Monday, April 30, 2012

Temperance So Long Girl

In my ongoing attempts to move away from a state of being, the nature of which adjectives such as 'slovenly', 'tiredly' and 'fatly' can accurately describe, I am dieting which also requires me to be sober. The sobriety was at first a disappointment to me as readers of this blog and real life friends and family members will know how dearly I love the sauce. But the fact is that alcohol is The Great Expander and frankly, I cannot enter the next phase of my life drunk, no matter how great and fun that would be. I don't now nor have I ever had a dependency on alcohol, at least I don't think so. What I do know is that since the year I turned 21, I've always been a social drinker. There may or may not have been a time during my mid-20s, living in a post 9/11 NYC when I was in danger of becoming an alcoholic but my debauchery never took to becoming dangerous and whenever I felt too full of it all, I could and did just stop for an extended period of time. (Side note: I kind of feel like no matter what I ended this paragraph with, it would sound like rationalization, even if none of it is so let's just leave it at that shall we.)

Sobriety this time around has proven to be....depressing and boring. However, I'm convinced that is because it has only been two weeks and also, I'm also dieting, which is a huge bummer. Also, life is generally depressing and boring so there's that. I did have high hopes that a clearer head would arrive hand in hand with my muse. While that has not happened yet, I am willing to give it time. In the past week, when I've set aside whatever little time I have in my day to write, I sit at my makeshift table (no desk yet) and all I want is a glass of wine. So to distract myself I shop online. (Keep your eye out for my post involving my spending addiction!) Then I get caught up in gchat. Then I look up old crushes on Facebook (chronic, memory altering romanticism) and before you know it I'm streaming Family Guy episodes for three hours and then it is time to go to work again. I might be even less creatively productive at the moment than I was at this time last year, which is kind of hilarious-ly sad. Like I said, I'm giving it time. I feel great things on their way  for me in May, I don't know why, I just do. As it stands, I don't intend on drinking or overdoing anything really until my trip to Chicago at the end of this next month. (Vegetarianism will also take a vacation as I must needs eat a Chicago hot dog, unless I can find a veggie one but really, why bother? I'm not going to find a "safe" hot dog to eat in Chicago or anywhere on earth.)

Time and money are both like twin blue whales trapped inside the the garbage and crap of my life. I'm not really confident in that metaphor since it would have to be a lot of fucking garbage that would trap a blue whale and I'm not sure that has ever even happened but I'm going to go ahead and leave that there what with the endangered nature of both blue whales and my time and money and largeness and all that being what I'm talking about.... You know what? Here, look at this pretty picture:

Stop killing me.

Wait, I thought of a better metaphor: Time and money are both like twin blue whales, hunted with the barbed harpoon of my jobs. Eh, kinda juvenile. Whatevs. I have no time or money! But back to my original point (I'll have you know that I just read about whales for an hour online because that is what I do. I innocently think about a topic and, enabled by the internet, I interrupt what I was doing and thinking and writing to read about random crap, like blue whales.) But yeah being sober has provided me with marginally more of each (time and money haha, you guys I am such a GOOD WRITER). Yesterday I reorganized my kitchen and my bathroom, I cleaned my apartment and decluttered a huge section of my life. No small feat for someone descended from pack rats.

And while all that sounds positively life affirming, being sober did absolutely nothing to prevent the following situation from happening to me.

After clearing out my kitchen I thought, I can do it all. Today. I never vacuum my car. It is kind of gross. But yesterday, high on dumping unnecessary crap, I decided to find one of those automatic vacuums that cost $1. So after I finish vacuuming my car from top to bottom (I was too late in some spots so my car will always carry the air of unvacuumed, or AOU) I felt even better and sat back in the driver's seat, ready to go home and enjoy a nice tall glass of wine water when I realized I couldn't find my keys. Thinking they could have fallen underneath the car, between the seats, inside a shopping bag I had in my car, near the vacuum somewhere, I essentially tore apart the car looking for the keys, panic rising. I had visions of tiny car wash gnomes mischievously sneaking into my car and swiping the keys for giggles and it hurt my feelings. So I had to call my parents, like a complete loser, to bring my extra set of house and car keys. When they arrived, after staying quiet about how slow their daughter is and helping me look even further, it occurred to me that perhaps my keys, like Phil Collins before them, against all odds had been sucked up in the vacuum? I was able to pry the container open and there they were, like tiny silver gemstones in a coal mine (?)! SOBRIETY.

3 comments:

  1. Waking up with a hangover in a pool of vomit sounds better than any one of these things. Go back to drinking. I'm a classic enabler and you should ignore me. But seriously, go back to drinking. Your friend, Booze.

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  2. LOL ah yes the joys of doing stupid shit....when you're sober! annnnnd..."Time and money are both like twin blue whales, hunted with the barbed harpoon of my jobs..." love it!

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