Review IV

Review of Barefoot Hard Seltzers, Black Cherry and Cranberry:

Generic fruit taste that is carbonated. Notes of mediocrity and “I coulda been famous if I didn’t get knocked up at prom”. You drink them because you bought them and you feel you should bear the consequences of poor life choices. #neveragain

 

Review of Corona Hard Seltzer, Blueberry Açaí:

Take a gas station blueberry muffin. Carbonate it, then make it get slightly flat but somehow also still carbonated. Drink it and feel the confusion grow. Pairs well with off-brand potato chips eaten directly from the bag and the crusts cut off a three year old’s PB&J whilst laughing your ass off at the innuendo in Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse.

  

Review of Mike’s Hard Pink Freeze: Take Sprite. Add a dash of lemonade and pink. Put it in a tall skinny seltzer can, call it Pink Freeze, and put dire warnings all over the box to NOT freeze it. The taste is as unoriginal as the name and strangely symbolic of the giving up most Xennials have done. Pairs well with emotional eating and watching My Girl whilst sobbing because goddammit she TOLD you not to mess with the bees, Thomas J.

  

Review of Pabst Blue Ribbon Hard Coffee: I am so confused. Horribly confused. Tastes like chocolate milk somehow. How can the beer of your youth taste like an even earlier time in your youth? Pairs well with frosted animal crackers and Dunkaroos. Must be consumed whilst watching Full House re-runs and primal screaming into the abyss because you’ve realized this is what your life is now.

 

Reviews III

Review of Bud Light Seltzer: Retro Summer Cherry Limeade

Tastes like the cheap cherry limeade popsicles. Notes of childhood playing in the dirt, drinking from the hose, and catching lightning bugs. Pairs well with cheese balls, Kid Cuisine, and Dunkaroos.

 

Review of Bud Light Retro Summer: Blazin Blue Raspberry

Tastes of a blue raspberry sucker: it wants to be raspberry, but also wants to be unnaturally blue. Together, it’s a tasty chemical bomb of a flavor that will yank you back to childhood, but with the added benefit of alcohol to make you forget the suck of post-pandemic life and lack of student loans forgiveness. Pairs well with despair and nostalgia and a cheap charcuterie board.

Costco

So I have been told, by my brother's girlfriend and my sisters, that Costco is a magical place full of wonder and delight and cheap rotisserie chickens and bulk packages of Poise pads.  I have never experienced this beacon of wonderment and delight, so they decided to take me here.  On a Saturday.  Before Mother's Day.  With Charlie, my child who freely acknowledges that she should not have access to adult money because it would not end well.  I imagine you can imagine how this went.

First off, the line to get into the fucking place was of Cedar Point length.  For those of you who don't know, Cedar Point is a local-ish (45 minutes away; pre-marriage I would have been like WTF that is a total day trip away and now it's like, oh I drive that far to go to the grocery store that's not Walmart) amusement park that is a big fucking deal when it comes to amusement parks.  Meaning, the lines are redonkulous.  I manage to somehow get a relatively close parking spot, which, I guess, like, yay me but why can't that luck extend to winning the jackpot in the lottery?  We get out and go inside to an entryway that is guarded more closely than Fort Knox.  Like, God forbid someone comes in without someone having that magical Costco card.  Which, Charlie was all like, "This place is a scam, you have to pay to get in and then pay for the stuff you buy?"  And I'm all like, welcome to adulthood in America.  Get some student loan debt and you are solidly middle-class, child.

Anyways, I'm waiting for Elizabeth to come in as she did not have the luck to get a super close spot.  I spot Faith, my brother's girlfriend, waiting for us inside the store where she has already completed most of her shopping.  I surreptitiously take a picture of her and then text it to her with the caption of "I can see you" because I am an asshole like that and should probably not be allowed technology unsupervised.  Anyways, we meet up and she is all relieved that it was just me and not some creepy ass ex texting her (sorry for unknowingly triggering past traumas there!) and we start shopping.

I will start off by saying, Charles had mentioned getting some laundry baskets because our all appear to have started to crumble worse than infrastructure in a red state.  I will say, we did not get laundry baskets.  Mostly because I did not want to spend the time looking for them because holy fucking shit, this place was packed tighter than a Taylor Swift concert.  I did get this two-pack of little trash cans with a flip lid, one for the bathroom because the one we currently have harbors more nastiness than a high school boy's gym bag, one for Charlie's room because she very suddenly became concerned about the lack of a trash can in her room.  We won't talk about the CONDITION of her room, however...

Anyways, we move on to the food section.  It is crazy.  Like, people just everywhere.  Gallon containers of everything from Liquid IV to rotisserie chicken that has been removed from the carcass already.  My already short attention span is going haywire.  Plus, dear sweet mother of God, there is like some kind of old person convention going on wherein they leave their fucking carts in the middle of the goddamned aisles.  I have a sudden urge to ram my cart into people. (Side note: on the way there, Charlie was talking about her one classmate who apparently has asked if anyone ever considers jumping off of the barn loft and also broke all of the bones in the chicken he dissected and asked to bring them home.  Charlie expressed concern (rightfully so) about this kid, but also coined the phrase "What in the Jeffrey Dahmer is that?" so I will forgive her for future sins.)

We start to encounter samples.  I don't know if it was just the day or what, but they were meh.  I will say Charlie tried this smoked salmon that she liked so I promptly got it because if my children ever express a liking for something remotely healthy I'm all over that like Charlie Sheen on a bowl of coke.  I also purchased some ravioli she liked, some Lacroix (despite me trying to talk Charlie into buying the Kirkland brand...I did give her a lesson on the difference between total price and price per unit, but since it was not her money to spend, we got the Lacroix).  I also got Liquid IV, because summer is coming and my husband works in a sweat shop (well not literally but it gets pretty goddamn hot) and will need the rehydration.  Elizabeth bought some energy drinks whilst ignoring my statement about how bad they are for you.  Apparently, I cannot guilt her into better life choices anymore, so yay for growing up?  I guess it's better than her sharing the bowl of coke so I will take the W however I can.

Then we go to checkout.  Being a newbie, I assume that I cannot do so without my sister who has the magical Costco card, so I follow her to self-checkout.  I promptly get scolded by the checkout babysitter.  Apparently I am a "fire hazard".  Well, I have been told by Alexis before that just because humans are flammable does not mean we should light them on fire (solid advice there, I believe.  I'm counting it as a parenting win) so I accept this but I continue to get passive-aggressively scolded by said checkout babysitter until I find an open checkout.  Then I get scolded by the scanner because I did not put said trash cans in the checkout area.  When did technology get in the business of shaming people?

When all is said and done...I was meh.  It was not a place full of wonderment and delight.  It was a place where my imaginary prescription for Xanax would have come in handy.  Would I go back?  Not on a Saturday.  Maybe like a Tuesday early in the morning, but I'm a night owl and the nearest Costco is 45 minutes away so that won't happen. (That time frame only applies when it is a place I can tolerate unmedicated.)  Do I consider the trip a success?  Yeah, I got a semi-healthy food for Charlie and some new trash cans. I didn't kill anyone.  I got a new catchphrase. I got to hang with my family. I did not use the catchphrase "What in the Jeffrey Dahmer is that?"

Reviews II

Starting from the very beginning…

So I made the mistake today, much to my family’s delight, of going grocery shopping hungry. Among the things that I bought was the new Bud Light Seltzers. I figured since I have nothing else to do this evening, I would try each flavor and leave you a review. Idk if I will get to all four flavors today, but I promise that I will review all of them at some point. So here goes...

Black Cherry. Vaguely reminiscent of Zima plus cherry Jolly Rancher but with a wannabe hipster twist. Tastes like ironic usage of “bae” with undertones of crippling student loan debt and the scent of your parents’ basement.  Pairs well with avocado toast.

Mango: Tastes like mango that has been seltzered.  Brings up dreams of tropical vacations to escape the dreary drudge that is your day to day existence. Reality soon smacks you in the face as you realize that it only has 5% ABV and you will, in fact, not get drunk off this as your tolerance skyrocketed in your early 20’s due to said student loan debt and sundry poor life choices you are drinking to forget.  Focus on the mango. Grab ahold of it with both hands because Dear God, this is your life now.

Strawberry: Flavored similarly to Bonne Belle Lipsmackers. Makes you feel slightly uncomfortable to drink something that’s alcoholic yet tastes like childhood. End notes are a weird mix of college walk of shame and Teletubbies. At the same time.

Lemon lime: Strong notes of lemon Windex with a lot of hell the fuck no aftertaste. Could possibly be used to freshen up the garbage disposal or dispose of someone you despise. Tastes like affliction, lamentation, and self-reproach. Don’t drink unless you enjoy cleaning products. Seriously, Windex.

Reviews I

I have been doing reviews of beverages on Facebook for a while, and Elizabeth’s boyfriend suggested I start posting them here as well so I will start moving them all over soon because why not?  May as well keep all the crazy in one place….

This beverage review brought to you courtesy of Dave and Faith, who purchased these for me to review to celebrate Cinco de Mayo:

Review of Mamitas Tequila and Soda Seltzer, Pineapple flavor: Well holy hell. This is a delicious, light beverage. No taste of tequila at all, which was a bit disappointing since, ya know, it’s in the fucking name and all. End notes of pineapple, which was not disappointing, since, ya know, it’s in the fucking name and all.  It’s gluten free which is good because people need something to blame for society’s sins and what better way to do this than to villainize sweet, sweet, delicious carbs instead of acknowledging that things started to go downhill when they started fucking with the flavor of Oreos and changed the freecreditreport.com band.  Pairs well with the false hope a 60° day in early May in Ohio gives you. 

Review of Mamacita Tequila and Soda, Paloma Flavor:

Ok, first off I had to Google WTF Paloma is because the closest thing to a cocktail I get is actual 7-Up in my whiskey with the good ice and an actual lime because I am not Fancy like Applebees and the only times I’ve ever consumed tequila is in a margarita or when I was in college in shot form. And I guess these Mamacita beverages now. And contrary to any rumors the fuckbois I dissed in college started because I was not DTF in a dorm room that stunk of ball sweat and Cheetos, I don’t put just anything in my mouth. Therefore, I cannot comment on if this thing tastes like an actual Paloma or not. Maybe?  I don’t know?  Anyways, this is also a delicious beverage. We will call it Paloma-esque. Palomish maybe?  Sure. Pairs well with a reminder to my ride and dies (you know who you are) to delete my Internet browsing history when I die, especially if it’s under mysterious circumstances. Because maybe I’ve now pissed off Paloma aficionados and I have a bounty on my head. Actually, no matter how I die, can we just say it was that?  And also, a flash mob and good snacks at my funeral would be great. Serve Palomas, too.