Just a Wee Nip Now and Again

I made one of my rare forays to the liquor store on the way home Monday. I still feel just a tiny bit odd when I go in a liquor store; the places were so verboten when I was a preacher's kid way back when. If a nice lady were seen in such a place, Heaven would surely have been rocked off its foundation. Thankfully, for many reasons, I no longer feel like I'm sitting in constant judgment by Big Brother. (Or Big Church Congregation, as it were. One day I will mouth off at length about living in that particular kind of fishbowl.)

But I digress. I'm not a big drinker by any means. My trip Monday was to pick up a new supply of Disaronna (amaretto). Late last year I discovered the combination of a little amaretto and Sprite for a late night sleep aid. ("And it's so tasty, too!") Brother and sis-in-law gave me a fifth of Disaronna for Christmas and I was down to my last two ounces. (A fifth consumed over a period of 7 months--yeah, I'm a big drinker.)

As I waited in the drive-through at the liquor store, I had to chuckle. My grandmother Hodge was a tee-totaler, but told a good story about getting fall-over drunk on sips of beer at a ranch party when she was a youngster. That may well have been the only time she ever drank spirits. I never saw her take a drink in all the time that I knew her.

If anybody was any more straight-laced than Maw-Maw, it had to be my grandmother Wilcoxen. And yet there came a time in her middle-aged years when a bottle of Mogen David wine became a staple in her refrigerator. I can remember my father teasing her and her protestations that she was taking a small amount every day at the instructions of her doctor. I don't doubt that for a minute. However, now that I'm in the early stages of middle-age, I'm betting that his suggestion that she take a wee nip daily wasn't met with great resistance.

Because a wee nip now and again can take the edge off the day's stress and relax you enough to finally get to sleep. And we middle-aged gals can use a little help in that department. An ounce a day keeps the insomnia away.

And the heck with what the church ladies may think.

LSW