Yeah, OK, maybe

 I might try - AGAIN - getting back into regularly writing shit and stuff. Maybe. 

Yeah, OK, maybe

In Praise of the Husband. Don't Get Used to This

So as anyone who knows me, or who has read anything I’ve ever written on any of the mumillion different sites upon which I’ve spewed my prose over the years, I’m a wordy bitch.  I talk A LOT.  The husband, probably as a defense mechanism, doesn’t listen to much of what I say.  He has told me this outright, on multiple occasions.  He says he tunes in every so often to hear if anything important is being said, then tunes out and goes back to killing things.   It is so blatant that the following conversation has occurred, repeatedly:

                Me: I’m making spaghetti for dinner tonight

                Husband:  Ok!

                ::five minutes pass::

                Husband: What’s for dinner tonight?

                Me:  ::punches husband::

And y’know, I get it.  That last entry I posted, about all the cars?  That is legit the way I talk, day after day, all day e’ry day, a constant flow of words words words, I don’t know how he hasn’t killed me yet.

Oh wait.  Yes I do.  He doesn’t listen.  Derrrrrr…..

Here is a story I tell literally every time the topic of Star Wars: The Theatrical Experience comes up, by which I mean, any discussion of watching teh Stars Wars on the big screen.

It was 1977.  I was a child.  I wanted to see Gus, a Disney movie about a talking donkey.  Or some such.  A sports playing donkey.  I am unclear on the details because 1) see child, above and 2) we did not see that movie.  As you may have guessed from the context clues I left scattered about, all willy and also nilly, we saw Star Wars instead.  My young self was not happy about this.  I kicked and screamed and ranted and raved all the way to the theater and whilst waiting in line.  There may also have been crossed arms and pouting.  Very childish behavior, even for an actual child.

But of course, I loved Star Wars and forgot all about Gus the Talking Sports Ball Playing Donkey.  Or rather, I forgot all about wanting to see the movie about Gus the Talking Sports Ball Playing Donkey.  I did not forget all about my epic tantrum.  I tell this story frequently, much to the husband’s chagrin.  “You tell this story ALL THE TIME!”

Today, on the Facebooks, in a Marvel group to which both my husband and I belong, someone posted an article about all the “other stuff” that would be steaming on Disney+.  You know, the less prestige titles.   Like Gus.

Someone commented that Gus was “really stupid and fun” to which the husband responded with “My wife……” and HE TOLD MY STORY!  He DOES listen! 

I am so in love with him right now.

In Praise of the Husband. Don't Get Used to This

Beep Beep'm Beep Beep YEAH

I do not have good luck with cars.  In thirty-one years I have had  ::counts on fingers:: FOURTEEN cars.  That’s a lot.  And the majority of them have met bad ends.

(Spoiler alert:  By the end of this, you’re going to be wondering how such a smart girl like me can be so DUMB about cars.  Ummmm……the patriarchy?)

The first was my grandmother’s 1984 Chevy Cavalier.  That car ran fine until literally the day I gave it to my brother.  I was driving it that night for reasons I can not remember and I was on the highway going highway speeds and….the tire fell off.  Just went rolling across the road.  I watched it go and thought, “Huh” and then “That’s not good” and then “OH CRAP!” (I was a young’un then and did not curse as fluently as I do now). 

After that I had a sporty Toyota Celica but not for long because my husband (at the time) was all into autocross and decided that the best competitive vehicle he could have would be a Mazda Protégé but he did not want to get rid of HIS car (a Mazda 323) so he bought the Protégé for ME and he’d use it on the weekends.  I was okay with this even though the Celica was super sweet and sexy, because the Protégé was BRAND SPANKING NEW and I loved that car.  It had a moon roof, and a candy dish!  (I would keep jelly beans in the candy dish and sometimes, whilst driving, myself or Krumpet would accidentally ingest a Buttered Popcorn jellybean and those were the WORST and we would foam at the mouth and flail around wildly until we could open a window and ptui the offending candy out of our mouths and into traffic BUT I DIGRESS)

Okay, it probably wasn’t really a candy dish.  It was probably meant for something boring like coins.  But c’mon, CANDY.

(a brief mention of the Mazda 323 – I drove it on a fairly regular basis and I counted it as one of my fourteen cars just so that I can recount the following story.  The aforementioned husband (at the time) worked at Domino’s and one night his coworkers covered the car, like COVERED it, with refrigerator magnets for Domino’s.  He did not tell me this and I only discovered it the next morning when I left the house for school (college, not high school, I did not get married THAT young) and had to drive that car to campus and then park it on campus and walk away from it on campus and return to it on campus and let me tell you everyone on campus was VERY AWARE of that vehicle and all the magnets)

Eventually the husband (at the time) and I split and I retained custody of the car and Krumpet and I had many grand adventures in that car (but those are stories for later) until the morning I was awoken by one of my roommates knocking on my bedroom door and saying “The police are on the phone and want to know if you have seen your car?” which I think is kind of a silly question because the police KNEW where my car was, it was on fire somewhere in Northern Baltimore County which is NOT where I had parked it when I went to bed that night.

So that was the end of that car.

After that was a very old Honda Civic that I bought for $500.00 and drove for a few months until I was sideswiped by a school bus.  My insurance company totaled it and gave me as check for $1400.00 but let me keep the car – so I kept driving it AND turned a profit.

From there I went through several vehicles in quick succession, all supplied by my children’s father.  Another Honda Civic with brakes prone to failure at the worst moments. An Audi with more problems that I can list but most amusingly, air conditioning that would only work when making right turns.  A Volkswagen Passat which was in the shop more often than not and I will never again own a European car thankyewverymuch.  And Honda Accord that was rear ended – we took the insurance check on that one but never fixed it (hey, we had two young kids by then and were struggling DON’T YOU JUDGE ME!) so the trunk never quite closed right, but at least I was able to drive that car until our third child came around and we decided we needed a minivan.

I don’t think anything bad ever happened to the minivan (a Toyota Previa if you’re keeping track at home).  I drove it until eventually the baby daddy and I separated and he started seeing someone new and it made sense for his new wife to have the minivan since the kids lived with them so I bought my first ever brand new car all by myself with no help from no one no where!

That car was a 2003 Hyundai Accent and was less calamity prone than some of the others except I got sideswiped once by a driver that did not stop so my insurance company paid out for the damage less some massive deductible because I did not file a police report but the only real damage to my car was a large scrape down the side and a driver’s side door that was a little creaky about opening but I just took the check and did not get it fixed (hey, I was going to Vegas that month and needed wanted the spending money DON’T YOU JUDGE ME) (and holy run on sentence Batman!)

But then, in 2007, I was living in Baltimore City with my soon to be husband (at the time) and the Hyundai Accent.  It was a Wednesday morning – THREE DAYS BEFORE OUR WEDDING - I woke up, got dressed, went to the lot where I parked my car overnight….and it wasn’t there.  I thought it had been stolen, I filed a police report, I got a rental car, found out the next day it had been towed for unpaid parking tickets. 

Now let me talk about those tickets for a moment.   I was aware of them before this but neither my car nor myself were at the location where the tickets were supposedly issued at the time they were issued.  My car and I were at my office, in a whole ‘nother county.  I had documentation of that fact.  When the citation for the unpaid tickets first came in the mail, months prior to the towing,  I called a friend of mine who worked in the Mayor’s Office, he put me in touch with someone else, that person assured me everything would be taken care of and I didn’t need to worry about it.  AND I BELIEVED HIM.

So when my car went missing THREE DAYS BEFORE OUR WEDDING it didn’t even occur to me to think “towed”.  So the insurance company called me that Thursday, TWO DAYS BEFORE OUR WEDDING, and said “Um yeah, your car was not stolen, it was towed because you are a deadbeat who did not pay your parking tickets and we’re going to need you to return that rental vehicle that we are paying for and do it now” so TWO DAYS BEFORE OUR WEDDING the soon to be husband (at the time) and I were scrambling trying to get to city hall, pay the (bogus) tickets, get a release form, get to the tow yard and get my car back and did I mention said soon to be husband (at the time) DID NOT DRIVE?  (oh and yeah, once I paid the parking tickets I was no longer able to dispute them and me, bitter? NAH)

But there is a silver lining because I fell IN LOVE with the rental car I had for one glorious day and in 2008 I upgraded from the Accent to a shiny new Hyundai Elantra just like the one I had rented, and this is where y’all are going to think I am a raging idiot so buckle in.

So it is 2011, I have this Hyundai Elantra, I am no longer married to the soon to be husband (at the time), and I am working two jobs, a full time office job and an almost full time night job slinging pizzas, and by slinging, I mean doing a FUCKTON of driving.  Vroom vroom motherfuckers.

I was on a delivery late one night and my oil light went on.  I finished my delivery, got back to the store, tried to pop my hood to add some oil, hood wouldn’t pop.  Huh.  I went inside, told my manager what was going on, he tried to pop my hood, still wouldn’t pop.  He said, “Don’t worry about it, I had my oil light on for months with my last car, get back on the road”.  So I did.

And I continued to not worry about it until I was driving north up 83, from Baltimore to York, PA, 70 miles per hour, when my engine exploded.  I mean, it wasn’t all fiery and dramatic but it was very loud and the car was very dead.   And, much like the inconvenient timing with the Accent, this happened a week before I was scheduled to have fairly major surgery and be out of commission for a month.  Plus, I was living in a cave at the time.  So.  No car + not working + living in a cave = I went a little mental.

(okay, disclosures, it wasn’t THAT bad.  I stayed with my folks for a few days post-surgery and it wasn’t REALLY a cave I was living in, it was a basement apartment that was always very cold so it felt like a cave, but still, I was all aloney on my owny down there during most of my convalescence and also doped up on painkillers and WHEE what a ride that was!)

But after a few weeks, I got off the pills, got a new-to-me car got back to work, got back to slinging pizzas, got back to life, say hallelujiah!

That car was another Hyundai Accent and I’ll be honest, I hated that car.  I still had loan payments on the Elantra I had killed so once I was lucid again following my surgery (which took a few days - the return to lucidity I mean, not the surgery, man multi day surgery would suck, yeah?) I called CarMax and told them I needed the cheapest car on the lot.  I bought the damn thing without even driving it first.( I am not sure whether I even looked at in in person, sheesh!) and, I mean, it wasn’t a BAD car.  It was just ugly and no frills and BORING.  A basic econobox.  But it got the job done and at that point in my life, it kinda matched my lifestyle.  I was in a bad place, working 80 hours a week, still not able to make ends meet, drinking too much, indulging too much, living off of pizza and whatever I could scrounge up from 7-11 on my way home at 2am, once passing out in a friend’s basement in what I thought at the time was a pile of clothes but actually turned out to be a pile of trashbags.  Yeah.  Those were my dark years.  Not that there weren’t good times as well, but a lot of those good times were based on bad behavior.

But I’m not talking about that.  This is not an autobiography by way of cars.  OH SNAP!  WAIT, IT IS!  AUTO-biography.  It IS an autobiography.  Hee hee hee, I slay me.

ANYWAY.  I managed to hold on to that car for over five years.  I kept up on my oil changes but the engine always had a mysterious ticking noise that disturbed me.  And, it ate tires.  I blew five tires in one twelve month span.  But overall, it did me pretty well and I paid off the loan so there’s that.  I also met the husband and turned my life around and things got better and not dark and depressing and shameful and I decided to upgrade again to a Hyundai Elantra.

Yeah.  That Elantra lasted three months but IT WASN’T MY FAULT THIS TIME I SWEAR!  I was on my way to work, on the Baltimore Beltway, minding my own business, eyes on the road, traffic stopped suddenly ahead, *I* was paying attention and stopped on time and as soon as I did my eyes went to my rear view and I saw the car behind me NOT SLOWING DOWN and I had time to brace myself before she slammed into me and pushed me into the car in front of me who went into the car in front of her.  I blacked out for a few seconds I guess because next thing I know the drivers of the other three cars were standing on the side of the road and I crawled out of my car from the passenger side and immediately this woman came running up to me “OMG I’m so sorry, are you okay, can I give you a hug?” and I was very dazed and confused but nothing seemed broken so I accepted the hug but it still took me a while to figure out wtf was happening.

So my car was totaled, her car was totaled, I think the car in front of mine was totaled, I got a concussion and all because this woman was FUSSING WITH HER PHONE WHILE ACCELERATING ONTO THE HIGHWAY.  People.  DO NOT TEXT AND DRIVE. 

After that, I decided Hyundai Elantras were cursed for me.  Great cars but both of mine had come to tragic ends so it was time to try a new model.   (Worth noting, the husband’s car seems to also be cursed, although it is NOT an Elantra, it is a Chevy Cruze and is in the shop an average of once per quarter.  My husband HAAAAATES that car.  Just this past week he was trying to replace the headlights which should be a fairly simple task but [insert car talk here about engine blocks and stuff] and he said that if he ever met the guy who designed the Cruze he would make sure he was tortured for all eternity.  But Husband and Roommate together managed to replace the headlights (I helped!  I held the flashlight!) although Roommate did snap off something from the interior that we HOPE wasn’t important and Roommate feels really badly for breaking the car but we are planning on buying a new one in a few months anyway BUT I DIGRESS)

So, new model time!  I went back to CarMax, found a Kia Optima, low mileage, lots of frills.  It’s a good car!  I’ve had it for about two and a half years now, nothing bad has happened, but my check engine light went on about two weeks ago.  We took it in to Auto Zone, they read the codes, we determined it needs a new O2 sensor so at least it is not an urgent issue and I am going to take it in to have the work down in two weeks so everything should be fine right?  (Please reassure me, I am afraid).  While at Auto Zone we bought new windshield wipers which the husband installed while I sat in the house, reading trashy magazines and eating bon-bons, as a break from my typical sandwich making activities.  He came inside, looking all kinds of sheepish and said, “Your windshield was cracked already, right?”

No.  NO IT WAS NOT.  “What did you do???” I asked, but he seemed so contrite and apologetic I let it go.  I wasn’t about to get into it with him over a small crack and if it was something major I knew him well enough to know he would take care of having it fixed.  Ya gots to pick your battles folks, and I love the man more than I love the car.

So I continued eating magazines and reading bon-bons until the roommate came upstairs and I said, “I hate to tell you this but Imma hafta break your car”.  Of course he wanted to know why so I told him, “Well, you broke my husband’s car and he just broke mine, so now I have to break yours it’s the Ciiiiiiircle of Cars!” and just then the husband came into the kitchen so I told him I was going to break Roommate’s car and explained why and husband said “What are you talking about there is nothing wrong with your car I did not break it” and I said, “But the windshield….” And he just smirked at me because he did not break my windshield, he was pulling my leg the whole time because he is an asshole.  So I punched him.

I hope his next car is an Elantra.

Beep Beep'm Beep Beep YEAH

Do you know who I am? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??!??!?

I started this bloggery thing back in 2003.  And here I am now, in 2019, trying to make a go of it again.  A lot has changed in the intervening years.  So much so that 2019 me barely recognizes 2003 me.

And I mean, I guess that’s true for all of us.  Sixteen years, man.  SIX TEEN YEARS.  I was freshly separated from my children’s father and in a “relationship” with a man-child, a “professional wrestler” from Appalachia, a fully grown man who lived with his mother (which in and of itself isn’t that bad, sometimes circumstances bring you back home and I am not casting aspersions on anyone, I mean, I was living with my folks at the time also, since my marriage had ended).  I don’t want to speak too badly of him as he has since passed away (long after we had lost contact).  Suffice to say he required more babying, more handholding and coddling, than my own children.

And sadly, he got it.  From me.  I don’t know who I was during that time.  I had no backbone, no personality that wasn’t defined in some way through him.  I didn’t see it at the time, of course.  I was in LURVE.  And I’ll be honest, it sickens me just to say that.  I sickens me to look back on how devoted I was to him, how everything I said and did was to please him.  It sickens me that when I look back at my life and identify the absolute lowest points, the moments when I felt emotional pain as a physical sensation ripping me apart from the inside, I identify three discrete moments.  The moment I learned that my son had attempted suicide (and came very close to succeeding).  The day I signed my mother into hospice.  And the WEEKS after our completely unexpected (to me at least) break up.  And I am MORTIFIED at how I begged him to come back to me, at how manipulatively I used every trick in the book to win him back, even while I knew he was carrying on with other wimmens, living his life without me in far off Kentucky, while I did nothing but weep on the sofa and drug myself into oblivion (and by “drug” I mean four Benadryl per night.  I’m hard-core like that)

And then the day came, he called me, he had lost his job and the wimmen and he wanted me back and did I have a SINGLE SHRED of self respect?  LOL, of course not.

Eventually, after losing two of my closest friends, after my children started asking me why I loved him more than them, I finally started to come back to myself.  I told him I needed more from him, that I couldn’t keep pouring all of myself into “us” and getting nothing in return.  So that ended that.

::deep breath::

Okay.  This went in a direction I wasn’t expecting.  Shall I talk next about the Shagging Wars of 2005?  No, probably not.  But I did date, A LOT.  And I had fun.  And I felt like me.  I was sassy and fun and spirited….but I still let myself be subsumed by the Fling of the Week.  But at least these men, the ones I crushed on, at least THEY were worthy of my time.  I didn’t feel I had to change myself to be with them.  And the writing that was born from that time was pure gold, probably the best I’ve ever written, or ever will write.  I kept two blogs during that time and I referred to them as Pink and Blue (because of the color schemes of each individual site, of course).  Blue was my general audiences blog with the more mundane day to day observances and stories.  Pink?  Pink is where the good stuff was.  ALL THE BOYZ.  I’d love to go back and read some of it but I can’t remember how to get in.  It’s all password protected and stuff.  Maybe one day I’ll figure it out.

But then I met someone and settled down and I got boring and couldn’t write.  That was in 2006.  The relationship only lasted about two years but I’ve been unable to get back into writing.  I mean, I’ve TRIED.  But once you start a blog (or at least, once *I* start a blog), there is a sense of obligation.  For example, last week I had my birthday party at a farm, with farm animals, and a hayride and a bonfire, and it was a great time and I feel like I SHOULD write about it.  But I don’t FEEL like writing about it.  So since I don’t want to write about the thing I feel I should write about, I don’t write at all.  OBLIGATION.

So I am trying to shun that and this is why I am here now.  My point when I started writing this was to draw a comparison between who I was and who I am today, but I digressed, a LOT.  I am a wordy bitch, please put that on my tombstone.

So this is who I am now, in 2019.  I am happy.  I know who I am and I love who I am.  I have interests outside of my husband (who I met in 2013 and married just this past summer) and he has interests outside of me.  We have a life together, but we also have time apart and we both value that time (even though I spend a good chunk of that time binge watching Friends and he spends his time in the basement killing things).  He enriches my life, he is not the entirety of my life.  I can stand up for myself without becoming confrontational.  I’ve learned that a disagreement does not mean the end of the relationship (whether romantic or platonic – the two closest friends mentioned above that I lost during the whole man-child fiasco are back in my life now and I love those LADIEEEEEEZ so very much).  I don’t worry as much as I used to about other people’s opinions of me (although I do care very much about the feelings of others which is something I still need to work on.  I am always so afraid of offending someone with an ill chosen word or phrase that I end up saying nothing when sometimes, SOMETHING needs to be said….but here I am digressing again.)

Bottom line, I love me.

Do you know who I am? DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM??!??!?

Young Boy Josh

I am old and creaky and have many much pains but the worst of the pains is caused by a disc in my back.  It comes and goes, but when it comes it stays far too long and keeps me from doing things I like to do (wine festivals!  concerts!) and things I don’t like to do (work!  fucking laundry!).  In the past year, it’s been coming more often, and staying longer so I finally saw a doctor and the doctor has sent me to physical therapy which is working wonders, HUZZAH!

The therapist I see there is WONDERFUL and I have no idea how I am going to live my life once my insurance company decides not to pay for any more appointments, but for now, I am happy.  She also has several young people who work with her, including Young Boy Josh.

Now, I am sure Young Boy Josh is not THAT young.  He’s probably in his 20s. But that’s young to ME ::shakes cane::

And he is so adorably earnest and goofy and I CAN NOT with him.  I went in today and before I hopped up on the table to get my TENS and heat going, I put my phone in my pocket, but before I could put my phone in my pocket I had to ascertain whether my pants HAD pockets which, as all of us ladies know, is never a guarantee because THE PATRIARCHY!  So yeah, these pants had pockets which gave me a brief moment of exultation which Young Boy Josh noticed and he’s all what’s the what?  So I told him “I HAVE POCKETS!” and he’s all “Neat!” and I said, “Young Boy Josh, you do not understand.  YOU are a male type person and always can count on pockets” and he said, all happy and eager and chipper, “LOOK!  I have two of them!”.

Show off.

So I get my ten minutes with the TENS unit and….

Okay, wait, maybe some of you don’t know what a TENS unit is?  Just in case, I will tell you.  It is a Godsend.  It allows me to get through my day without crying constantly.  After my first session with one, I immediately went home and purchased an at-home unit.  Basically, there are two sticky pads which, in my case at least, get stuck to my lower back on either side of my spine.  There are wires attaching the pads to the unit itself, which, once activated, sends a mild electric current to the pads.  I don’t know why it works, I just know it does.

So right.  I get my ten with the TENS and Young Boy Josh comes to help me off the table and he puts the unit in his pocket and goes to grab the storage bag for the pads.  Except.  The pads are still on my back and the wires are still attached to the unit and the unit is in Young Boy Josh’s pocket and Young Boy Josh AND his pocket is WALKING AWAY and I yelp “JOSH!” and he’s all, “Oh.  Oops!”

So that situation gets all resolved and I go through all my exercises that I am supposed to do, with Young Boy Josh’s guidance and we get to the last one and it is my least favorite but I gots to do what I gots to do so I ask him how many reps and he says “ten” and I’m all “FINE” and then he says, “no wait, 15, I was looking at the wrong line” and I legit growl at him.

There are other young people who work there also but none of them are as entertaining.  I wonder if I can request Young Boy Josh for all my appointments.  That’d probably look weird, yeah?  Yeah.

Young Boy Josh

There is a REASON!

GUYS!  You ever wonder why they make you sign a waiver before consuming super intense burn your mouth off spicy foods?  Like, c’mon, what’s the worst that can happen? It’s not like Death by Jalapeno is a thing. I just always thought it was a gimmick, but nope, I’m here to tell you, the danger is real.

I will start at the beginning, because duh.  I am a beer nerd.  Craft beer is my jam.  The husband and I go to a lot of beer festivals, sometimes accompanied by Eldest Child who has inherited my love for all things craft and local, beerwise at least.

So we’re at Hibrewnation, in York, PA.  This is our second year attending.  Last year we went General Admission but this year?  We’re rolling VIP, boyyyyyyyyyy!  An hour early entry plus access to VIP only beers.  It’s like catnip for us hep beer-cats, only instead of ‘nip, it’s hops.  Hopnip.  TM, TM, TM, don’t steal my shit or I will find you and I will and I will ….. um…. make angry face at you.

Turns out we only ended up with 45 minutes early access because our Lyft driver was a downright idiot.  I’m sorry, I do not like to be hyper critical, but if you are driving for a rideshare service you should NOT have stuff sitting in the backseat of your car that you then have to rearrange so that your three passengers have somewhere to sit.  Your car should be relatively neat and clean and OH YEAH!  You should have GPS easily accessible.  You should not be driving with one hand and holding your phone with the other.  You also were provided with our destination address when we initiated the ride so whyyyyyyy are you asking us, after you’re already lost, where we are going?  Why are you skidding through lights and missing turns IN THE RAIN.  I want to drink, not die.

But I digress.

Anyway, as stated above, we go to lots of festivals.  I am not a novice at this and I know how to pace myself.  I can get buzzed, get tipsy, get happy and text everybody I know, post ALL the photos to Facebook (I am old and do not Instagram or Snapchat, sorry cool teenz) but I rarely get full on forreal DRANK.  I get to the point that I make the vendors at the event VERY happy, if you know what I mean.

NO!  Not like that!  GET YOUR MIND OUT OF THE GUTTER.

I’m just saying.  We end up buying lots of stuff that we would not otherwise buy.  Like earthworm jerky.  (Yes, earthworm jerky.  NOT my idea).  So we make our way to several different booths, we buy jerky and some kind of carrot ginger relish (that I have no idea what I am going to do with) and eventually, we find the pretzel vendor.  EVERY event has a pretzel vendor somewhere.  I end up buying five bags – salted caramel and taco and bacon cheeseburger and cookies and cream and maple flavored.  And as I completed that transaction, I saw this:

Well.  Challenge accepted!  Without thought or permission or SIGNING THE MFing WAIVER, I just threw a handful into my mouth.

And that, my friends, is where shit got real.

I basically lost all capacity for conscious thought.  I thrust my beer mug out to my daughter who scurried over like the dutiful child she is to the nearest beer tent (which happened to be Sam Adams) and acquired for me a full pour of their New England IPA (which is quite tasty, btw, not that I would know that from THIS experience).  Which I threw back in one massive gulp and sent her back for another.  And another.  After chugging three full pours, I was finally able to focus on something, anything other than the burning. 

Also, after chugging three full pours, I went from happy go lucky spend all the money tipsy-buzzed to FULL ON DRANK.   It was time to go and because we are smrt responsible adults we had prearranged a ride from the child’s father.  Everything seemed fine until we got in the car and it started moving.  I dumped all of our purchases out of their bags and repurposed the bags for….well, you can imagine what happened next.  It was not pretty.

We got dropped off at my daughter’s house and she and the husband helped me from the car.  I stumbled on the sidewalk and ended up rolling down the hill, in the mud.  Got into the house and needed to go downstairs but also knew going downstairs in the conventional manner was unwise.  So I sat on my butt and bounced down the stairs like that.  Ended up lying flat on my back on my daughter’s living room floor while she tried to sponge the mud off of me and the boyfriend praised her for being such a good daughter since I used to clean her butt and then I rambled on and on about the epic poops she had as a baby and then raised my shirt and played bongos on my belly until I passed out.

So yeah.  Moral of the story is that when you get drunk and make an ass of yourself, always have a scapegoat.  I blame the pretzels.

There is a REASON!

Conversations with The Husband (First in a series)

Scene:  Friday night Halloween party at a dark and crowded bar.  My costume, is, well.......lacking.  I was planning on wearing a hoodie that says "I'm a Cat" but decided it would be too warm.  So I have on a black top, black pleather mini skirt, black knee high boots, fishnets, and a cat ears headband.  Affixed to my top are NINE buttons.  Each button pictures a book cover from various fairy tales.  No one know what I am supposed to be.  I was all proud of my cleverness but now I am feeling deflated and lame.

“The problem with this costume is that it is too subtle. You can’t really tell what’s on the buttons unless you get all up close and in my bosoms to read the buttons. And no one wants to…..well.  No.  That’s obviously not true”.

“I mean, unless you’re feeding a baby, boobs have no real purpose”

“That’s not true! They’re good for….um….holding one’s cell phone whilst dancing”

“You can hold your phone in your elbow or armpit”

“Well that’s not practical!  What if want to do the Macarena?  I am much more likely to do the Macarena at a party than I am to flash my tits.”

No one contradicts me so I continue.  “Okay, fine.  Boobs are also drink holders.”  And I pull back the neckline of my top so I can rest my cup on my bosom shelf.

“I can do that too!”  And he pulls away his shirt collar and traps the cup between his chest and collar so the collar of his shirt holds the cup stable.

“Yeah but you can’t do THIS!” and I pull away my collar and the cup remains in place.  “GAME SET MATCH BOYYYYYYY”

Conversations with The Husband (First in a series)