Did you know that glass wine bottles (or glass sparkling grape fruit juice bottles...or whatever glass bottles that size and shape), are awesome for putting in your tall winter boots? It keeps them standing up straight, which makes for easier storage in your closet (instead of boots falling over the place), and preserves their life span by not having them fold over on themselves and get damaged that way. The downside is they last longer so you don't have a pressing need to buy new ones.
When I found this out, I immediately went to our fridge to look for bottles.
Which leads me to the story of why we have an exorbitant amount of hard liquor in our fridge.
Benjamin used to work for a liquor distributor in San Antonio who shall remain nameless due to ensuing details. He was in the computer tech area. Periodically, he would work really hard on a project, and impress someone with access to the warehouse. Or he would clean massive amounts of pornography from an executive's WORK MACHINE, and be given access to the warehouse to keep things on the down low. If he could have reported the executive, he would have. But said executive might have been the person in charge of the whole company. (Or might not).
So when he would impress someone, or go above and beyond, he would often be given a bottle of alcohol that couldn't be distributed for some reason or another. Perhaps it was expired, or just not popular, or the wrong shipment was ordered, or couldn't be delivered, or any number of reasons why the company had a stash of liquor that it could not distribute. In the approximate year Benjamin worked there, we acquired about four bottles of rum, four bottles of vodka, a large bottle of Jack Daniels, a bunch of single-serving size of various liquors, some Limoncello, about eight bottles of wine, and I don't even remember what else.
But we don't drink. Or we hardly ever drink. I haven't had a sip of alcohol since being pregnant or breast feeding. In the years preceding, I had one glass of something sweet and fruity on a special occasion approximately four or five times a year.
We've managed to use up all the wine, either for cooking, or for taking to parties where friends would help finish it off. I remember one Thanksgiving with friends bringing a red wine called Knarly Vine (or something like that), which the friends particularly enjoyed.
But the hard liquor is still in our fridge five years later.
You can't sell liquor without a license. And we don't really have friends who drink. If I gave it away, I would be afraid perhaps it was used by an alcoholic, or got someone in a car wreck, or whatever. If I couldn't sell it, and couldn't give it away, I also couldn't bring myself to just pour down the drain that much MONEY.
But then I read about the wine bottles for boots.
So I opened the fridge, and took a hard look at the door-full of liquor.
And took a deep breath and dumped two huge bottles of rum down the drain.
Because I hate rum.
The vodka? I couldn't bring myself to do it. There's a half bottle of raspberry vodka, which we did use once to make berry daiquiris (about four years ago). And a full bottle of Grey Goose Pear. When I did used to have a period mixed drink, it was usually something involving vodka. So I just couldn't do it. Maybe in ten years when I'm done birthing and nursing babies, I'll be ready to dust off the bottles and have some friends over for pear-berry daiquiris.
In the mean time, the two empty bottles of rum did wonders to my leather boots.
In my shorter casual boots, I put still-sealed water bottles of Aquafina, which were a better size (and not fragile).
Except Jax likes to play with water bottles (wonderful crunching sound when squished between pudgy fingers), so now the floor of my closet is full of floppy boots AND a bunch of water bottles rolling around (the glass bottles and leather boots being safely confined to a high shelf). I'm not sure if I'm really better off.
When we wore this outfit last week, the first thing that came to mind was the word Limoncello.
And thus, this lengthy explanation of our apparent drinking problem, which is really an indecision problem.
If you come over and look in our fridge, don't judge.
And if you come over and look in my closet at massive empty bottles of rum, don't judge that either. We didn't drink it.
