I had been planning on heading to campus this morning to sit in on another one of the classes I�ll be teaching, but it was not to be. Today the class was handing back their first composition assignment and I was curious to see how they handled it. I�ll have to get the scoop from the T.A.

The reason I didn�t make it is that I was driving all over the northwest surburban Chicago area looking for fancy wine. Tomorrow, you see, is my husband�s 40th birthday and he has decided that what he needs to get him through the whole event is booze. Not just any booze, fancy booze. More specifically, aged Bordeaux booze. After a lot of research by internet and phone, I finally located a store that had what I was looking for. I printed out the directions from Mapquest and headed out the door with AJ in tow. Because what could make a trip to the liquor store more fun than a three-year-old?

Actually, AJ is not averse to trips to the wine store. He demonstrated an early affinity for the grape. As a baby, his first attempt at crawling was inspired not by seeing mommy or daddy on the other side of the room, but by an overwhelming urge to get up close and personal to the wine rack, which he proceeded to dismantle in short order. Fortunately we didn�t have any fancy booze then. And we did eventually figure out that we had to babyproof the place.

After he was old enough to talk, one of the first things he asked for was a sip of my wine. Now before anyone gets all huffy about alcohol for babies, know that I spent a substantial portion of elementary school living in Europe where juvenile alcohol consumption was not only legal but normal. My parents gave my brother and I small glasses of wine (often watered down) at dinner as young children and, quite frankly, we didn�t care for it, other than the fact that it made us feel grown up. Moreover, because wine was readily available to us, the mystique of alcohol consumption was seriously diminished. Consequently we were probably much better behaved as teenagers. But I digress. So AJ asked for a taste of wine and I gave him some. The problem was, he loved it. He wanted more. Now I only let him have occasional tastes off of my finger. I never thought I�d have to establish a formal alcohol policy for my three-year-old. I hope I haven�t set him on the road to degradation.

Fortunately, though, AJ�s tastes in wine are fairly pedestrian. While I was hunting up vintage Bordeauxs with alarming price tags on one side of the aisle, AJ was sitting on the floor behind me trying to read the labels of the $6 bottle of Turning Leaf. But even AJ has his standards. He has turned up his nose at the giant jug of cheap cabernet sauvignon sitting on a basement shelf, a relic from a sangria party past, with a label that includes the seemingly superfluous explanation that it contains �100% grape wine.� The specificity of that statement, of course, made me question its validity.

Although I had considered wrapping up the bottle of 100% grape wine as a present, I did actually purchase two bottles of the real thing, one old enough to drink now, and another to save for my husband�s 50th � an investment, of sorts, in our future.

And this afternoon, I will be doing penance for this morning�s decadence, by slogging through another round of travel grants and making progress on my revision. When AJ wakes up, we will go in search of balloons and cake and cards for tomorrow. I love celebrations.

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