The Heating Pad

Have two types of tendinitis in one shoulder...and a pulled muscle in the other (which actually hurts worse)? Still working on recovering from the insomnia which had the bad timing to ruin for you a rare sleep-through-the-night session from your progeny unit? Afraid to say too much about your afflictions in fear of having friends call you a whiner? Why, you need a drink:

• take a double dose of some generic ibuprofen variety
  
• place three ice cubes in a cocktail glass
  
• add one measure of Tennessee whiskey (although rye or bourbon would do in a pinch)
  
• add one half measure of triple sec
  
• top with a good ginger beer
  
• hope the concoction quells the aches in your torso
  

addendum

For the second go-round (hey, the recipe only uses half of the ginger beer...I have to make another!), as the original drink used up all my Tennessee whiskey, I was moving to rye....although I wasn't singing "this will be the day that I die" or indeed anything else. I decided to similarly replace the triple sec with some strawberry liqueur. The resulting variation? I call it The Ice Pack.