Keep a list of "just right" wines in your wallet.
You know you're getting old when you begin to despair over the state of social media.
When I see Twitter headlines such as "Taylor Swift's Cat pulls off Epic Photobomb" receiving more retweets and comments than actual epic announcements like "Audacious Plan to Land on a Comet", I really feel like scooping out my own eyeballs with a spoon.
I have, however, found the trick to enabling one's "even keel" and avoiding the inevitable cerebral conniption by thinking too much about the modern social condition, very easy. One simply pops down to the supermarket or liquor store and buys a nice bottle of wine.
Of course it's always better (or "way funner" as I heard some teens say the other day) if you also arrange to have a good mate pop over to join you, that you have some chips and dip on hand and also have it sorted so you don't have to drive anywhere.
But what wines do you choose I hear you ask? Actually you're probably not asking that at all. In fact, you're probably wondering why I'm taking so long to get to the point of this column and, truth be told, you'd prefer to be reading about curtain trends or car reviews; but humour me.
I'm talking about wines that provide fantastic distraction and connect you to what's real, things such as the uniqueness of each day, without breaking the bank.
Wines that spark niceness in your nostrils and on your taste buds and provide a talking point for a second or seven, complementing rather than overwhelming the conversation.
Wines that you can rely on in any situation, whether it's to inject glam into your cheese and crackers, to take to your local BYO restaurant or proudly present to the host of your next dinner party.
I'm talking about wines that work perfectly when it comes to toasting the happy couple or when consoling a heartbroken friend.
Wines that possibly wouldn't feature in the "Wines to Try Before you Die" lists of important wine people, yet have become like trusted comrades over the years. I
used to have a list of them scribbled on the back of an old (losing) lotto ticket lurking in a pocket of my wallet, but it's basically committed to memory, like my children's birthdays, which razor refills my husband likes, my IRD number and the first 20 elements on the periodic table (nerds rule, okay?).
Santa brought me a wallet for Christmas and when transferring all the eftpos, credit, library and loyalty cards from the old one, I realised my list was missing.
Perhaps it fell out when I was struggling to prise my driver's licence loose the last time the police pulled me over.
The wallet was so old the card had cemented itself to the faux leather on one side and stuck fast to the tacky-grubby plastic window on the other. When I finally yanked it free, my wallet exploded in a cloud of supermarket petrol vouchers, coffee cards, loose change and lost earrings.
"You could have just handed me the wallet," she said. "Your registration is due this month too by the way."
That's the story of my life really. It seems every day something else is up for renewal - to the point where on my gravestone, besides the words "she got stuff done" will say "this account is now overdue", but I digress.
Appreciating wine isn't necessarily about spending lots of money on famous, pricey, five-star fabulousness.
To me, it's about finding a wine that works with whatever life happens to be throwing at you that day; when Facebook gets a tad flaccid, LinkedIn is plain old limp, Instagram is exhausted and Twitter is tired, and for those times you just need delicious distraction.
My list of tried and true, anything at anytime wines that will do just that.