Sometimes as my wife Jennifer is departing from any particular occurrence, she’ll turn back to me and intently say, “That’s not an AngelsPortion post!”

“Ah, but it is, my dear,” I’ll whisper under my breath. “It most certainly is.”

She knows me all too well.

She knows I’m always watching. I’m always paying attention. I’m always ready to take the simplest of happenings, examine it, and then set it before all of you in all of its pure or profane glory.

And why shouldn’t I? What is to be gained by keeping these little life gems hidden away?

I mean, why wouldn’t I tell you about the time my daughter Madeline, as a one-year-old, caught the Rotavirus? And what is this illness? Well, I can tell you that explosive diarrhea is pretty much its defining characteristic. I can also relay that it is never a good idea to let your infected child bounce happily in an excersaucer wearing only a diaper—that is, unless you want to see the watery contents of her tiny intestines jetting out the sides of her little Pampers with each bounce’s impact, drenching everything within a two-feet radius of her bright smile. Oh, and by the way, she was only wearing a diaper because I had to cut her out of a similarly soaked onesie she was previously wearing. Yep, I grabbed the scissors, cut it off of her, and threw it away. There was no chance in this lifetime that I was going to try to work her out of it and then put it into the washer.

Nope. Not a chance.

Okay, so, maybe that’s not the kind of story you want to hear. And perhaps Jennifer is right to a certain extent. Some of these gems are better left unmined. But in truth, I think in certain moments she stops to level her mandate because she doesn’t want to reveal her darker side—which I must say, is one of the facets to this beautiful woman that makes me love her so much.

By darker, I mean the following.

Are you familiar with the horror film entitled “Annabelle”? Briefly, it’s about a doll that is possessed by a demon. I know that Jennifer has never seen it. In fact, she won’t even watch the movie trailers for it. They are terrifying enough. I know that my seventeen-year-old son, Joshua, has seen it. In fact, he saw it with his friends in the theater when it first came out. When it finally made it to video, I rented it and he watched it with me. I thought it was lame—as I think pretty much all horror movies these days are lame—but I can tell you that by about half-way through the film, Joshua had moved from the end of the couch to within inches of me.

Now, as I’ve learned, the movie claims to be based on true events, and it turns out that the real doll is not at all like the amped up prop in the film, but is instead a rather soft and inconspicuous “Raggedy Anne” doll.

Guess what. We have one. Jen’s mother made it for her when she was a child.

So, now that both Jennifer and Joshua know the doll’s origin and style, Jen’s childhood cuddler has taken on an ominous presence, and with that, they’ve both been working overtime to frighten one another with it—setting it on top of partially open bedroom doors so that it will fall on mom when she enters, or sticking it in a child’s chair in the shower so that when the young man pulls back the curtain, he is startled enough to be heard downstairs.

But last night, I think it could be said that Jen took the lead in this little dance.

In the midst of midnight’s pitched darkness, Jennifer crept into Joshua’s room. He would be returning from a friend’s birthday celebration in moments, and so she’d need to be swift.

With the doll in hand, and one of our son Harrison’s remote control cars in the other, she duct-taped the doll to the top of the car and set it under the edge of Joshua’s bed.

And then she waited.

Joshua came home, and after visiting with us for a few minutes, he made his way into his bedroom. But before he could flip the switch to bring his room to a comforting glow, the dimly beaming light from the hall barely washing the right measure of his bed, Jennifer hit the gas on the remote and out came the doll with a mechanized screech.

Let me tell you, if Joshua had been wearing a onesie, I’d have needed to cut him out of it. The Rotavirus has nothing on Jennifer, even as the boy promised his mother that she would pay for her crimes.

“And this is not an AngelsPortion post!” he said angrily.

“Oh, yes it is, my good man. Yes it is. In fact, I have just the whisky in mind.”

Alas, the Highland Park Valkyrie edition.

In Nordic lore, Valkyries were vicious female spirits—emissaries of Odin sent into the battles of mortal men, angel-like beings arriving with a measure of judgment, choosing the loathsome and cowardly for the Underworld, while selecting others for Valhalla or for joining the spiritual regiment that would be required for the final battle of the ages known as Ragnarok.

Yep, sounds like something Jen would be a part of if she were a Nordic demigod in service to Odin. Too bad she despises whisky, because this namesake dram is fit for such otherworldly deviants as she.

The nose of this delightful dram is one of cranberries and white chocolate—almost feminine in its initial gentleness. There’s barely a hint of smoke. And I mean barely. In fact, you might not even discover it unless you know to expect Highland Park’s signature incensing—this time reminiscent of smoked citrus zest.

The first sip is incredibly sweet, offering an inviting and generous splash of the citrus noticed in the nosing. Alongside, this beauty unsheathes an additional armament of honied cinnamon. But then its alluring smile turns to a more serious and menacing grin, reminding you of its rightful station at Odin’s side with a tarry stir of cinders reminiscent of the Nordic god’s furnace. This stays through the medium finish, with barely a mention of the fruiter delights that were first to arrive.

If anything, it makes for a great dram while following around and watching an otherwise gentle and kindly wife, a mindful and loving mother of four doing all that she can to set the stage for terrifying her seventeen-year-old son. It’s nothing short of being the perfectly consumable soundtrack to her twisted scheming at 12:30 in the morning.