John’s making pear wine in the kitchen and our house smells like a cheap bar. I swear if I take a deep breath, I’ll be over the legal limit. (And the fermentation is just starting. It’ll get worse.)

Did I mention sticky floors? I use my swiffer floor scrubber many, many, many times each day but the floors can still stop me in my tracks. I love his wine, but the time when it’s being prepared is a challenge. Come and rescue me if you don’t hear from me. I’m probably stuck to the kitchen floor.

We’ll be hauling the wine to Florida with us. Last year we used five gallon carboys and one cracked down the seam while in route. Every time we stopped, I commented that I could smell wine. By the time we got to our condo, we’d lost half from that container. They could have followed our trail all the way from Michigan down I-75. This year John’s doing it differently. He’ll put the wine in five gallon covered “pails” which are less apt to crack. There are other advantages of pails over carboys: they are lower and flat on top so some stuff can ride on them and they are stackable to bring them back to Michigan.

It looks like it’s going to be tough cramming everything in. We thought that on this trip back, we’d be traveling light, but the load keeps growing. The wine might crowd out the deck chairs I really want to bring for our lanai. I’m so hoping for four of them but I may have to settle for two, if we can even fit them in.