The Accidental Wine Expert

Well, the boss is coming to dinner and everyone is nervous. Maybe he won’t like the dinner. Maybe he’ll fire Jim because he hates the dinner! Better distract him from the tuna noodle casserole with some fancy schmancy wine. So you’d better become a Wine Expert in a hurry. You’ve got – oh, say five minutes. Luckily you also happen to have a bottle of Virginia Dare wine in the back of the cupboard so you will be all right.And naturally the boss in the cartoon is very, very impressed: “I didn’t know you were a wine expert, Harry!” Indeed. Anyway, here is the giant version so you can follow the exciting (predictable) story of how Harry and Madame Harry – merely by slapping a bottle of Virginia Dare wine on the table -advance Harry’s career. Because so few people (says the boss) know about “gracious living.” And about the “wonderful wines we make in America.” Good thing they didn’t bring out the Beaujolais, right? Hic!…Anyway, this is all one paragraph because my Blogger thing is not indenting for me this morning and I want to  post this before I get back to work – a fabulous combo of vacuuming and writing dossiers on my main mystery-novel characters. And thank you again for your comments and I apologize for being such a lousy slacker answering/returning them. I will have to make a New Week’s Resolution on Monday or something (I just discovered my Microsoft Calendar so whom knows, I might even get organized next week!)

Oh, now’s it is indenting. OK, we’ll indent over here. If I do jump over to a new blog I will let you know, but still hanging around here for now. As you see. And now the Microsoft Calendar is calling me to hurry up. Which means, according to the Virginia Dare ad, that I am not a grape. Good to know!

Go Ask Marybelle

So this lady – the one dressed up like Alice in Wonderland – she walks in on me one afternoon in the middle of my bath. I said, do you mind? I’m trying to have a little spa break here – it’d been a really long, long day. It’s hard being a little kid, you know. Or maybe you don’t. And so, so boring, too – playpens aren’t exactly a whirlwind of excitement. And trying to tell people what’s on your mind? Oh, forget it. They never understand!

Alice decided to butter me up and paid me a compliment  – oh, you have such a lovely complexion, she says. And I wanted to reciprocate but really, this gal did not have a peaches and cream thing going on. I guess you’d call her complexion more – pineapple and cottage cheese, really. But you can’t say it to someone.

But a hint about skin care? It would not be amiss, I thought. I held up the bar of Ivory Soap and – well, what I said to her was, “You know, missy, you really ought to make friends with something along these lines.” But apparently what came out of my mouth was – and I quote – “Glubb – dabo – figgl!”

I want you to know, for the record – I did not say anything so ridiculous. I don’t even know what ‘glubb dabo figgl’ is supposed to mean. Maybe it’s Esperanto or something. Maybe Alice had water in her ear, since I was splashing around a lot (I know that Mother gets pretty saturated when she lends me a hand, so there you go).

Alice claims it meant ‘go see my doctor, on the double’ and she did that. He probably said Ivory was fine, why not, what are you wasting my time for young lady, go wash your face.

Next thing we know, Alice is married to some Navy guy and I’m the flower girl and I’m six years old. Took her awhile, I guess. Think of all the cases of Ivory she went through! And me? Exhausted. And if Alice comes over asking me for marital advice, please tell her I’m out jumping rope.

[From LiveJournal - the ad is nice and big over there, by the way. I'm guessing that this is from the 1940s, judging from Alice's hair and clothes and the naval wedding thing.]

Seam and Nothingness

Oh, that depends, does it not, on one’s definition of  “something nice.” Guys standing under you looking up your dress is not what most women would call nice, is it? Back to the drawing board, ad guys!

So hello after a week! Yeah, here we are…I’ll be keeping an eye out for ads, but just not every day (I think you guessed about that, right?). If you follow me on Twitter (and please do, I promise to write more funny 140-character poems in the near future!) – then you know I am presently: writing That Mystery Novel and thinking about What Now regarding blogging: a writing blog? A new ad blog? A blog about the weird Victorian novels I am reading (they go so nicely with writing a Victorian mystery, you know, and are such fun – about 100 years ago I was doing graduate work in the Victorian sensation novel so this is wonderful to go back to).

I also created a (now empty) blog called The Mystery Machine because I thought it was a great blog title but…it is empty! Maybe it will become a writing blog. I’ll let you know. And I’m going to try and catch up with your blogs, too, over the next days. I’m not gone, in other words – just a little bit tired (this is my 803rd post, would you believe, and that does not include 700+ history posts, yikes!).

[The peculiar stockings ad is from Life, December 3, 1956.]