TheBanyanTree: Post Thanksgiving

[Monique Colver]

Thanksgiving was the Best Time Of Our Lives, which I say to participate in
the post Thanksgiving social media contest to see who has had the best, and
who is the most grateful, and who is the most awesomest in terms of
presentation, guests, and food. We didn't have the most guests, and our
presentation was lacking, but the guests we had were of the highest quality
and far superior to, say, your guests, and the food, which was prepared in
tag team fashion due to my inability to stand up for very long, exceeded
even our wildest expectations.

There. So now you have the basis of the Thanksgiving debacle, if by debacle
you mean a no-holds barred festive good time, which I think is the very
definition of Thanksgiving. Also a plus: no dashed expectations when the
presents aren't quite what one expected, since Thanksgiving is not yet a
gift giving occasion.

Anyway, after our guest left, I collapsed in a heap, and then had some
leftovers. I assumed I would be sleeping well when I went to bed, because
that's what I expect. So I lay there in my bed, a dog asleep at my head,
and remembered why I don't drink much. It's the sleep patterns. It's not as
I was guzzling whiskey straight, it was only almost three small glasses of
wine, what could it hurt?

And so I laid there looking for something to do. I bought the new John
Irving. I played with my phone. I wrote the beginning of a short story on
my phone. Eventually I drifted off into a distracted sleep, only to be
awakened by Ash who wanted to go outside to see if he could find any early
Black Friday sales (he was unsuccessful in his quest) and then tried the
sleep thing again.

I'm quite disappointed in my inability to drink without repercussions. It's
not as I really care about drinking, and it's not as if I want to drink all
the time, and it's not as if I don't go months and years without a drink
with a care, it's that when I do drink, I expect it to not affect me in any
way whatsoever.

I started drinking when I was 18, as most of us do (right?), especially
once I found out that the military post I was living on didn't care if I
drank myself into a stupor every night. The club would serve me drinks all
night long, and the package store would just hand the stuff out to me,
assuming I presented them with money. And so I drank copiously, because
everyone knows that the best way to fight off feelings of loneliness,
confusion, despair, and self-hatred is to drink.

Once I'd worn out my welcome, they sent me to another base where I knew not
one single person, but back then I could make friends fairly easily,
especially the bums along skid row when I'd hand out bottles of cheap
liquor. The package store at this base was quite lovely, and I never went
to the club but once or twice because it wasn't needed. I would buy my
whiskey or rum at the package store, carry it out in the paper bag, open
the bottle, and spend the rest of the day carrying around the bag and drank
from it. I was unaware of the concept of "mixers" at the time. I married a
fellow alcoholic because, y'know, drunk, and over the next few years my
drinking tapered off, while his did not. Instead, he attempted to make up
for my shortfall. On my wedding night he was a sobbing drunken mess who had
to be helped to bed while his friends pounded at the door, demanding he
come out and do more drunk stuff with them.

That was a gigantic clue that screamed, "Get the hell out of this while
there's still time!" but I don't listen very well.

As the years went by I drank less and less, though occasionally I would
overimbibe when out with friends -- I was purely a social drinker --
drinking alone did nothing for me, it did not even amuse me. And now my
meds suggest I don't mix alcohol with them, which I regard as far less of a
warning than a mere suggestion. I go months and months and months without
drinking, and I feel not the slightest inclination to take it up. Though
occasionally, now and then, I have wished that alcohol would dull some of
the pain in my head, but I knew it never would, so why bother?

Yesterday my cousin brought two bottles of wine. We even have wine, and
hard liquor. Sometimes we cook with it. But she brought wine, and it was a
holiday, and we had a really good time. And the wine was good.

Today I'm working on my laptop, writing with a dash of accounting thrown
in, reading my new book, just hanging out. .The perfect day after the
perfect day.



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Monique Colver
Colver Business Solutions
www.colverbusinesssolutions.com
monique.colver at gmail.com
(425) 772-6218