An Alcoholic Raincheck

I'm not much of a drinker. (Um, many posts to the contrary. Cough.) I don't stock bottles of wine to drink with dinner, or beer for those lazy evenings that are so frequent with small children around.

Snort. (Anyway, I very much dislike beer.)

But I do love my cocktails. I love to try different combinations. I love to incorporate things I've made into them, to create something that could never be purchased at a fancy bar, even if I had access to such a place.

I just really like sitting down with an icy cocktail topped off with seltzer and drinking. Drinking one, anyway. Okay, so it's usually a double, but still only one.

Alas, even that one is unwise when I'm in the middle of one of these frequent pregnancies of mine.

Most of the time I don't even care. As I said, not a big drinker. But there are times. Times like the Fourth of July, when a gin and tonic seems like the perfect way to celebrate a holiday and a long summer day.

Hello, Fourth of July! I will not be celebrating you with a gin and tonic this year.

But next year . . . by the Fourth of July next year, I should be recovered enough from Baby #4--meaning not so punch drunk from exhaustion that ingesting alcohol seems superfluous--that I can toast Our Great Country with gin.

God bless America. And not being pregnant. Someday.