I was told there would be food...I should have stuck with just that.

Good afternoon!

So as many of you know I work at home now, and my afternoons are pretty free if I'm not writing or watching episodes of Grey's Anatomy.  (Which is my summer homework.) Yes, I love my life.

Yesterday Hubby, who also works from home, but isn't usually home because he's usually on the road for work, was home, but had to go on the road to Janesville, WI, which is roughly an hour from us.  he suggested that I come along and he promised me lunch.  Sure, it would be a late lunch, but it would be lunch. It would be food.  It would be food I would haven't to clean up after.

I was in.

We drove the hour and pulled up to a fairly shady looking car repair shop. This is sort of my husband's life. He drives around to shady car repair shops and takes pictures of cars that have been destroyed in accidents.

While he was doing that, I sat in the car, and watched an old coot (and here I'm not being rude, but seriously, he looked like the old guy from the throw back Mountain Dew bottles)  running a GARAGE SALE. Now I point out that his signs all said "GARAGE SALE" and that's interesting because he was in a PARKING LOT...and the closest GARAGE was the car repair place where I was sitting, a full city block away.  Garage sale?  

Anyway, OC (Old Coot) was selling a lot of bikes and some lamps and a few China dolls in glass cabinets...yep it was a real "all for one and one for all" sort of sale.

Hubby finished his business about the time I was bored watching OC sit there haggling over one of the China dolls with a ten year old boy on a bike.  Not sure what the wheeling and dealing was about, and I didn't care since I was hungry and #Iwastoldtherewouldbefood.   We started looking around downtown Janesville. 

If you've never been to downtown Janesville, you've missed the glory days.  There used to be an auto plant in that town and things were booming.  Now, much of what's left are empty buildings, second hand bookstores (well, used books and tools, according to the sign) and second hand furniture and clothing stores.  Basically, the downtown is one big garage sale.  OC was just an open air sales guy, I guess.

Anyway, we found an Irish pub that looked promising. I like Irish food and I like pubs and I like lunch.  And by the time we were there it was almost 3:30 and I was starving.

Of course, the minute we opened the door I lost my appetite. 

Bars and places that serve food should smell, I don't know, like maybe food is available.  They should NOT smell like the inside of a cedar chest that's been inhabited by wet wool and moth balls for the last five years.

Yummy.

Undeterred, mostly because we were super hungry, we went in.  There was one woman behind the bar, talking to two people sitting at the bar. The rest of the place was empty.

"Hey," says the lady behind the bar, "you coming in to eat?"

"Are you serving food?" asks Hubby, who isn't normally snarky, and I don't think he meant to be here, but hey, the place smelled not at all like food and there was no one eating.  It was a valid question.

"Oh yeah, we're here until 10."


I had to wonder, did anyone in town know that?

She gave us waters and a menu and I checked out the drink menu.  It was pushing 4 PM and I thought, hey, a little day drinkin' might be fun.  So I checked out the menu, while singing the Little Big Town song in my head, and found something that sounded odd and a little dangerous.  

It was called the Four Leaf Clover Martini.  Now, I know that some places name stuff to sort of keep in the spirit of the theme of their bar.  And since I'm sure no one would buy anything called a "smells like mothballs tini" they had to call their drinks something, so the used Irish words and phrases.

Their idea of a "four leaf clover" martini involved the following alcohols:  Vodka, Kahlua, Irish Cream, Jameson's whisky, and something call Frangelico.  

And nothing else.

Maybe they called it the four leaf clover because if you ordered it, you'd be lucky to have a liver strong enough to drink it.

But hey, I was interested in what all these liquors piled together might taste like.

So she brought it to me.

Should a drink like that have layers?

Something wasn't quite mixed right or it was separating or something. It was a layered drink. Something clear on top and everything else murky brown beneath.

And it smelled like the rest of the bar.

Hubby said, "You'd better drink that before the Irish cream curdles."

I took a swig.  Yeah, I'm thinking we were too late for that.

I'll say this. The sandwiches we ordered were good. Not adventurous, but good.  And the waffle fries were awesome.  But I wasn't going to leave that martini. I paid for it, I was going to to drink it.

And almost immediately, I regretted it.

Now I'm not positive was the martini, but I spent the rest of the evening feeling awful. Nausea, chills, sweats, muscle weakness, headache, eye ache, body aches.  All I'm saying is I felt fine before the martini and not fine after.

So what did we learn?

We learned if a place smells like wet wool and mothballs when you walk in, stick with the grilled cheese and the waffle fries and leave the alcohol alone.

And maybe don't drink anything before 5 Pm. Maybe that's just a really good rule.