So at the end of Jazz Night, everyone's left and I pull my cassoulet out of the oven up at the bar, sit down and eat, of course with a glass of wine, a sip of Paul Mas single vineyard Malbec from the Languedoc, a sip of Minervois, a sip of the red Sablet Cotes du Rhone Villages. I manage to do the paperwork, put away the wine list iPads, the last odds and ends. I bike home, sit on the couch for a little bit, then get up to do a load of laundry, a bit of recycling of newspapers and cardboard, some general tidying. Gordon Ramsey's show is on in the background as I do the dishes, feed the cat, give her her medicine, clean the mail of the work week off my desk. And of course, this is a lonely time of night, and so I have a glass of wine. I drink a couple glasses of ice water, another glass of wine. But nothing crazy, just what seems like the right amount of medication. I'm up 'til about seven by the time the laundry is in the dryer and done with chores, finally relaxing to the tail end of a 1979 Sean Connery film with a great cast, Meteor, I guess it was called, hard to resist. (Henry Fonda, Karl Mauldin, Natalie Wood...) And then, I go to sleep.

But I must not be sleeping well, because even when I try to get up, succeed in making a pot of tea and some breakfast, I am still wiped out. The cycle I wanted to avoid, the drinking of wine before bedtime, and the growing exhaustion through the work week, culminating in sleeping a whole day away, and not feeling good about the waste.

It must be the alcohol. And so, a search through the web about the subject. And here's just one. http://oade.nd.edu/educate-yourself-alcohol/your-body-and-alcohol/ Seems to make sense.

Good god, has the only way to find a panacea, the only consistent pattern of attempt at feeling good besides exercise and long bike rides in the last twenty five years been through beer and wine and stronger stuff? Is that the only means to find some organic feeling of comfort and escape from problems that a writer and bartender pretty far out of synch with the folks of his town? And even now at midnight, a roasted chicken resting, one glass of wine so far, I already feel the comfort of the wine. It is working, soothing me, making me lazy.