I learned something disturbing this weekend: I can no longer drink to excess without consequence.
Bummer.
I had my first inkling of this last year at the office's after-tax-season Survivor's Party. It was held at an Indian gaming casino with attached swanky hotel. The Kahunas sprang for everyone to stay the night so we could party hearty, which we did, much to my regret the next morning.
Have no fear. I am not about to regale you with gleeful stories of fluids evacuating my body at various speeds and trajectories. No, that would be crude. I speak rather of what happens to the mind when confronted with the knowledge that 1) you are very sick, 2) you are going to be very sick for several hours yet to come, and 3) you are not sick enough to actually die and thus end the horror in which you now find yourself.
I had never before experienced the phenomenon of being so miserable I could not sleep. If you have not experienced this, I hope you never do. It is torture. All I could think about were cancer patients and other people who live with constant pain and nausea for weeks and months and years on end and, DEAR GOD, how do they do it?
So then I had the additional burden of guilt over feeling sorry for myself after a mere six hours of misery when there was a chemo patient somewhere at that very moment puking her guts out and not having the luxury of knowing whether she was going to live in the end.
That is where my mind goes when confronted with sleepless pain and nausea. Where does yours go?
I finally got a little sleep after an emergency air drop of Advil and Tums. While I slept, the office crew had a 10 o'clock breakfast meeting to talk about how to get my sick ass AND my car down the mountain, since I would be in no shape to drive by the noon checkout time. Little did they know the combination of Advil, Tums, and and hour and a half of sleep is The Secret of Life. By the time they got to my door at 11:45, I was brushing my teeth and giddy with the euphoria of normalcy.
What does all of this have to do with this past weekend, you ask? Well, my dear friend Tania got me drunk. Damn her! The good news is it was not as bad as last year, pirin tablets were close at hand, and I had a private bed available for as long as I wanted, with no noon checkout hanging over my head. I slept until 2:00, then did her taxes. (Note to self: taxes first, drunkenness after.)
I got back at her, though. I broke her wireless network. She had to get on the phone with tech support to get it fixed. But wait, that was before the drinks started coming fast and furious. DAMN YOU, TANIA!
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LESSONS LEARNED
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Note about the post title: Tania does not really smell of pork chops but she did have one waiting for me when I arrived. So thoughtful. And though I saw some crocs in the shoe pile, I cannot say for sure they were hers.
Tags: drinking, tania, tax season follies
