One happy day my fridge looked like this!

Sitting on the deck, my knuckles scraped, shins bruised, and hair everywhere, the bottle of beer in my hands could have been a flute of Dom Perignon. But it wasn’t; it was better. It was, in fact, an IPA Maximus from Lagunitas, because that is what you drink after a day of moving everything you own and everything your Significant Other owns across town in 90-degree weather. You don’t drink champagne after that.

You don’t drink champagne after your kickball team won its first game ever and you don’t drink it when you’ve lost every one. You don’t drink bubbly after working out in your garden all afternoon. You don’t fall onto the couch after an exhausting day at work and take a long draw from a bottle of champagne. That’s ridiculous, right? But champagne remains known as the beverage of celebrations. I’d like to challenge that assumption.

Beer has a reputation for being the proud drink of the common man, and I feel there’s nothing wrong with that characterization. But I’d like to suggest that beer is also, more than any other beverage, the drink America celebrates with. From the “Champagne of Beers” all the way up to your finest Belgian Double, beer is the drink to clink for every accomplishment, small or large. Because some days, just getting through the last hour of work and making it home to sit in pajamas and eat mac and cheese out of the pan is as much an achievement as getting married or winning the lottery. Beer is everybody’s drink for everyday victories.

When Ben got up off the deck and offered to bring me another IPA, I accepted eagerly, knowing we still had a lot of moving and organizing to do, being relieved to have the big part of the move complete, and feeling so happy to be right there, right then, with that beer.