Snow days make people do crazy things. For instance, last week, school was cancelled on Friday. Loveland schools have a policy that if school is not held for that reason on Friday, then no evening activities or weekend events are to take place. This is all well and good, but it leaves the children and their parents to devise a scheme that will keep all busy over the weekend.
As such, my son’s basketball game, schedule for 4 p.m. on Saturday had been cancelled. And too, was Mark’s coaching return, after their first victory following several defeats. This left our Saturday wide open. Sometimes, we go yoga-ing on Saturday mornings, but we both felt the need to be out doors and walked in the snow, illegally, in the new woods being created, or recreated next door.
We returned home to find the children in the same position as when we left, hurriedly doing homework for which they had five snow days to complete, or chill-axing in front of the computer playing games. No surprises there, they would remain in those positions all day, if we didn’t stir them.
Mark and I showered and decided to head to Findlay Market to buy items for the Super Bowl party that we weren’t hosting the next day, due to our invites unable to attend! We waited the obligatory ten minutes on Fields-Ertel to get to the interstate, though we only live 2.5 miles away. Its always ten minutes, whether its Saturday afternoon, sunny and the shoppers are out in hoards or on a Sunday morning, church crowds not even awake yet. The lights are designed to move traffic up and down Mason-Mont Rd., the crossroad, but not to move them across Fields-Ertel Rd.
As we waited somewhere near the Target intersection, Mark suggested, “Hey Jungle Jim’s is having a wine tasting today.” I looked at the clock. As avid followers but not attendees to Jj’s wine tastings, we knew the events were held in Fairfield, a ½ hour away, beginning at 1 p.m. Hmmm, I thought, and then said, “Well, let’s go there.” Many of our friends are usually there, folks we have sipped and shared wines with while on a tasting trip to Oregon. Each year, they try to get us to return, but like a good wine made in the Amarone style, where they lay the grapes out in the sun, I am still drying out from that trip, three years ago.
In thirty minutes time, we found ourselves surrounded by friends and twelve wines to taste. For two hours, we laughed, bemoaned the kids being off all week, and talked excitedly about memories from our back of the bus days on the Oregon trip. Our friend Dave, the wine manager at JJ’s even suggested that next trip, there will be two buses, so everyone can sit in the back of the bus. I think this included him, because he was always up front, trying to appear prim and proper, despite having tasted 27 wines in one day.
When Dave had rolled away the lone remaining banquet table holding the last of the tasting wines, we knew it was time to go. We shopped a little in the store, and then rolled our cart over ice and snow towards the car. As we proceeded down the sidewalk, the Pet store next store loomed large.
We had been talking about getting a puppy for sometime. Actually, I had a read a book called The Art of Racing in the Rain I realized I wanted a dog. The main character is a dog named Enzo. Enzo is also the narrator and I fell in love with his personality, he is dedicated first to his bachelor owner, then to the owner’s new wife and daughter. He is just a really cool dog. I set the book down after finishing it, looked over at Mark on the couch reading something else and said, “If we ever get a dog, it has to be named Enzo.” And that was the beginning of the thread of this story.
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