Stirring the Pot Read Online Free Page B

tapping you do.
    THE WHINE-FREE SPRITZER

    Another way to quit whining? Ditch the wine and stick with the hard stuff:
    Ingredients:
    3 ounces (decent) bourbon
    2 ice cubes
    1 ounce soda water

Girls’ Night In
    RECIPE FOR SUCCESS

    Ingredients:
    Several bottles of (decent) wine
    You and your closest girlfriends
    Disguised Pizza (see this page )
    Netflix
    Directions:
    Open the bottle to allow it to breathe. If it doesn’t look like it’s breathing, give it mouth-to-mouth.
    If I were to make a list of the great loves of my life, several on the list would be women. No, I’m not coming out in these pages! I’m simply saying that some of my female friends have loved me more and known me better than some of the men I’ve palled around with.
    For all the excitement and intimacy that goes alongwith a romantic relationship, sexual attraction can cloud your judgment, and sexual tension can build resentment (not to mention resentments over dirty laundry, left-up toilet seats, and the other annoyances of cohabitation). With family members, for better or for worse, there’s baggage. But with certain girlfriends, you can take off the mask you wear during the day—wife, girlfriend, daughter, mother, colleague, Girl Scout, or bitch—and just be you, which may be a little of all those things, but not just one. Girlfriends are happily leaned on. Which reminds me that all the talk about leaning
in
to our careers and our goals in life somehow misses a big part of the point: leaning
on
each other is the way to get ahead! Best girlfriends pick each other up when they’re down, celebrate each other’s successes, and coach self-forgiveness after major fuck-ups.
    Given that outpouring of mushy girl-adoration, it’ll come as no surprise to you that girls’ night is a date I hold sacred on my calendar.
    In my two tens (see this page for an explanation), girls’ night meant girls’ night
out on the town
. Short dresses, high heels, candy-colored cocktails with fruit skewers or umbrellas. Good tunes, good times. We’d get dolled up, go dancing, and protect each other as we explored the hell out of the world.
    Even if the club we went to was dead and no one bought us drinks or the guy we liked wanted someone else’s number, it didn’t matter because we were together. We were invincible! Put together, the three or four of us were a six- or eight-legged, glossy-lipped, sexy beast. Girl power! (So the next time you see a pack of young girls out on the town like that, resist the urge to think that their tipsiness or their seeming availability means that they are shallow and careless. Trust me, they are less on the prowl for men than they are on the prowl for adventure. They are celebrating their freedom, their femininity, and the safety they feel when together. End of lecture!)
    Now that I’m older-ish, girls’ night
in
is the thing for me. Being dressed to the nines in a trendy nightclub has its merits and I still go that route from time to time, but I’m less into the pounding dance beats, laser lights, and the jackasses who try to take a selfie on their smartphone with me.
    Now when I get together with my girlfriends I want to wear sweats or pajamas, eat good food, drink really good wine, and indulge in great conversation. And then I want to ice the cake by binge-watching an entire season of a television show featuring handsome, chivalrous, or devious Englishmen, or the vicarious drunkenness of the movie
Bridesmaids
. The concept isstill the same—we are celebrating our freedom (because Lord knows it gets harder and harder to coordinate as we all get busier with kids and careers), our femininity, and the safety we feel in each other’s company.
    How many more ways can I say it?
    Hands down, girls’ night
in
body-slams almost anything else in the cage match of fun.
    Girls’ night
in
is a staycation from my daily troubles. It’s more rejuvenating than a trip to the day spa and more nourishing than ninety minutes of hot yoga.
    I look