Val Shall Toss No Potato Before Its Time

You know how some people are poets and don't know it? That's not me. But I'm a brewer like a sewer! And I don't mean "sewer" like with a needle and thread. No sirree, Bob! I mean "sewer" like an underground conduit for carrying off drainage water and waste matter. The stinky kind. Yep, I only mean "sewer" with needle and thread if you're going to use it to sew your own nostrils shut.

I'M MAKING MY OWN VODKA!

Okay, I'm not making my own vodka on purpose. I didn't even know I was making my own vodka until today at 11:40 a.m. I was getting ready to leave for town to mail our fire tags for the house and 20 acres, plus our other property of 10 acres up on the hill, because if you don't pay the fire tag fee, and your house or land catches fire and the fire department drives all the way out here to fight it and keep the homes and properties of legitimate fire tag buyers safe...they will bill you for the cost of fighting your fire. Yeah. Something tells me that would be more than the $70 cost of each fire tag.

Now where was I? Oh. The VODKA! I planned to run in Save A Lot on the way to the post office, to pick up some sour cream and dill pickles and black olive slices in tiny cans, and salsa, and tortilla chips. And let me tell you, there was a real clusterf unfortunate series of events happening at the Save A Lot today. But that will have to wait until tomorrow.

So...I looked in the kitchen pantry to see if there was anything else I needed, but you know how it is, what with looking to see what's not there, and you can't actually see what's not there, so you don't know you need it until you've already gone to the store and come back home and go to reach for an item and you don't have it!

Anyhoo...I looked in the pantry, and didn't see that I was making my own vodka so much as I SMELLED I was making my own vodka. Funny how that vodka production jumped into high gear between 10:00 a.m.  when I last walked by the pantry and opened it up, and 11:40, when I really needed to hit the road to town. So I called The Pony upstairs for help.

"I'm never going to get to town. I need you to look under that bag of potatoes and see if there's an old bag of potatoes. That's what it smells like. Don't even worry about throwing them off the back porch for the animals! Put them right in the trash, and then take the trash bag out to the dumpster. Here. Take this good bag of potatoes, because the bag smells like the bad potatoes."

"Um. When I just put that bag of potatoes in the trash...I'm pretty sure there was some liquid dripping out."

"Go get the box of wipes and clean it up. Don't even bother with paper towels. We need wipes."

"Yuck."

"You can wash your hands later with this new bottle of Peach Bellini soap from Bath and Body Works that Sis gave me for Christmas. It smells great. Unlike our fresh vodka."

"VODKA?"

"Yes. That's what vodka is made of. Potatoes. Fermented. That's where you get alcohol. That's how prisoners can make their own hooch in the slammer. They take their fruit peels and some aftershave and stuff them in a trash bag under the bunk, and VOILA! A cocktail to sip behind bars!"

"Ugh. I knew vodka was made from potatoes, but I didn't know they had to get rotten."

"Well, where do you think the alcohol comes from? You don't get drunk eating potatoes."

"I know. So now we have a bag of vodka in the trash?"

"Certainly not! Not yet. It would need to be distilled. That would be some kind of rotgut vodka, all stinky and unpurified! We're not getting drunk just yet!"

Let the record show that Val knows very little about home brewing or distillation of spirits. She is a teetotaler from way back. On the wagon. Off the wagon. There is a bit of a gray area there according to whether you listen to Jerry or Elaine. But the thing is...The Pony knows even less. So forgive me if I pulled a Hick on him, spouting information that I knew he couldn't prove false. What he doesn't know won't hurt him. What he DOES know is that he certainly does not want to drink vodka if it smells like what he took out of the pantry.

So...if you have a kid who may be going down the wrong path, all you have to do is let your potatoes linger a bit too long in the pantry, and you can point out the evils of drink.

Public Service Announcements. Just one more bonus Val provides.