lastgreypoet

Games We Play: An Introduction

The Empress of Whisky and I play a lot of games: board games, card games, role-playing games.

We’re pretty competitive about the board and card games, and we are most definitely not that couple you hate because they’re always helping each other out when you play a game with them.

Hell, no.

In fact, we have a saying: “I love you … outside the game.”

(In a sign of how seriously we take this, the line made its way into our wedding vows.)

Inside the game, we fight like strangers at best, but more often like neighbors with a long-simmering dispute over that one tree on the property line that no one wants to prune or rake up after.

It’s awesome.

We love playing games with friends, and we’re always thinking it’s been too long since we went to or hosted a game night. (It always is!)

But we also play a lot of two-player games, just us, head-to-head.

That’s how we spent New Year’s Eve, ushering in 2020 at the dining room table over a series of games.

Then we got up and played several more on New Year’s Day, after brunch and while the black-eyed peas were still simmering.

As we were doing this, I decided it would be a great thing to write about, since it’s a subject I haven’t hit on before — at least, not regularly — and I’d been looking for something in the semi-regular feature category that wasn’t just more whisky.

So, here we are then.

First proper post will show up shortly after this one, detailing those games we played on New Year’s Day, then others will follow throughout the year as we play through our collection.

Oh, right. The collection.

We have a lot of games. Like, a lot, a lot. So many that storage is becoming an issue. Thus we’ve decided, with reluctance, to prune out a few.

The only fair way to do that? Play ’em all, of course.

May the best games win.

Superstitions for the New Year

Do you have any New Year’s Day superstitions?

Boy, do I.

Well, I don’t have them, per se, as I am not a superstitious person, but I am subject to them as a native Southerner.

Here are the big ones I learned growing up:

No washing clothes on New Year’s Day.

Mom always handled this one by having a massive wash-in on New Year’s Eve, and growing up I remember at least once seeing her standing anxiously near the washer waiting for a load to finish as the clock approached midnight. Also? Drying doesn’t count. At least, that’s what Mom says. Don’t argue with Mom.

My Younger Sister has taken this approach as well, and I heard from her yesterday about how her day was going, and she was excited to say the laundry had all been slain ahead of schedule.

I take a more literal approach. The superstition says don’t wash on New Year’s Day. I can handle that without washing everything in the house the day before. This is basic procrastination, and I am its master.

I did some towels yesterday, but there are some left. And I didn’t have a full load of clothes ready to wash. I won’t bother with any of this today, because what’s another day?

(Caveat: This is not superstition related, just how I generally approach laundry. Is there enough to wear today? We are good, then. The rest can wait. See also: Procrastination.)

No sweeping on New Year’s Day.

Be still, my heart. The odds of me picking up a broom on any day, let alone a holiday, are sliiiiiim. I am a modern man with a vacuum cleaner, thank you. Actually, I am an ultra-modern man with a robot vacuum. To be on the safe side, I will run neither today. (The theme so far in these superstitions is avoiding house work, and I am here for that action.)

There was one year, however, when Mom corralled my sister and I into raking all the leaves in the front yard. We expressed the opinion that raking was close enough to sweeping as to be courting disaster. Mom (whom I suspect just wanted us out of the house for a bit at this late point in our extended holiday breaks at home) overruled us, so rake we did. For hours. Ugh. Anyway, as a result of that incident I added my own superstition.

No raking on New Year’s Day

Don’t give me lip about creating my own superstition. It has to be as valid as any of the rest of them, I figure. It’s even on-theme, what with being an avoidance of chores.

Anyway, these days I have a real easy way to get by on this one, which is called living in a condo. (Note: This works for most forms of yard work, be they rooted in superstition or not.)

Eat black-eyed peas for luck.

The way I see it, any food-based superstition can really just be re-framed as a holiday food tradition. No one says it’s “bad luck” to not eat turkey on Thanksgiving, right? We eat that bird because of tradition. And because of yum.

Anyway, black-eyed peas. I love them.

For me, New Year’s Day is just a great excuse to do black-eyed peas right. Most years the last thing I do before bed after watching the ball drop on New Year’s Eve is to put a full pot of peas in salted water so they can get a good overnight soak. This way, when I wake up, they are ready to start their slow (two hours or so) simmering cook on the stove the next morning and be ready in time for the holiday lunch.

I absolutely do not go in for crock pots or insta-pots, or any other new-fangled way of cooking them. I’m generally pretty science-positive and new-technique-friendly in my kitchen, but doing black-eyed peas the old way is a tradition with which I do not mess.

Eat greens for luck.

I’ve also heard this one as eat greens for prosperity (ca$h money, yo) in the new year.

I guess I’m doomed to be poor, given my relationship with green vegetables (and most other vegetables), which is, basically: “Leave me alone, and I’ll leave you uneaten.”

Most years, just for sport, I’ll choke down a few green beans, as they’re the closest thing to “greens” I can tolerate. You can keep your damned collards, though.

Getting back to the “foods as tradition, not superstition” thought: If black-eyed peas are the Thanksgiving turkey of New Year’s Day, I guess that makes greens the cranberry sauce for me. (Yeah, I don’t like cranberry sauce. Sue me. Or, better, just appreciate this means you get to eat more of it yourself.)

Something I’ve forgotten

There’s (surely) another Southern New Year’s Day superstition/tradition I am forgetting as I write this.

There are (certainly) New Year’s Day superstitions/traditions from other communities / parts of the country / parts of the world that I do not follow because they aren’t mine or I am ignorant of their existence.

If you know of some good ones, feel free to share in the comments.

Updated Thoughts on Dry January

They’re still basically the same as they were when last I brought the subject up.

I will add, this time, that these are my thoughts, the ones that work for me.

If you, your liver, or your family need a break from alcohol — for a month, for a year, forever — do it.

I make a bit of light sometimes of my drinking, but if I may be serious for a minute — hush, it’s possible — I acknowledge not everyone has it so easy. I know and appreciate my good fortune in these matters.

Cheers.

2019 Whisky Wind-down, 1: The Down

Today’s dram: Ardbeg Kelpie.

Today’s tasting notes: If you love big, cask-strength Islay whisky, the sort where the first sip scores your mouth to prepare to lay down a sweet ride on the ocean … get thee to your best bottle shoppe and acquire this. I don’t have a seal of approval or such, but this would be on any such list I developed.

Today’s brief preface to thoughts: A kelpie is a legendary creature, specifically a shape-shifting water-beast in Celtic lore, said to haunt the lochs of Scotland.

I don’t know if such things are real. Legends tell us stories we may choose to believe, of things that may have been real once (or remain real but hidden). It’s a matter of choice to believe in them, to seek them out, to find our own truths.

Today’s thoughts: I suffer from depression and anxiety.

This has been the case for me for at least half my life. Until recently, however, my struggle was carried out on a personal level only.

That changed this year.

I finally acknowledged it was time I had some assistance. Getting to that point took an incredible amount of time, frustration, and overcoming fear. So much fear. When you’ve lived half your life learning to cope in certain ways, you really might not be inclined to give those ways up on the hope that someone — an external someone — might have a piece of the solution you’ve been needing.

This is especially true when the one and only person you really trust to talk to about such things is yourself.

I’m not going to make this a long, mopey recovery post. Frankly, I don’t have that in me. I’m still a bit amazed I have this much in me. But one of the remarkable things about the ongoing improvements in my mental well-being is an ability to look at something, keep looking at it, and even start to do something about it.

Not coincidentally, these are all common factors to overcoming writer’s block.

I may never be the scribe I aspire to be. I may never be good enough to be the understudy to the person who carries the pencil box of the person who holds the backup pencils for the official pencil box carrier to a third-tier, semi-notable writer … but dammit I’m going to stop worrying about the outcome and just get some words down.

Nothing else for it.

My mental improvement has been a journey, and it’s not over. I owe tremendous thanks to so many people who helped me get to the point of seeking help, receiving help, and keeping going when the help takes time to, well, help.

Several friends, whom I will not name here, have gone through, and continue to go through, similar issues. Their support — especially, in many cases, just their examples in living their lives — has made such difference in mine.

Several family, whom I will not single out, have also helped tremendously in this regard.

Okay, I will single out a couple, only because I know specifically they will not mind.

Without The Empress of Whisky, my life partner, I would not be here, full stop. She’s the pole star in my wanderings, and the constant that keeps my going. I love her fully and forever.

Also, Cat. She really is the best cat.

Today’s toast: To the future, and to the joy that comes of having one.

2019 Whisky Wind-down, 2: The Wind

Today’s dram: Passport Scotch

Today’s tasting notes: It’s a blend. It tastes as much like generic Scotch whisky as you can imagine, in this case on the peaty side with a slight rough edge. The label says its contents are “predominately from Speyside” — I don’t get a particular Speyside vibe off it, though — and it’s made by William Longmore & Co. It’s fine.

Today’s thoughts: I’m rarely drawn to blends, but this bottle called to me in the duty-free shop, so I picked it up on a lark because the name amused me in an international airport.

(There’s actually a story about buying this and then fighting with the TSA about it, but I don’t have a lot of time tonight, and I don’t need to get on any government watch lists, so I’ll save that gem for another day.)

This purchase was on the way back from Costa Rica, which you may recall was where this blog got stuck for a bit.

Frankly, I could still be there.

No, really. Everything in the past two years might just be a fever dream I’m having because I fell asleep in the sun on the beach. Totally possible. Partially desirable.

Part of the joy of the Costa Rica trip, after all, was spending some time outside the States, in the company of people who also needed, after our first year in neo-fascist America, to get away for a bit. The temptation to just never come back was mighty tempting.

I did not succumb to that one.

Instead, I let another temptation take me — the one to just lie down and shut up, to let the world go by, to let the bad things go unremarked.

I still don’t know what I should be saying about things, but I am here, in my home country, which will probably always be my home country, and I daily surround myself with the kind of people who make this a country worth staying in and worth fighting to keep free.

Today’s pseudo-philosophical attempt to relate whisky to life: A blend may or may not be stronger than the sum of its components, but it is a sum, not a single thing. Seems like there’s a lesson in there worth applying out here.

Today’s toast: To there (and back again).