Reasons Mommy Drinks (21 page)

INGREDIENTS

Lemon juice

Celery salt

1 ounce vodka

3 ounces tomato juice

Dash of Worcestershire sauce

Pinch of salt and freshly ground pepper

Tabasco sauce

1 celery stalk

INSTRUCTIONS

Rim a glass with lemon juice, then celery salt, and fill it with ice. Pour in the vodka and the tomato and lemon juices. Add the Worcestershire, salt and pepper, and Tabasco to taste. Garnish with the celery stalk. Chase with a spoonful of sugar.

HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK

From the outside, having a baby didn’t really change Daddy’s life all that much. Physically, he didn’t have his penis ripped in half delivering you, though he did put on a few pounds in “sympathy weight,” aka “excuse to eat more chicken wings.” Daddy can still drink when it pleases him, not having to worry about incubating a human being or feeding you from his man boobs. He didn’t have to put his career on hold to take what he once jokingly referred to as “staycation.” (Daddy learned the hard way never to make that
hilarious
joke again.) No one asks him if he suffers from debilitating guilt when leaving you to go to work, and in fact, becoming a father only upped his cred as a corporate man. To be fair, it’s not all rainbows and unicorns for Daddy—he too has to get up at Early as Fuck O’Clock and his man cave is now your nursery. Gone are the days of drinking Champagne off Mommy’s naked body on a Tuesday. Now he has to put up with Mommy flying off the handle because he put the forks away incorrectly. She’s lucky he hasn’t “gone for smokes,” never to be seen again. Mommy may not say it often enough, but she loves Daddy a whole lot.

INGREDIENTS

1½ ounces rye

½ ounce sweet vermouth

2 dashes of bitters

Cherry

INSTRUCTIONS

Combine all the ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake well, strain, and pour into a glass. Garnish with a cherry. Serve it to Daddy. He’s earned it.

HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK

Mommy had barely issued your birth announcement when people started asking her when she was going to give you a little brother or sister. Now that your first birthday is approaching, Mommy can’t go a day without being confronted with the question. It comes from all directions—in-laws, colleagues, a middle-aged guy in the Starbucks line—and it’s almost always accompanied by unsolicited advice about the importance of perfectly timing the age difference between siblings (according to the latest perspective on the subject from a totally credible news source like Tori Spelling’s Twitter feed). But the question most often comes from other new Mommies, disguised as actual interest in Mommy’s life but truly a cry for help along the lines of: “If I’m going down this miserable road again, this time with toddler in tow, you better the hell be coming along with me!” Even worse than the questions are the prying eyes, scanning Mommy’s midsection for clues and monitoring her wine consumption at social events, forcing her to make a big production of pouring herself a second glass of Cabernet, which then haunts her the next morning when you wake up at 5
AM
. Though several women from her prenatal class are already aglow with swollen ankles and pregnancy acne again, Mommy is simply not ready. Yet.

INGREDIENTS

1 ounce Irish cream

INSTRUCTIONS

Fill a short glass with ice. Pour in the Irish cream and consume while listening to the sweet sounds of Deee-Lite, Take That, or Vanilla Ice.

NOTE

Whoever said “the more, the merrier” never endured nine months of pregnancy.

HOW BADLY YOU NEED THIS DRINK

If you can sleep in, spend $26 on lemon sage ravioli, fly last minute to Croatia, get your eyebrows waxed, have nothing in your fridge but Stella Artois and mustard, take Yoga Muay Thai Fusion Wednesdays at 6
PM
, say things like “This season of
Walking Dead
was staid and uninspired and couldn’t live up to neoclassical themes woven into the existential tapestry of
Game of Thrones
,” or own nice things, then you are single. Single people complain about being single all the time. Mommy nods politely as they whine about eHarmony, their cat’s digestive issues, or the end of a Tribeca Film Festival selection, but all the while Mommy is fantasizing about wearing their skin to become them, just like in
The Silence of the Lambs
. Single people don’t pee when they sneeze. They really don’t know how good they have it. This, of course, does not apply to single parents, who are heroes and should be given keys to the city’s wine cellar immediately.