Given life’s pitfalls, there aren’t enough hours in a day for meditative skills that will transform me into the Dalai Mama. The Tibetan head of holiness says that love, compassion, and forgiveness should be a part of our daily lives. Since this mantra is sometimes hard to follow,

I cannot walk around with a morphine drip as a pacifying remedy. Instead, I head towards colloquial cosmopolitan consciousness. Or I can easily adjust the jitters with my newest oral medicine, UV Vodka Lemonade. It’s a more practical method than hauling a makeshift pole carrying a drug injection.

I’ve been known to tackle a few Smirnoff saturated lime backers in my time here on earth. They taste dandy and puts a swerve in my stride. It doesn’t mean I want to be depicted as a drunken femme fatale. Residents of my community would shun the attention of their intoxicated neighbor intent on becoming a hiccupping exhibitionist. Besides, with an overabundance, I’d start to shiver, and make me shop for another liver. It also makes me want to do the Cha Cha. It’s tough though when I’m abiding by those recommended doses of eight glasses of fluids each day. That may explain my looking so luminous while doing yoga stretches in the Chili’s parking lot.

Tossing my cookies is not a great way to gain friends. Nor does having my pores dehisce with vapor action. Poorly timed missteps can erode body parts if I’ve fallen and cannot get up. But I must admit to having the most entertaining conversations with myself.

I might point out more viable reasons for liquor absorption. Loss. Celebration. Re-mortgaging to pay loans. Keeping up with the Rat Pack, or even the Kardashians. Noncompliance to maternal authority, such as sitting in a restaurant next to a table with children hollering as if they’re in a house of horrors and the mother turns and says, “I just don’t pay any attention to it!” There’s really no reason for cursing like Lil’ Wayne, or hearing a rappers vocalization that can be heard in Amsterdam. Sweating bullets from a heatwave can develop a long term relationship with Tom Collins. Or waiting in a doctors office for eons in air conditioned draftiness makes me want to hightail it for a hot toddy. Plus, it’s a fabulous warm-up to family slaughterings. I mean gatherings. A reservoir of some fine nectar also makes a terrific dental anesthesia. They say what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. I’d say by now I could probably muscle test Schwarzenegger and win with ten shots of tequila.

Although after a few swigs, sometimes I’m likely to feel like a plane primed for takeoff that could easily stall into a three hour delay. Then there’s that second possibility. I’m sure you’ve heard the term babbling idiot. And thirdly, the likelihood of my usual Martha Stewart regal stature of meticulously applying elements to make great table settings no doubt ends up looking more like craftiness created from Kindercare.

For years I followed the slogan, “Just say no.” I said no to moisturizers, my mother, all-nighters, wearing fishnets, and alcohol. Then I tried saying “yes” to everything to see what results would surface. Since then I’ve drunk myself to silliness, read every magazine in the drugstore till dawn, sunbathed naked by moonlight, and kissed strangers. Some may call it living on the edge…. of insanity. I say the beauties of life can often be in the eye of the brandy holder.

If rich Uncle Edward had written me into his will before he departed this world, I would have a better stocked liquor cabinet, along with a Porsche in the driveway. The libation surgeon general says that a cathartic cocktail is fine for our health. Part of the novelty is a smiley face, because there’s a clause in my martini contract that says I’ll never be sad again. It doesn’t take much to make me happy. A mango margarita will do, unless it’s a margarita from a ritzy hotel in Palm Springs where you give them a twenty dollar bill and get a dollar change, totally compromising my bankroll for the following week.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the spaceship. My daughter recently said, “Let me know when you get close to dying. I’ll send you flowers, and to the nearest happy hour.”