I’ve already confessed to my love affair with gas station wine, but I may have hit a new low. There are apparently all kinds of wines on the market that are made of everything from muscadines and blackberries to the finer fruits like canned pineapple. I had one yesterday that has been aged since all the way from back in November. It actually claimed to be a Blackberry Merlot but I’m pretty sure it was a soda that someone had simply poured a little bit of moonshine in to make it classify as alcoholic.

Don’t mistake me for someone who has no ability to discern the finer things in life. I just don’t have the money to actually consume the finer things in life.

So why don’t I just face facts, you ask, and slap a ballcap on my head backwards while sitting on the porch of my single-wide trailer drinking beer like a lot of my neighbors? Because I’m a snob, that’s why. I never said I was humble, just poor.

I’m very attached to the image of settling into my chaise on the veranda in the evening with a piece of lead crystal stemware clenched in my happy little fist, the bouquet of a fine wine swirling around my head like an alcoholic thought balloon while the setting sun reflects off the golden pool of a wonderful pinot. Instead, I sit on my back deck drinking wine that came in a box out of a glass that came free with the jelly that was inside it. But it all looks a lot more like my dream version of events after that third glass of wine, probably because the industrial ethyl alcohol the “vineyard” put in it is messing with my brain. Or because I’m just now too drunk to notice the flock of wild turkeys that just walked through my backyard. Wait, no, those were swans, I’m sure of it.