Diane Laney Fitzpatrick

Writer, blogger, author and humorist

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Tonight I Moderately Drink For . . . For Youth . . . Or Something

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If you’re trying to cut back on your drinking, you’ve come to the right place. I’m pretty much an expert on all the gimmicks invented for people who want to lay off the sauce. I’m not talking about quitting altogether; for that you have other, more experienced resources like AA, Saint Monica, and friends who aren’t Irish. I’m talking about reining in those “just a couple of glasses of wine” that turn into “I can’t find one of my shoes and, also, last night did I offer to host Thanksgiving in Key West? Because Facebook tells me that fourteen people have signed up so far.” Getting that back to “just a couple of glasses of wine” is the goal here.

The underlying mission is more specific. I belong to a growing mass of Americans who are learning that the effects of alcohol go beyond losing articles of clothing and overextending hostess events: Alcohol is starting to make us look and feel effing old.

I can’t be the only one who has looked in a full-length mirror in a well lit room and said, “Wait. This can’t be right. How did Great-Uncle Hank get in there?”

About six months ago, I began a Quixotic search for moderation. The Internet was kind enough to offer up tips and techniques, strategies, mantras and meditations, URLs for gross simulation videos showing what vodka does to your liver after only four appletinis, and pan-denominational prayers. I’ve kitchen-tested most of them with the exception of Sharia Law. [Read more…] about Tonight I Moderately Drink For . . . For Youth . . . Or Something

My Dream Life as a Walton Walk-On

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There’s a guy I grew up with who has an amazing farm and homesteading business, the kind of thing you might read about in a Booker Prize winning novel set on the prairie with a strong female lead, or Pinterest. He and his wife are always posting photos of the animals they raise and the things they grow and the fuzzy things she makes from their sheep and whatever else she can lay her crafty little hands on, without using a kilowatt of electricity. Some days, I can smell the homemade herb bread and the wood burning stove in their farmhouse just by looking at the crocheted baby hats she whipped up. There are no babies for miles. She just can’t stop herself.

I have become Kathy Bates-y obsessed over this couple and their farm. The fact that they started out as regular people is added intrigue. He was with me in the redhead alliance — population 7 — in our graduating class, and she was just another clarinet player in band. Forty odd years later and they’re Chip and Joanna Gaines without the  shiplap.

Last Christmas, while I was scanning the As Seen on TV gadgets to buy for my holiday shopping list, she was showing off a 7-foot-tall pine tree she had handcrafted from wool feathers, whatever those are. It was so beautiful. I cried a little bit. [Read more…] about My Dream Life as a Walton Walk-On

Retirement. Aaaand scene

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At this, the three-month point of retirement life, I’m starting to get a real feel for the ins and outs; the pros and cons;  the good, the bad and the squeamishly butt-ugly.

I can’t tell you all the secrets (I’d have to kill you and don’t think I couldn’t, with the expired dairy products in my frig) but I can offer you a glimpse into what it’s like to have your husband of thirty-six years unemployed and home all day, and not because he’s unskilled and just out of rehab; but because you both thought it sounded like a swell idea for him to retire early.

And it is swell. Seriously. For us, the timing was right, despite the fact that we’re both fairly immature and probably don’t deserve to have all this unsupervised time on our hands outside of the yard in prison.

It’s swell. [Read more…] about Retirement. Aaaand scene

Wintry Mix Is Not a Cocktail in the Lodge Bar at Tahoe

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They’re calling it the Deep Freeze of 2019. I’m calling it Okay So Our Mailman is Purple Now.  I’m not going to rattle off the highs and lows, talk about low pressure zones in the Arctic, or mention what a polar vortex is. If you want to hear that, you’ll have to get your ass over here to my house and be in the kitchen for my husband’s quarter-hourly reports.

“It’s eight in Lexington,” he said yesterday, apropos of nothing. We were sitting at our tiny kitchen table pretending to read The Economist and old Winston Churchill speeches. In actuality, he was on  Fun Facts for Kids on Weather and I was playing Picture Cross and watching Dance Moms with the sound off. “And it’s going down to two  by the end of the week!”

“Mmmmmm,” I tried hard to express exactly how little interest I had in the weather in Kentucky and still use no more than one mouth sound.

“That’s Lexington Kentucky, not Mass,” he said dramatically.

“MMMMMMM.” It came out like a growl.

Hearing how shitty the weather is this winter is just another test for me; a test of my new life resolution; a resolution I started in December because I was starting a new life; a new life in a new place; and that place has winter out the ass. [Read more…] about Wintry Mix Is Not a Cocktail in the Lodge Bar at Tahoe

Keep Calm and Move to Cleveland

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In case anyone was wondering why I look so tired in recent pictures, I moved again. From San Francisco, where I lived in the heart of a city outsiders see as a glittering, real-life movie set, to Cleveland, known for weather extremes, closed factories and ham loaf.

Of course, neither of those stereotypes is true. But don’t tell the others. Now that I’m back in Northeast Ohio, I am enjoying the novelty of being someone who left California to retire to Ohio in the winter on the brink of a recession. People’s reaction is heady stuff. If everyone did it, I’d be just like everybody else and not the spokesmodel for contrarianism that I am.

I’ll be honest. Our life in San Francisco was pretty sweet. But it had to end sometime. I was on the brink of gout and alcoholism and was spending too much money on sushi and shoes. We were eating out so much that I was going eight days before the dishwasher was full enough to run and it was full of just wine glasses. I’m not saying my life in San Francisco was a social whirlwind, but I once reached into my good coat pocket and found a rhinestone, a false eyelash and a magician’s Jack of hearts with my name on it. [Read more…] about Keep Calm and Move to Cleveland

I Am Literally Choking on TV

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Our cable internet was becoming very spotty. Things kept cutting out, freezing up, leaving the talking heads on CNN paralyzed mid-weird-mouth position for an uncomfortable number of seconds.

“Gah! I missed the end of his sentence. Now I’ll never know what that unnamed source said to that other anonymous leaker about the alleged unconfirmed dossier.”

My husband gave me specific instructions. “Tomorrow, call Comcast and tell them what’s happening. I think they’re throttling us. Come right out and ask them if they’re throttling us.”

I was spooning chicken into lettuce cups while I kept my eyes and ears on my laptop, live-streaming twenty-four hour news on my kitchen counter.  And because I can’t concentrate on three things at a time, even when one of the things is something a one-armed monkey with developmental disabilities could do, I repeated back, “Call Comcast. Are they throttling us. . .” [Read more…] about I Am Literally Choking on TV