Linda Anne

👠 LADIES! 👠 Yes! Ladies—I’m taking to YOU. Do you love a woman? This is for you. Are you one? Duh 🤦🏼‍♀️ Do you love spirits and want to know more about the inner workings of the industry? These women are ready to give you the SNEAK PEEK! We need to shine our spotlight on the stories of these women in our shared industry! Let’s go! NEXT Saturday. April 25th. At 2pm. Meet us at @kovaldistillery for this conversation, networking opportunity & overall hangout. I’m here to buy y’all a drink! Featuring chingonas: @lucinarez @whereisedna @lil_fischy @argelia23 @mezcal_lady Pre-Party for @mexicoinabottle (make it cute) #mexicoinabottlechicago Featuring: @lucypistolasmezcal @granalta_spirits @condesagin @esprezcal @kovaldistillery 🍄 earrings by my girl Erica via @tigermothgoods 💕💙

⚙️BE FLEXIBLE⚙️ If you can’t make happy hour drinks for kids AND adults in the Rocky Mountains with Tupperware shakers and potato masher muddlers…are you REALLY a beverage educator? Change has always been a tricky one for me. I certainly love a plan. Type A all day! Nannying, traveling, co-parenting, and running events ALL seem to require a high level of adaptability for me. I have to accept change as a constant and keep practicing on-my-toes solutions. These strawberry margaritas in the mountains were sweet, mouth-watering proof that we are flexible cuties who cannot be threatened with a good time. We will deliver! Cheers! May you be like Gumby today in your flexibility. #ninetieskid #pbs #stretchy #stretchyourlimits

👗 FASH-SHUN 👗 There’s precisely zero folks who have NOT heard my new obsession with “doing fashion”. Thank you my girl, @ladyberman who runs awesome vintage pop-up @ladybgoods for launching me into a new way of thinking about clothes and style. Some days, this fresh out-of-the-shower face is the one you will see. Maybe wearing sweatpants or a racer back bra from @aldiusa but—this just in!-sometimes wearing wide-leg flood-length pants or wooden jewelry or a little ascot-style bandana around my neck. Point is, I’m trying. And im trying a NEW thing. Let’s open our minds, all of us, and try a new thing to feel happy or confident or geeky! Join me.

🕯️DATE NIGHT 🕯️ The holiday season—for almost everyone I know, present company included—are a #chicagomix (lol @garrettpopcorn ) oh highs and lows and santa clauses of all kinds in between. I’ve always been a seriously Quality Time driven human, no matter which assessment you use to score me. 😉 (in a big way, this is a grad school-meets evangelical joke. thank you.) I love a date night, many-months-of-planning vacation, a VIP access experience. Into it. I have logged more hours of growth, compassion, new worlds of thinking & opportunity in this last year of falling in love with @customwoodwork1984 than I ever anticipated at this time last year. And I will tell you for sure: one of the ways we make this life together a reality: a really secure landing place, a home in the safety of one another is by having date nights. Exploring Pilsen was a great way to expand and discover together. And have some of the best cocktails of our lives at @the.alderman.chicago 💜 Huge shoutout to @buenazvibras & charlie for the nerdiness, chatter and craftsmanship. Missed you @thecincinnatibarman but loved—as always—every sexy detail about your spot. We popped into @pilsenyards of course and shopped at @pilsenvintagechicago and a host of other spots on 18th. We held hands and crossed at the crosswalks and Eric studied fixtures and finishings because he’s never not a carpenter. Take a date night, my friends. 🕯️ Put it in your actual budgeting for the New Year like we did today. Live your life and do your work, but find time for connection. I know I need to. 🕯️

🎈 Happy Birthday @customwoodwork1984 🎉 What a wonderfully unique guy he is, with all sorts of cool hobbies that no one knows about, deep rabbit holes of expertise in hyper-niche topics. He’s such a natural parent, following his clever instincts and will catch a weird detail when all the rest of us miss it completely. I’m learning so much with you and from you, Eric. You’re a fantastic teammate in doing this life together. Let’s do it some more! Happy “Ruby Jubilee” for 40!

✡️ MAZEL TOV! to the boy I nannied when he was a wee one. ✡️ Isn’t it cool to have a second line for your bar mitzvah?! Seems to me this dude was cool since we washed all his hot wheels cars in the sink on a rainy day. #imnotcryingyourecrying #nannylife

⚡️ R E S E T ⚡️ I come from a family with an extensive history and ancestry (because alcoholism is—in part—genetic, thank you @surgicalmuseumchicago ) of alcoholism & alcohol abuse. I want to be a piece in the puzzle of daughters who break the generational trauma (because, in a way, I believe it is this) of this disease. To be free from it. I have been using an app for a little over a year called @reframe_app (which i highly recommend & would be glad to discuss), which focuses on psychology-based content to increase motivation to cutback on drinking. After my free trial, i put a note in my calendar to cancel the app before I was charged. Because I’m super cheap. But it turned out that I was experiencing a great deal of benefit from the app. So I paid for the next year. Big move for Linda. And then I decided to double down and try for a California sober month, before my regular sober month (usually, January). Dry august. And wow! I found so much delight in a behavior of restriction! 😮 I found new non-alc alternatives. I learned that I really love to drink a beverage at all possible times, all day long (reinforcing something I knew about me). I found some new sober patterns and paid attention to what brought me joy. I worked on managing my emotions and communicating effectively with my partner. Sobriety (even temporary) often affords time for a lot of improvements you didn’t realize you were missing, I find. And despite a couple exceptions (personal & professional), tonight I am celebrating my achievement. In the sunny afternoon: one of the favorite n/a bevs I got into: @casamaraclub on the back porch. In the evening: my favorite cocktail, a Mezcal Last Word, with which I have marked so many occasions. I’m sipping it on the front porch as the sun sets with the pup. Thanks to the new @lucypistolasmezcal expression (Guanajuato AND Guerrero!) If you wonder “can I?”, I think you can. Give it a try. If you’re looking for a reset, I would say it’s worth the effort! I’m a big fan and I intend to take a number of lessons from this month into my regular life moving forward. Here’s the the best version of me. And to you, whatever that may be! 🤟🏼

🪜 My man is a carpenter. And his creative brain has all these twists and turns, these gorgeous tangents & thousands of ideas one by one but also all at once, like a shotgun blast. 💥 I, too, am a creative but my anxious brain [and my probably neurodivergent brain. TBH, I’m guessing we’re both neurodivergent] works differently. She’s a bit fussy and fairly high-maintenance. I have to landscape her thinking place so she can reach all her good ideas. Which reminds me of something my dad used to do when we would visit Lori’s little baby grave at the cemetery. Dad brought clippers, the orange handle protruding from the back pocket of his church Dockers, and we’d stand mostly reverent while he clipped away the grass and weeds over-growing the edges of Lori’s gravestone. In my memory, this was such a loving and tender thing to do, perhaps one of only a few ways he could show how infinitely he loved his lost little girl. I admire how Eric’s brain doesn’t require such meticulous upkeep. Like, the creativity is easier to access. And how his go-get-em mentality enables him to bust the kitchen to pieces in a couple of hours to cut and sand and paint his way to something new and beautiful. Well, today I got to help. 💪🏼 And even though it was so simple as applying the mold-killing paint within the borders he marked out for me, I felt the satisfaction of completion. The connection of working together. And even—perhaps—the energy to manicure a nice little thinky space for my high-maintenance creativity to roam free. 🪜you’re the best, @customwoodwork1984 I’ll apply mold-killer paint for you any day. 🎨

🛠️Happy Dad’s Day to all the Fellas out there & to all my loves with complicated dads and dads who aren’t here 🛠️ I’m lucky to have a dozen or more men in my life (some for a while, others for a chapter) who have modeled the qualities of a super duper dad. For anyone who knows Mister Bob Sullivan or been with me for four seconds, you know that I’m so proud of the man my dad has been choosing to grow into for decades. He brings his A game for me, for us, for all the folks he’s ever loved. @resully56 I’ve never been in love with someone’s dad, any dad—until now. @customwoodwork1984 This year, you’ve brought so much calm, laughter and delight into my life, Eric. You’re a man who stands behind your words with action, you teach me about tenderness and the power of peace, and you are raising your daughter to be a fierce force of a young woman. I love watching you learn from each challenge, fine tune your bargaining skills, and create a stable & safe space for your daughter to be full of life with her fireworke-y personality. I’m eager to support you in dad-ing & building our future until my morning mohawks become a deal-breaker for you. Happy Dad’s Day and all the days.

Tasting. Tasting. Tasting. 🌿amazing opportunity at @easydoesitchicago to taste a portion of the @5sentidosagave line. Wow. Glad to brainstorm events with @kevasaurus1 on-site. Exciting new things coming for @seynasecreto ! Huge nod to @lahweeeze the queen of agave history and production. Thank you amiga for your wisdom and time.

🐶 AUDREY APPRECIATION 🐶 I’d be nowhere without you, my little bubba. You’ve saved me from myself a dozen times, no less. Cured my lonesomeness, made me laugh while I was crying, shared a completely spastic joy with me when you discovered me behind the couch during hide & seek. I’m floored by the squishy, sweet girl you’ve become from the day we brought you home from the rescue and it took almost an hour to get your scared little pancake body from the sidewalk into the back seat. And when you used to bark at the vacuum. And freeze under all the train viaducts. My little Bestie. 💙 You’ve done fantastic! Round of applause for Dad duties goes to: @jbjblues The ultimate hockey 1-on-1 partner, punch-in-the-facer and field trip to the lake guardian. We did it, Brad! 🥹 We’re doing it, still! 💪🏼 Happy Holidays from Audrey Elliot. 🎄if you have thrown her oktopus, kissed her face, walked her when I couldn’t, or let her sit on your couch 😲 she loves you still with the force of a thousand Christmases. 🐾💙

🎈 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ANGELA LYNN🎈 If you know my little seester @astoldbyangela —wish her a wonderful year of twenty-nine. I know it will be full of challenges & delights. Full of big decisions & rewarding results. Full of exploding hearts & super fabulous pals. I love you with an infinite capacity, Little Gela. You teach me so much, we constantly push one another, I always feel energized by talking to you and I’m so very proud of you! You are safe space for me. I Can say anything, despite my naievite or ignorance. We can learn together and grow. I love it all. Not to mention my obsession with you as Audrey’s best Tia in all the land. Stay balanced, keep true to your priorities and always be consistently kind. You’re such a gorgeous human bean. I’ll be here for you and with you forever. So will your niece dog. You are an infinite source of squishy love for her. 🐾 Here’s to twenty-9! 🤟🏼