Category: gin

This post is for Friday.

That glass looks as though it may have once held a lovely pint. On New Years Eve, I took a vow of abstinence–of alcohol, my own little prohibition–for the month of January. I didn’t tell anyone and, anyway, I originally did it to lose weight. But then it became a thing to see if I could actually do it for a whole month. You’ll notice that I’m now referring to the endeavor in the past tense.

I caved a tiny bit last night when my husband brought home a bottle of Talisker Single Malt. He’s as frugal/thrifty as a Scot, so this was a big, big deal. And it’s from f—ing Skye, for God’s sake. So in fact, I had a wee dram; but I was prepared to consider that just a cosmic anomaly in an otherwise tidy alcohol-free month.

Okay, tonight we attended the elementary school science fair–that my son participated in and which probably led to the bottle of Talisker being purchased. You see, my husband takes my son’s science projects very personally. If you don’t know what I mean by this point, you never will, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Anyway, one of the kids’ projects compared the effect of black light on various solutions–as in, can you make them glow like a lava lamp, man–and apparently a big trigger for black light brilliance is quinine, as in tonic water. That’s just lovely, but the kid had drawn a picture of a bottle of Schwepp’s. The name brand. I nearly got in the car and went to the store right then. You see, I knew I had the gin at home.

Still, my virtue survived intact. But once I pulled into the driveway of my home, I remembered that my husband was out of coffee filters–I drink tea, I’m not hampered by these things–and this is the same husband who had been up until 4 in the morning working on the….well, you know. So coffee filters I would go a-getting.

I’m in Target [full disclosure: I am a Target stockholder] and my phone rings. It’s him. He has a list of things the kids have requested once it was learned that I was headed for the store. Everything on the list was orange–Kraft macaroni, OJ, Sunkist soda, a Goldfish-type knock-off called Chickadees….oh, and one thing that’s not orange, somethin’ for Dad. Tonic water.

That was the end. I said, “I’m in.” I am currently enjoying my gin and tonic, crafted by Himself.

I made it 19 days.