our beer.

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Photo credit: Photo by Tamas Tuzes-Katai on Unsplash