Bleeding Fingers

Well, it is Halloween, so I needed a blog title like that. It's also (almost) appropriate.

I need to return to Wineapalooza because we met so many wonderful people and tasted some extraordinary wines and those deserve to be shared, so I'm pushing on with it, even though I'm months behind. In fairness to me, I didn't anticipate signing a book deal in the midst of Wineapalooza. I have been a writing maniac of late (hence, the bleeding fingers --or, um, figures of speech), working on The Dog Lived manuscript and it seems like as soon as I look up from the keyboard, another week has flown by. And there is so much going on! So much more to share! So, here's my new  scheme wishful thinking hope and prayer plan. I'm going to give you a little of the remainder of Wineapalooza, and then a little something else. Then wineapalooza, then something else. All of which requires me to actually blog.... Hmmmm.. Well, let's get started.

Wineapalooza left off at the cabin randomly named for Mark Twain. The next day we were in Madera, where we had no winery reservations and thus slept in. Which turned out to be a good thing, because there weren't many wineries (um, none) open on Monday and making wines of the Forgotten Grapes varietals. So we drove on out to Sanger where we visited the Cedar View winery. And what a gorgeous stop that was! I mean, look at this:

Right? How could I not share this with you? Favorite wine at Cedar View was the Alicante Bouschet (see ForgottenGrapes.com if you don't know that that is!). And in the "it's a small world" category, the owner/ winemaker, Jim Van Haun, and I had a friend in common, so I brought back a bottle of his rose' wine for her (Hi Stacey, if you're still reading this even though you know I lived.) Here's Chris with Jim and his wife Debbie in their tasting room--with a copy of Touring & Tasting magazine open to the page that features them. It's like we're tourists. Only with taste.

For the record, at this point in the Wineapalooza Mother of all Wine trips, we have visited 31 wineries and sampled 269 wines. It was time to head to Paso Robles, which, not coincidentally, is where I dream of living some day.



And for the current "little something else" of this blog post, on this, the last day of "Breast Cancer Awareness Month" I want to share a little news with you. I'm coming up on my 3 year "no-cancer-versary." Well, that will actually be January 28th (the 3 year anniversary of my surgery and thus the last time there was any visible signs of cancer in my body), but that seems right around the corner doesn't it?   I mention that only for context....see, last week I packaged up my wigs and scarves and even the styrofoam head to hold the wigs and donated them to The Pink Ribbon Place. And, I'll admit, it was a strange feeling. Uncomfortable. What if the cancer returns? What if I need these again? And, I can also tell you that I kept the wigs, t-shirts, scarves, etc. all together in a laundry basket in a corner of my closet. I had not looked at those items in a long, long time. So I had a rush of emotions pulling everything back out. It was difficult looking at them again. In the end, that's what made me decide to go ahead and donate the items. That was a different time in my life and it's over. These wigs and scarves can help somebody else now.
Goodbye red...somebody else needs you now.