In the spirit of trying not to think about the abomination or elation tomorrow’s election may bring, I decided to perform one of the Quistilton Family’s most hedonistic rituals: The Returning of the Bottles and the Cans and the Change. This ritual involves dredging up the huge trash bags filled with deposit containers (Coke cans, beer bottles), dragging them to Wegmans, and counting them up to receive a measly 5 cents per container. We always wait eons to do this, until we have three or four garbage bags of funky cans and bottles, and then I force the Husband to bring the beer bottles back because I don’t want to look like a desperate alcoholic toting wee ones to the store for her deposits.

And then I have so many cans that they clog the machine and I have to move to another machine which they also fill up, while the Wee One is climbing out of the grocery cart and I can’t grab her because my hands are sticky with Old Coke Shmutz.

But then I return the change, and it’s always worth far, far more than I think it will be. Today it was $40, and that was only a paltry few handfuls of nickels, dimes and pennies. Yeeha! On to the sushi bar!

Because of course the hedonistic aspect of this festival is that it all feels like free money, so we get whatever we want in the WHOLE DARN STORE. This is what we got today, crazy nuts that we are: Two trays of sushi, Jergens intense moisturizing cream, chondroitin and glucosamine tablets for the Husband’s knee, Viactiv milk chocolate calcium chews for my poor mineral-leached bones, pink lemonade for the Biggie, and *gasp* a six-pack of beer. Good lord, someone arrest us for our folly!

Except we almost couldn’t buy the beer. “Marva,” our lovely hostess, wouldn’t allow me to buy it because the Husband didn’t have his ID with him. Somehow she believed that we, with our fatigue-aged faces and young children in tow, were attempting to illegitimately buy booze and get the naive young Husband liquored up. Dude, PARTY!

So the Husband, seething, left the store while I went back to the beer section and tried to get another six-pack of our favored local brew (“Cascazilla,” named after the lizard and Cascadilla Gorge). There wasn’t another one. Annoyed by the inconvenience, and certain the Wee One was gritching for her dinner outside, I marched haughtily to the manager’s desk and demanded, “Um, where do the cashiers put things when customers can’t buy them? See, uh, I was going to buy this beer and then she said we couldn’t because my husband didn’t have his ID and then there wasn’t another six-pack and then, um, so...” all along feeling the New Englander’s Guilt--I WAS ACTUALLY GOING TO BUY BEER. AND I ADMITTED IT.

And it turns out Marva was wrong--they’re allowed to sell beer to married people. Because presumably we need it. So, Pfffflllbbbt to you, Marva! And cheers to the rest of you. May we all survive tomorrow.