drink

At 11 o'clock last night, I was dolled up in my slinky dress and ready to go to bed. And not in the euphemistic sense. We'd ended up dillydallying at home a bit, and I was tired and not in the New Year's swing of things. I would have been quite happy to sit on Shelley and Steve's couch, have a glass of wine, toast midnight and scoot up the driveway to my cozy clean house and my brand new sheets.

At 12:30, I'd finished off a flask of straight gin, tossed back a few small glasses of bubbly wine and was starting to black out. I remember lots of the rest of the night, especially the very fun parts that left me with a bite mark on my shoulder, but it's with tunnel vision. The edges of the night are greyed out pretty close to the centre, and beyond that it's murky muddly swirly.

I've done that a few times this year - gotten black out drunk by accident, where I've started the night thinking, oh, I'll just have a drink or two and go home. Each time, I've misjudged just how drunk I am and then, of course, how much more I can handle. Last night was weird, since I can generally handle a flask full of whiskey with aplomb. Maybe I metabolise gin differently? Maybe it was the small supper several hours before? Maybe it was the bubbles.

No matter, really, because I don't like it and it's not okay. It makes my rosacea flare up for a day or two, it means the next day is pretty much a write off. It means that I wake up thinking what in god's name did I say that for and really? I fell down again? fucking christ. It makes me squeeze my eyes shut and roll over.

But I did have a wicked time at the party. And I remembered that I love celery.

True to form, today has been pretty much a write off. Though I did make delicious overnight french toast and roasted potatoes for Shelley and Steve this morning. After that, though, I read a mystery novel in the tub for an hour and some and then dozed on the couch for another hour and some. Now I'm blogging, about to get ready to go eat lobster.

With a nice bottle of wine from which I will not be drinking.

In honour of Carruthers MacLaughlin, I am currently listening to The Smiths.

It has been a debaucherous weekend so far. I'm not generally more than a 2 pint/3 bottle gal on any given night, but my jesus, I've been packing it back. Enough last night that I agreed to do Paul Revere at kareoke if Jennifer would do Manic Monday. She had to go first, which gave me time to get through my 4th (or 5th?) beer of the evening. I actually pointed my finger at the ceiling when I rapped "pulled out the jammy, aimed it at the sky". Fuck me. Jennifer managed with much more aplomb, no fake jammies in site. Though that would have been pretty funny: "Wish it were a Sunday/That's my fun day." Stick 'em up.

It was okay to drink that much, though, because we'd gone for a run. 1 point for virtue, 4 beers for debauch.

We went on after Carruthers MacLaughlin, who I just wanted to tie up with string and put in my pocket. My god. He charmingly, endearingly and enthusiastically butchered the three songs that he sang, the first being How Soon is Now. He had mussy blond hair and thick rimmed glasses. Tight jeans with big white sneakers. And I was probably old enough to be his, well, his older cousin.

Friday night was the Wolf Parade show. Openers Holy Fuck were not what I expected at all. With a swear in their name, I thought it would be more punk, less Madchester. Frog Eyes were really good, though as my companion pointed out, all of the songs had the same sort of quiet start, build up, crescendo, abrupt ending structure. And they kinda sounded like the soundtrack to something uplifting, where the herione overcomes terrible odds to succeed in her lifelong passion. Wolf Parade were great, and they more than made up for the Sunset Rubdown disappointment. Besides which, that Klug fellow is very handsome without his terrible mustache.

After that, the bat came back. Or more precisely, came out of the basement once more. Two bits of good timing: first, I was still awake at 3.30 am; second, I had a gentleman caller at the time (of course, just about the only good reason to still be up in the wee smas). I saw the bat and thought, brilliant, perfect timing, he knows how to deal with bats. Turns out he was more proficient at distracting me from the presence of the bat than of getting rid of the bat.

Claudine, let's call her.

She tried to get on my good side by perching on top of some boxes on the top shelf in my kitchen. All I could see on the top of this wooden box was a furry brown half-moon bat head bracketed by black exclamation mark ears. Pretty damn cute, and it did soften me up some.

And she did me a big favour last night. Came upstairs at - surprise! - 3.43 this morning, and flapped around my bedroom a bit. I woke up, shoved on my glasses, turned on the light in the kitchen, opened the door to the vestibule, turned on the light out there. And this is where I realized I'd made a tactical error. Glasses? Check. Clothes? Oh dear. Claudine flew into the vestibule before I could get clothed and open the door to the outside. I shut my apartment door, and when I came back and opened it, she flew into the apartment again. Got the front door open, waited, checked the living room, bedroom, kitchen. I'm not sure if she flew out when my back was turned, or back into the basement to reappear tonight. What's your guess? I pick reappearace: 3.36 am.

At any rate, I realized at 4 that if I didn't get some water into me, I'd feel fucking awful in the morning. So thanks to Claudine, preventer of wicked hangovers.

I don't think she's eating the spiders in my basement, judging from their legion numbers, so she must be getting pretty damn hungry. Makes me a little nervous.

Today, virtue will reign, and once I finish writing the longest post ever, I'm going to spend the rest of the day doing other writing and cleaning my clothes.

And not drinking beer.