I wanted to make mulled wine this weekend, so I went to the supermarket to try to buy a package of pre-made spices.  No go.  So I visited the Piedmont Market, a chic little place that stocks gourmet stuff, and asked one of the staff if they had what I needed.

“Oh, well, that’s a little seasonal.  We probably don’t have that yet.  But if you visit the spice aisle, you can probably find the ingredients to make it from scratch.”

Oh that’s helpful.  If I wanted to make it from scratch, I would have done that in the first place.  Believe me, I know what I’m doing when I force myself to use pre-made ingredients. *

Later, a friend condoned this ludicrous state of affairs: “Well, mulled wine is sort of seasonal.  I mean, people don’t drink it in July.”

Yes, but this is November, goddamn it.  Furthermore, if I’m in Costco five days before Halloween and they’re already hawking huge, cardboard-and-light nativity decorations for suburban front lawns--yet I still can’t find mulled wine packages at the local market--then someone is out of sync with the season and the holiday spirit in general, and it sure isn’t goddamn me.

*While making the mulled wine from scratch that evening, I unpeeled an orange only to find that said orange was, in fact, a grapefruit.  I had just grabbed something big and orange from the produce section without reading the signs or even looking at the fruit closely.  I’m lucky I didn’t end up with one of those “Caution: Wet Floor” signs.  This is why people don’t let me into their kitchens.