Being 41 Is Like Being Drunk All The Time

Back in my pre-kid days, I used to drink. A lot. Regularly. And I used to hang out with people who smoked pot. A lot. Regularly. Needless to say, we had a lot of fun. There was much laughter. And sometimes we thought we were being so brilliant that we would write our ideas down.

In the harsh light of a hangover morning, we'd look at our scribbles and say, "What the fuck? Why was this funny? Is this a letter or a number? Fuck this, I need Tylenol and McDonald's fries."

Since I have never allowed a hangover photo, I give you a picture of my favorite drink, the gin and tonic. 

Or something like that. Don't expect total accuracy, I was hungover, for God's sake.

Anyway, even though I rarely drink anymore, I sometimes get ideas at approximately the same time of evening. You know, the time I should be in bed, sleeping. Instead I am in bed, hastily scribbling down blog ideas that just occurred to me.

I don't turn on the light to do this, because that would ruin my going to sleep procedures. Plus, the switch is across the room. I don't write neatly, because I must hurry and finish before my boyfriend Jon Stewart comes back on the TV. It usually takes me a few days to remember I've written something down - like, I'll be sitting in front of the computer trying to think of a blog topic and suddenly remember that I wrote down a brilliant idea the other day. So I'll run up to get my notebook and flip eagerly through the pages, only to think. . . .

"What the fuck? Why was this funny? Is this a letter or a number? Fuck this, I need Tylenol and McDonald's fries."

I don't get the fries anymore, though.

You would think that after the first few failures, when running up the stairs to get the notebook has yielded nothing more than my being out of breath, that I would stop writing these bedtime ideas down. But much like I never learned that shots do not mix with four gin and tonics, I keep writing and hoping.

Even more disturbing than the notebook problem might be the bruise problem. When I was a drinker, I would occasionally get a bruise. I would never have any idea how I got the bruise, at least not until I mentioned it to a friend and she would remind me how I tripped over my own front step. Nowadays, I still get the occasional bruise of unknown origin. And (so far) my kids are no good at chronicling my embarrassing moments.

My final reason for believing that I am actually drunk all the time nowadays is that I talk to myself a lot. It used to be, when I would come home drunk from wherever, I would talk myself through my nighttime routine so that I wouldn't forget anything. Because make-up removal, tooth brushing and allergy pill ingestion seem like calculus when you're really drunk. But here I am at 41, talking myself through the errands I have to run or how to make cookies or whatever.

Is it possible that all the painkillers they gave me at my c-sections have never actually worn off? If I start drinking again, will I get smarter? Do I have a brain tumor?

Answer me, internets. I'm so drunk I'll believe anything you say.

Having Kids Is Like Being Drunk

I am currently sporting a Cars band-aid around my thumb. It is band-aid number 4 and I have it so tightly wound that it's going to leave marks. In fact, I'm slightly concerned that my wound is going to need more than a band-aid.

It happened in the kitchen. Almost every injury I've gotten since having kids has occurred in the kitchen. I was cutting up cantaloupe while trying to block out a big kid screaming game as well as translate 20 month old gobbledy-gook. ChunkyMonkey yelled in frustration, I turned to look at him and . . .blood gushed from my thumb. I ran it under water, then returned to all the mommy duties. Soon I realized it was still bleeding.

And as I sat there at dinner, paper towels wrapped around the thumb and an inability to clearly explain to Ironflower and Lovebug what I'd done, I had an alcohol flashback.

The most fun wedding I ever went to (er, um, I'm sorry if I went to your wedding and that this wasn't it. I'm sure I had a fabulous time at your wedding too. I swear.) was my friend Mimi's. I was a bridesmaid in a cute dress who knew most of the guests, there was an open bar and lots of flirtatious men. What wasn't fun about it?

Well, there was the broken glass. Dropped near me, I quickly hopped up to get a waiter or paper towels or something. But, um, I had already taken off my strappy high heels. So apparently I stepped on some glass. It didn't hurt much, which I took to be a good sign and not a sign that I'd had more champagne than necessary. So I wrapped some paper towels around my foot and kept dancing.

When the paper towels bled through, I just asked someone to get me new ones. I was having so much fun.

It wasn't until early Sunday morning, as I practically crawled downstairs to my bathroom, that I became concerned about my foot. It throbbed, but so did my head, so I didn't worry until I saw the trail of blood. It went from the front door up the stairs to my room and was actually coming back down the stairs.

Yeah, my foot was still bleeding.

You know when a good time to go to the ER is? Early on a Sunday morning. Unless, of course, you can't adequately explain why your drunk ass didn't come into the ER the night before. The doctor actually called extra nurses in to hear my explanation of how I'd embedded the glass into my foot by continuing to dance.

Despite laughing at me, though, they gave me something that erased my hangover while they cleaned  and put seven stitches in my foot.

When I looked at my children at dinner and tried to explain how I cut my thumb, I felt exactly like I did in the ER. It was like the drunken instinct to hop right up - of course I'd keep chopping, even though I'd moved my thumb! And of course I'd just wrap some paper towels around it and keep going. Because just like I couldn't pass up fun back in the day, I couldn't pass up mommy duty last night.

I could totally pass up having stitches on the bottom of my foot again, though. That sucked. I hated the thought of crutches, so I spent weeks hobbling in flip flops and actually pulled a muscle in my foot as well.

Anyone else ever noticed parallels between having young kids and being drunk?