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John likes to buy wine. Lots of wine. Bottles of red crowd our wine fridge. But I can’t drink any of it.

It’s all wine John’s bought for special occasions. It’s nice wine. It’s expensive wine. He says we’ll drink it on special days, or after it’s aged 10 years, or something like that.

And I’m sure we will. But I want to drink it right now.

My mother kept a lot of my grandmother’s gold jewelry in a safety deposit box. I inherited some of it when I got married.

It’s nice jewelry. And I wear it all the time. A gold bracelet with a work outfit, my grandmother’s baby bracelet on a gold chain as a necklace, a big gold necklace with simple dresses. I wear it all the time.

Some people believe in saving the best things for special occasions. It makes the event more special, and protects and preserves your valuables, the things you cherish and are worth a lot of money and emotional investment.

I’m not really like that. I believe in fancy dinners any time of year, drinking the best wine on a random Tuesday, wearing my best jewelry all the time. It makes even the most mundane things feel special. It makes every day a day of celebration, in some small way.

Now more than ever, I feel like I need these tiny celebrations. I feel like I need to celebrate the fact that I’m here, I’m present. I feel the need to bring my past in to my present, and remember that it makes me who I am, but it doesn’t define me. I feel the need to celebrate the fact that it is Tuesday.

Here’s another example: John bought me a very pretty ring for Christmas. It’s a ring I wanted. It’s big and shiny. It’s probably meant to be worn on special occasions, like a cocktail ring.

I wear it every day.

Maybe you like to save things for special occasions. But what I’m saying is, you should let those things make your everyday occasions special. Go out for a nice dinner for no reason. Wear something that makes you feel good. Cash in that gift card. Whatever. If we all save the best for last, we’re depriving ourselves of the best things right now. Why? Spread it out. Spread the best stuff out. Otherwise, you’ll have a life of OK and the last will be spectacular. I’d rather have a life of spectacular.

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Last year was the year of Lauren. Remember that? I was going to create new experiences, try new things, take charge, carpe diem.

And I did. In more ways than I can count. Sometimes you can change your life, you can look ahead to what you want the future to be and make it happen.

And sometimes life changes you.

My father had a stroke last month.

It was sudden and unexpected. He lives near me, so we’ve gotten him treatment and pills and things to do. He’s staying with me while he recovers.

I’m not telling you this because I want sympathy, or because it’s any of your business. It’s not your business. I’m telling you this because I’ve been thinking about what to do with this blog.

Food and cooking and eating are still important to me. Hell, eating is important to all of  us, it’s how we stay alive. But writing about recipes and cooking seems trivial now, when I have a lot of other important things to think about. Things that are more important than writing this blog.

I’m also telling you this because I want you to know that I might be writing about other things for a while. This blog, when I first started it, was just about my life. It might become about my life again. I might want to talk about my dad, about strokes, about taking care of a parent.

Then again, I might not. I might want to use this space to escape from all of that. Where I can talk about something frivolous.

Through this whole process, people have told me to take care of myself. Part of that means giving myself permission and space to do what I want.

Right now, I don’t know what I want this blog to be, or what it will become in the coming months. I have no idea.

If you’d rather read stuff about food and not about my life, you can read other blogs for a few months. There are a lot of good blogs out there, and you shouldn’t have any problem finding them.

But I bet some of you will stick around. I hope you do, anyway.

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I lost my mother-in-law.

I mean, I literally lost her. In San Antonio. I couldn’t find her for an hour and a half.

John’s parents are staying with us for the week. They don’t live in Texas. They’ve been here before and know our area a bit, but they don’t live here. She and I had gone to pick up John’s car from the dealership. We drove there together, she let me out, I got John’s car, and we got on the service road to go to my house. We weren’t far from the house, and I thought she was only a couple cars behind me.

But then I got home, and she wasn’t there. After a few minutes, I called her. No answer. She didn’t have her phone. But if she’d been following me, she shouldn’t have been more than a few minutes behind me, even if there was traffic or she got stuck at a light. Time crept on. I waited in the driveway, watching the cars go by. She wasn’t in any of those cars.

After 20 minutes, I decided to try to find her if I could. I didn’t know if she had any money, or if she knew how to get home. I didn’t know if she knew enough about where we lived to ask anyone how to get home again.

So I drove for about an hour, checking gas stations for the car, looking for accidents or cars pulled off the road. I was in an absolute panic, thinking that I’d let this happen. Thinking that she could be hurt, or gotten into an accident, or be crazy lost. I kept driving, because I needed to do something to try to help, and it was all I could think to do.

Finally, my father-in-law called. She’d found her way home, after being lost. I breathed a sigh of relief. I called John to let him know. I drove back home and hugged my mother-in-law.

And then I had many glasses of wine.

All this leads me to believe that having children is going to turn me into a walking panic attack. John called me last night, and I had to tell him, “I can’t talk now, I lost your mother!”

I’m telling you this story to explain one of my greatest fears when I think about having children: That I will literally die from a panic attack.

I freak out about a lot of things. I can’t help thinking of the worst. The planner in me kicks in, it starts considering scenarios and what I would do. I start to thinking, I need to look up the hospitals and start calling them. I should look to see if she took her wallet. I should drive down all the side streets and see if she’s there. If she doesn’t come back in another hour, where should we look? Should I call the police department and see if anything’s been reported?

I can’t help it, my mind goes to the worst things and starts planning. In many ways, this is a bad thing because I usually get worked up over nothing. It’s usually fine. Just because John isn’t answering his phone doesn’t mean he’s in trouble – it probably means his phone died.

Someday, I will probably get better about this. It’s useless to worry about everything that crosses your path. I know that. But I can’t help myself from freaking out.

I’m not sure what I’m trying to say or ask right now, but I wanted to share that with you.

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People say to me, constantly, “Lauren, you are a cosmopolitan gal-about-town. What are your rules for LIFE and LIVING?”

And to these people I say, “Stop speaking to me, minions! Peel me some grapes!”

No, of course I don’t say that, because no one has ever called me a gal-about-town. Probably because that’s not a thing.

But I have flown on an airplane many times, and I have some tips for travel for you, based on my keen observations. Lo:

• We all know you’re going to sleep on the plane, but try not to dress like it. Look, I know. It’s a long flight. It’s a great time to get some rest. But it’s really weird to see someone wearing uggs, sweatpants, a ratty T-shirt, and a sparkly purse. It’s a combo that does not work.
• Conversely, if you’re old, wear and do anything you want. This is an unspoken rule for life, actually. I saw an elderly man eating, and he had on a baseball cap that said “Won’t stand 4 SHIT.” Well played, sir.
• Don’t look at people when you eavesdrop! Cmon, we all want to catch up on Real Housewives: Airport, but remember not to look at people when you eavesdrop. If you look away, not only will they not know you’re eavesdropping, it will be easier to hear things, because your ear will be facing them. How else would I find out that in Air Force basic training, they make you do push ups on your birthday? Great thing to know!
• Stop being shocked about TSA rules. Look, we all hate emptying our pockets and taking our shoes off to go through the detectors. We all hate getting patted down and not being able to bring drinks. It’s ridiculous. But stop acting like it’s a surprise. We all know it’s going to happen.
• Don’t be so possessive of the overhead bin space. In an ideal world, we’d all be able to put our luggage right above our seats. But we don’t live in an ideal world, do we? We live in a world where bacon has a lot of calories, and the Kardashians are a thing. So don’t get all mad when someone puts their luggage in your so-called luggage space. We don’t have individual luggage spaces overhead, so get over it.
• Speaking of eavesdropping, remember that we can all hear you. Like, all of us. I can hear you, girl on your cell phone. I can hear you, beleaguered mother in front of me. I can hear you, teenager going to basic training. I can hear all of you. And I will write about you on my blog. Someone you don’t know and will never see again will write about you on her blog. If that doesn’t shut you up on a cross-country flight, nothing will.
• Be classy. Not klassy. Some people think it’s classy to wear a denim cap and sunglasses on an airplane. Actually, it’s klassy, as in a Kardashian would do it. It is klassy because no one who is classy would do it, on an airplane or anywhere.
• For the love of cookies, try not to fart so much. I’m guilty of this one too. I’m mildly lactose intolerant, but forget this fact every 9 minutes. It’s gross, I know. But try not too. We’re all trapped in this metal tube, and the smell has nowhere to go. NOWHERE.

You’re welcome, humans of the world.

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Yeah, I know I’ve been gone for awhile. I kept meaning to, but then…I didn’t.

And now I’m going to write about some stuff that has nothing to do with food.

So that’s what I’m going to do. Disappear for a while and go off the rails in terms of what I post.

Sound good? Great.