The second day after Christmas
I pulled on the old rubber gloves
And very gently wrung the necks
Of both the turtle-doves
My true love
My true love
My true love gave to me.

– The Twelve Days After Christmas, by Frederick Silver

I’m not really a drinker. I have Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, which is autoimmune hypothyroid, and alcohol doesn’t mix well with Synthroid. One or two glasses of wine and I’m sleepy. When I had pneumonia earlier this month, my doctor asked me if I wanted cough medicine, but she knows I’m not fond of narcotics, and honestly I didn’t have much of a cough. I told her I was having hot toddies before bed, and she asked for my recipe, then said, “Truly, that’s healthier than codeine, so if it’s working for you, do that.”

And I did.

I like wine, even though I don’t drink a lot of it, and I like the occasional beer, but one of my favorite things to drink to take the edge off is something that was introduced to me at a Christmas party in Mexico: Sheridan’s.

Sheridan’s is an Irish whiskey-based liqueur. It comes in a double bottle that’s really two bottles fused together in a sort of abstract swan-shape. The bigger side is coffee-flavored whiskey, and the smaller side is a white chocolate liqueur, and when you pour it, you tilt the glass so it forms a layered drink like coffee with cream on top. It’s a little bit sweet, and a little bit like Bailey’s but also not at all like it.

And you can’t buy it in the states.

So every time I visit my mother in Mexico, I make sure to have enough pesos leftover to buy a bottle of Sheridan’s and a bottle of really good Tequila at the duty-free store in the Cabo airport. I prefer to use pesos because they give you a discount for using cash, but it’s also a good way to burn leftover pesos.

This year, mom came to me, so I paypal’d her the money to buy the Sheridan’s – I didn’t want to make her carry Tequila also.

I’m just finishing the bottle I bought on my last visit to Mexico, and the new one won’t be opened for a while.

But since I was introduced to it at Christmas, I consider it a holiday tradition, as much as eggnog is here in the US and rompope is in Mexico.

Cheers.