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Guaranteed to get the party started!
Super cute, huh?
P.S. Did you book your flights yet?

To: Melanie
From: Finn Miller
Subject: sweet dreams of you
Do you remember that Leon Russell concert a bunch of us went to at the old Music Hall in Boston? The one where LR stood up from his piano and told the audience of screaming stoned-out kids that he wasn’t going to start playing again unless they shut the f up. Well last night I dreamed we were back there again and he made everybody else leave and then he played a set just for us. We held hands and then we started making out and then Leon Russell told us he wouldn’t keep playing unless we knocked it off. Great dream.

    Sadly, I couldn’t recall ever going to a Leon Russell concert. I Googled up a song sampler of Leon Live and listened to “It’s Been a Long Time Baby.” It was a good song, though I had to admit I didn’t quite remember it, either.
    Spin the Bottle, on the other hand, I could remember. I pushed my laptop away and slid down from my bar stool. I walked across the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Bottled water, yogurt, walnuts, mixed salad greens, baby carrots, individually wrapped one-hundred-calorie dark chocolate bars. A four-pack of individual servings of hummus almost made me cry. Somehow my refrigerator had turned single again before I’d fully accepted it myself.
    I considered the ketchup bottle and a bottle of shrimp cocktail sauce briefly, but kept looking. Way in the back, I found a half-emptybottle of dessert wine that someone at work had given Kurt last Christmas. Even though we’d both hated it, we’d never thrown it away because Kurt had been convinced it was crazy expensive.
    I held my nose in case it smelled like a science experiment by now and chugged the whole thing.
    I shivered and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I held the bottle up to my mouth. “Now that, ladies and gentlemen, was one bad bottle of wine,” I said into my wine bottle microphone. I blew into it a few times, unsuccessfully trying to get the melody of “Red, Red Wine.”
    “And I am one cheap date,” I added as the wine rushed to my head.
    I gave the bottle a quick rinse and turned it upside down on the top rack of the dishwasher to finish drying. It wobbled and started to fall.
    “Uh-uh-uh,” I said as I grabbed it. “I’m not through with you yet, little bottle.”
    I giggled. I definitely had a bit of a buzz on and was quite possibly having a midlife meltdown at the same time. I considered a quick WebMD search so I could compare symptoms, but decided this was no time to get sidetracked.
    I knew I’d seen the recipe online, and sure enough, when I Googled it, all sorts of links popped up. I clicked on one randomly.
MAKE YOUR OWN CHALKBOARD PAINT
    1 / 2 cup latex paint, any color
    2 tablespoons unsanded grout
    bowl
    paint stirrer
    paintbrush
    white chalk
Stir grout into latex paint until lump-free. Paint surface of chalkboard-to-be. Let dry. Rub chalk over entire surface and wipe off before using it for the first time.
    I found an old bag of unsanded grout in the garage and some black paint called “Beluga” I’d once used to freshen up an old table. I mixed the paint and grout together in one of the old coffee cans I used for collecting metal scraps.
    I layered some long strips of paper towel on the kitchen island and painted the empty wine bottle carefully, stopping once to double-check that the front door was locked. I mean, how embarrassing to be caught decorating a Spin-the-Bottle bottle at my age. Although maybe I could pass it off as a menu vase I was making to write the day’s pathetic offerings. Tuesday: single serving probiotic plus fiber yogurt, single serving hummus with stale crackers, microwaved single serving frozen Healthy Choice entrée .
    While the bottle dried, I pulled down the creaky attic stairs in the hallway and climbed up. I hadn’t saved much from high school, but I was pretty sure my yearbook was still packed away