Interesting Life Anecdotes: Bourbon

What this blog needs is some funny stories!  The other mom's blogs consist almost exclusively of little tidbits and anecdotes of family life.  Cute stories about the kids.  And we're always trying to be like everyone else, right?  Therefore i will attempt to give you an Interesting Life Anecdote.  And what better topic to begin with than hard liquor.

There are two things you need to know as background info to this story.  Number one, I have very strong views about grocery shopping with a baby.  I did it once, and promptly swore i would never do it again.  Ironically, i had a conversation with my sister-in-law about this topic just last night.  Never again, i told her.  The baby behaves beautifully at the grocery, so it's not because of her I detest it so much.  It's because of street parking and 3 flights of stairs.  Unloading a very heavy baby carrier plus endless bags of groceries out of the car, walking 100 yards to the front door, getting everything thru two doors and up 3 flights of stairs - it's a Herculean task.  Never again.

Number two, recently I'm obsessed with cranberries.  They are so stinkin good for you!  Might I also mention, delicious!  I buy at least two bags every time i'm at the market.  You can understand why i volunteered to make the cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving.  I saw a recipe for Bourbon-Cranberry Compote in Real Simple, and had been dying to make it.

Well, Thanksgiving is close at hand, so it was time to get cracking.  I was pitifully sick all weekend, and wasn't able to run the errands i needed to.  So here it is Tuesday, and i haven't purchased the Bourbon for the Bourbon-Cranberry Compote.  My scheduling options for when i could go buy it were very limited.  Either, this very minute with the BabyGirl, or by myself at like 11 o'clock on Thanksgiving Eve.  I gritted my teeth and decided to go right now.  She and i threw on some clothes and hit the road.

There we were: two girls in the alcohol section.  The BabyGirl sitting pleasantly in her carrier, happily crumpling my grocery list.  As i stood there staring at the liquor shelves, I realized that i didn't know as much about bourbon as i thought i did.  Turns out, i don't know a dang thing about bourbon.  I've never purchased\drank it before, but i thought it would be self-explanatory.  You walk down the liquor aisle til you come to a glass bottle with "BOURBON" in big block letters.  Let me tell ya, it wasn't so easy.  We passed the tequilas.  We passed the rums.  We passed the gins.  We passed the vodkas (a whole lotta vodkas).  We passed the whiskeys.  I thought to myself, "I'm not going to spend any time looking at all those whiskeys since it certainly won't be there."

And that was the end of the aisle.  No bottles labelled BOURBON.  Hmm.  The BabyGirl was no longer content to merely crumple the shopping list; now she is eating it.  I snatch the remnants away from her, and we go down the next aisle.  Here we go, i thought, this one has promise.  This aisle has sherry and port, so i felt like we were on the right track.  I don't know why i thought bourbon was in the dessert wine category.  Sherry and port immediately gave way to tons of champaign.  No luck on that aisle either.

Oh dear!  Is the bourbon in the <gulp> locked cabinet?  Cause i'm not the kind of girl who buys the kind of liquor from the locked cabinet.  Meanwhile the BabyGirl, who now has no entertainment since i took the list away, has occupied herself by taking off one of her adorable pink kitty shoes and throwing it on the floor.  I bent over to retrieve it just as she threw the second one over the edge also, landing on my head.  Since her feet are now bare i was compelled to nibble her toes a little bit, which made her giggle.

Back to business.  Just to be sure, i looked at the locked cabinet, no bourbon there.  Great, now what?  We started over at the beginning: tequila, rum, gin, vodka, whiskey.  This time i looked at them all with intense scrutiny.  In the midst of my concentration i sorta forgot about the BabyGirl, until out of the corner of my eye i noticed that the whole grocery cart was shaking.  She was slamming her legs up and down in the carrier.  I finally took the hint that she was bored with this bourbon hunt, and gave her a toy.

And finally, after looking at almost every bottle, i found it!  Guess where?  In the whiskeys.  There you have it, folks, bourbon is a whiskey.  Yes, i am an airhead.  I think it took me a good 15 minutes.

Now i just hope that this is some dang good cranberry sauce!