The problem with drinking wine is that it makes you sleepy the next day. It became a kind of habit where we'd have a glass on a Friday night, maybe with chips, maybe with popcorn while we watched something on Netflix. It was the way we spoiled ourselves deprived as we felt, since having kids, of going out. Popcorn got in my teeth, so we gave up popcorn. Chips made me feel bloated, and so I restricted myself to only small quantities. How unwillingly we let go of little allowances. How disinclined I was to growing older, to becoming more attuned to the body as it is. The body doesn't care what the mind decides is an allowance, a little bit of freedom, a little bit of letting go. Bottles of wine add up in a year, and so we subtracted them from our spending. You have to get to tricking yourself into deriving a greater pleasure from clear-eyed mornings, a congruence of good feeling and health. I wonder sometimes though, if these things I change for the better are not some form of tightening... tighter, tighter, pop. Or is it just a way of learning a new kind of freedom? A freedom from the tyranny of a clichéd idea.