By Page Barnes of yourmomsguidetolife.com
Ashley Turner of Lexington, Kentucky doesn’t get much free time. When she is not at the office, she is at home wrangling the needs of her rambunctious toddler twins, 5-year-old daughter, and her wife, Sarah.
“It’s exhausting!” says Ashley. “So when I get a few free moments, there’s usually nothing I like to do more than pour myself a glass of wine and sit on the couch to read my favorite mom humor sites.”
But a recent evening took an alarming and unpleasant turn. Ashley and Sarah had finally gotten the kids to sleep after their usual evening routine of bath, brush teeth, story, kisses, lights out, water, lights out, monster under the bed, lights out, “I can’t sleep,” Benadryl, lights out. Ashley and Sarah settled onto the couch for a few minutes of peace and quiet before they went to bed.
Sarah was exchanging texts with her mother and Ashley was browsing through her favorite mom humor websites. Ashley was a glass and a half into a bottle of Shameless Tart Vineyard’s 2013 Zinfandel (which Wine Spectator described as “the Sophia Vergara of Zinfandels — voluptuous yet brainy with strong essences of patchouli, currant, and Head & Shoulders”), when she suddenly barfed Shameless Tart all over herself, the cat Minerva, and their Pottery Barn couch – which was only 8-months-old.
“I was just sitting there, quietly reading my ninth ‘Mom and Wine’ meme of the evening, when I suddenly urped. I was so startled! I’d been feeling fine, but I was thinking, ‘Oh, FFS! Another wine meme?’ The next thing I knew, I had blown wine everywhere!”
“At first, I thought Ashley was dying,” added Sarah. “It looked like she was puking blood. Ashley was red, Minerva was red, the couch was red. She missed me by millimeters. Thank God we don’t have carpeting! When I realized it was wine and not blood, I was relieved but pissed. I thought Ashley had probably had too much wine. But when I looked at the bottle, I knew it couldn’t have been that. So we just chalked it up to a bad reaction to the Sushi we had eaten for dinner.”
After cleaning up the mess and throwing every bottle of soda water in the house on the couch cushions, Ashley went to bed. By the next morning, all except the ruined couch was well.
But two evenings later when Ashley again opened a bottle of wine and started reading mom humor, all hell broke loose. “This time, it happened right away,” Ashley said. “I opened a bottle of Nasty Woman Vineyards Sauvignon Blanc (a competent, worldly wine with notes of bitter, bitter tears which won the tasters ‘favorite award’ at this year’s Sonoma International Wine Festival but was robbed of its gold medal as a result of Russian hacking). I took a few sips, read my first ‘mom and wine’ joke, thought ‘I am so sick of mom and wine jokes,’ and promptly lost my wine. Again.”
“At least it was white wine this time,” Sarah added.
“But we did notice that the two episodes had ‘mom and wine’ jokes in common,” Sarah continued. “So we decided to perform an experiment. The next evening, we retreated to the bathroom and poured Ashley a glass of Crabby Madame Rosé (an assertive wine of underrated virtues with strong notes of snark and raspberries accompanied by hints of e-cigarettes and resentment.) I handed her an iPad with an article about exercising with a toddler. Nothing happened. But then I pulled up a ‘mom and wine’ meme…the next thing we knew, Ashley was retching Crabby Madame into the sink.”
Lesson learned. These days Sarah tries to review Ashley’s favorite mom humor websites and screen them for “mom and wine” jokes before letting Ashley read them. “We just couldn’t afford to constantly replace the couch,” said Sarah.
Ashley continued, “But just in case, I’ve switched drinks. I’m drinking Jagermeister instead of wine. Because there don’t seem to be many ‘mom and Jagermeister’ jokes out there.”
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About the Author
Mom. Lawyer. Author of the definitive Guide to the Hippie Colleges of America. Writes as “Your Mom” at yourmomsguidetolife.com. Find her on Facebook and on Twitter @yourmomsguide.