I had kind of a crap week—long hours, tight deadlines and tons of stress. I just felt like hanging at home and having a drink—something I don’t usually do, much to the annoyance of Bill. We have so much wine and liquor here, but I feel weird drinking at home. I think it’s more of a social activity to me—something I do when I feel good, not when I’m feeling shitty. But I’m so tired and don’t feel like being social so I decided to make a cocktail and sit on my couch.

I am usually a dirty martini girl, but I like to mix it up once in a while. Recently, my friend Eve introduced me to the Ginger Martini. I think she uses a lemon vodka with a little lemon juice, but the star of the show is a ginger liqueur called Domaine De Canton. According to their website, it’s a blend of ginger, VSOP cognac and XO Grand Champagne cognacs, which makes a lovely gingery, vanilla flavor. It has a kick with a touch of sweet.

Domaine De Canton

It was love at first sip. So, of course, I ran out and bought some Domaine De Canton. I’ve tried to reproduce Eve’s martini but I felt like I was missing something, so I started to play around with the recipe a bit.

And this weekend I hit paydirt.

I used Belvedere Vodka, lemon juice, Domaine De Canton and—are you ready?—a ginger simple syrup. OhMAHGOD. It’s sweet (but not to sweet), tangy and has a little bite.

Ginger Simple Syrup

1 cup water

1 cup sugar

fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced

In a saucepan place the ginger, water and sugar over medium-low heat and let simmer for 30 minutes. The sugar will dissolve while the giner seeps into the mixture. Make sure it doesn’t burn. Remove the syrup from the heat. Remove the ginger and put the syrup in the fridge to chill.

Sweet Ginger Martini

3 oz. Domaine De Canton

2 oz. vodka

1 teaspoon of the ginger syrup (I used 2 and it was just a little too sweet. You can keep the syrup in the fridge for up to 2 weeks)

Lemon juice (if you can, use fresh. I squeezed about half a lemon)

Fill a cocktail shaker about halfway with ice, add the lemon juice, Domaine De Canton, Vodka and ginger syrup. Shake, and pour into a martini glass.

I know this is a little bit of work, but I swear to you, it’s worth it. I’m going to try some other recipes with the simple syrup in them so you don’t feel like you’re throwing away a bunch of sugar.

PS: You can get the Domaine de Canton at Beverages and More. And, no, this isn’t an ad. They’re the only company that makes it (as far as I know).

PSS: You just just want some sweet without the tang of the ginger, leave it out. You can always mix it with flavored martinis for a little extra sweetness.

PSSS: Should this be a weekly feature?! (And excuse to drink, right?!)

Gracie chose trick.

Is pink my color?

1. I chew and rip my cuticles. And when I’m stressed I will rip at them until they bleed (and then I’m too embarrassed to let anyone see my hands).
2. I think one of the great joys in life is the perfect Diet Coke.
3. I won’t leave the house without makeup. At the very least I need some powder and mascara to make me look less dead.
4. When something is bothering me I will work out every possible scenario in my head—what will I say, what if they say this, what will I do if this happens. My head is a difficult place to be sometimes.
5. I am still painfully shy. I even hate having to call customer service people because I don’t like to talk to strangers.
6. I am sort of obsessed with my hair. I gave up on the idea of having long, sexy, shiny hair a long time ago (it just doesn’t grow that long), so instead, I regularly get  highlights and hair cuts. And I wash and blowdry it every single day. Unless I’m practically dying and even then I’ll try.
7. I like to think I’m organized, but I’m really not.
8. As much as I love my Blackberry, I don’t totally trust it and find something comforting and soothing about actually keeping a calendar that I can write things in, flip through and carry with me.
9. I am one of the most insecure people I know.
10. I wish I were friendly and outgoing like my husband (instead of a surly loner).

I’ve always wanted to be a crafty girl, but I’m not. There’s just something missing in my genetic makeup for arts and crafts. It’s not that I’m not interested in them—I’m just either not good at crafts or not patient enough for them.

When I was a kid I loved doll houses. I adored the miniature furniture, perfectly detailed and scaled down. My mom was thrilled that I was interested and took me to pick out some furniture for my new doll house. I picked out the furniture that I wished I had in my own room—a large canopy bed with tall dressers that sat on pretty feet. I had kitchen sets, grandfather clocks, a stove, lamps, and my mom even sewed bedding and tablecloths for everything.

My dream bedroom set

It look a while, but I finally found the perfect doll house. It was a stunning Victorian, similar to this.

What it SHOULD have looked like...

It wasn’t cheap. My dad offered to help me put it together but I convinced him that I could do it. So he bought me glue and whatever else I would need to assemble it. I think I was 9.

Had I been less obtuse, this hobby would have been the first clue that I wasn’t the crafty type. I really wish I had a picture of the finished house. It looked less like a stately Victorian and more like a tenement building. The whole thing leaned to the left, the porch was lopsided, the shutters hung off, the roof caved in a bit in one area and the paint job—inside and out—looked like someone had been blindfolded and was turned loose. I had been given a wallpaper sample book as well as some carpet samples. After I paired a gold and blue wallpaper with purple carpet it was clear that I would never have a successful career as an interior designer.

My parents were devastated. That house was probably a couple of hundred dollars and the furniture was probably almost as much. At one point the dollhouse disappeared, never to be seen again. I’m sure it was smashed and burned in the fire place, the furniture lovingly wrapped up and put away for safe keeping.

After that, I moved on to knitting. My grandmother tried to teach me how but I didn’t quite grasp the concept and couldn’t do much more than a 10-foot strand of stitches.

now what do I do with it all?

I was pretty safe with reading and stuck to that for years, but at some point I started to look for other outlets for my “creativity.”

After college I took up mosiac tiling. I bought a bunch of little glass mosaic tiles and some clear candle holders and basically bedazzled the shit out of them. That didn’t last long—they looked cheap and ugly and I didn’t like to use them.

Then it was on to beading. I tried to make jewelry, napkin holders and God only knows what else. Everything was totally Fugly.

A couple of years later, a friend of mine was interested in quilting and convinced me to take a class with her. They taught us the basics of cutting pieces and  hand-sewing squares and triangles in fairly simple patterns. That lasted a while—as long as it took me to hand-sew twelve 12″x12″ squares together to make the topper. By that point I realized I had no skill at the actual quilting part—hand-quilting a pattern to sew batting between the topper and the bottom. That’s still sitting in my guest room dresser, mocking me for getting it so far but not finishing it.

So now I have a big container full of beads, wire, mosaics, fabric, yarn, glue, paint and thread. I wonder what I should try to ruin make next?

The Claw is sharp. The Claw attacks swiftly and brutally, scratching and gripping its prey.

Tap, tap, tap...

About 20 or so years ago, Bill had back surgery. I don’t know all the details but the gist of it is that his Volkswagon Bug was rear-ended by an armored truck and Bill had three discs removed from his back. It’s pretty impressive that he’s able to walk at all because back in the day, doctors were more likely to fuse your spine than do disc surgery.

But now, as a result, when he’s tired, when he hasn’t worked out, when he hasn’t been adjusted by the chiropractor, Bill’s back spasms at night. When he lays down and finally relaxes, his whole right side spasms. His leg twitches and jerks, and the foot curls up into The Claw and seeks me out in the night, attacking me.

I try to move my legs away, kick it to the other side of the bed, but The Claw is persistent. It hunts me down and finds me wherever I am.