"Why is there a plastic bottle of vodka on the bedroom floor?"
- the boy's first question of the morning
Yesterday I did far less than I should have. I had a meeting this morning about my lessons, and I was trying to pack in a bunch of planning that I really should have done last month, and it ran late. But at 10 o'clock I hit a wall, intellectually. I decided to accept an invitation to the Anti-Stephen's, where there was to be wine drinking, or so I was told. I left with the vodka in my back pocket, just in case.
Now, I don't much care for wine. I'm just not that much of a grown-up. I can drink it in certain situations - celebrations, most notably - but it is not my first choice of beverage. So I was prepared to sip through a glass of homemade wine and then go at the vodka. But as soon as I had my first sip, everything changed.
It was really good wine...or maybe it wasn't, what do I know, my tastebuds have likely been killed by Diet Coke and garlic. It was also extremely potent wine: my lips went numb after the first glass, followed by my tongue and then my forearms all the way to the elbows. After two-three glasses I was shamelessly tanked, and therefore happy.
The rest of the night passed in a blur of travel plans, Joy Division and readings from "Leaving Songs," a book of writing that Big Sur & the Anti-Stephen put together last week. I brought up the smashed onion story that they had omitted and BS capitalized on a missed opportunity to insult me: then he was tactful but last night he called me "plump." Yargh. I really shouldn't accept body criticism from someone as skinny & tall as BS; if he needs to find a perfectly thin woman to frantically rub himself against like so many tindersticks in the hands of eager Boy Scouts, then what do I care. Besides, I do have one of those Renaissance bodies and I'm not in complete denial about the current unfashionableness of women who look like me.
Anyway, the evening ended when Ikebana & her roommate drove me home. I was still totalled, so I did something that seemed sensible: I started calling my friends. Preacher and Palaver were just delighted that I had gotten drunk & called them in the middle of the night - no really, they were. It made me proud that I had managed to find real lasting friends who would laugh uproariously with me at an unlikely time of day on the same night that I had felt the sharp pangs of social emptiness.
* * *
We had a snowstorm last night that dumped knee-high drifts of snow on the town. Another Snow Day, but unfortunately it's 5 days away from being really useful to me. (And useful to me is how these things are measured.) Secretly, I find this kind of weather appealing - we've decided to break up with Winter so she goes to bed with us one last time and then sets fire to our favourite t-shirt. You gotta love weather with a spine.
No really, you gotta...in Canada, it's a survival technique.
* * *
3 years ago today: radish dividers
