Tag Archives: drinking

Gigs, boys, being boring for health, and books.

Life, , , , ,

In which I’m so boring I did laundry AND cleaned my room AND went to bed early last night.

[dropcap]L[/dropcap]ast weekend was the first annual Walla Walla Guitar Festival. It was a raging success, especially considering this was its first year; we sold out and everything!

I had a fantastic time, and seriously loved having so many players in town at once — I spent at least three hours just hanging out in the green room chatting with the other players.

Here’s an image of my performance with Coyote Kings. We opened the festival:

Coyote Kings w/Mush feat Kenny 'Blue' Ray

(The amazing Kenny ‘Blue’ Ray sat in with us, as did Cookie, but they’re not in this picture.)

I got hit on by — not one, but two — boys in their 20’s. It was, for reasons I can’t articulate and suspect are entirely due to being socialized, immensely gratifying.

(I went home alone, of course.) (What? What am I going to do with a boy in his twenties? Be jaded at him?) (Also, I couldn’t care less about sex, to be honest.)

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Yes, I’m still quitting smoking.

I do not want to do this, and I am not at all gung ho and positive about it: I just don’t want to have to pull a goddamned tank of oxygen around with me at the grocery store when I’m 45.

Quitting means that, for awhile, my life consists of two things: Being At Work, and Being At Home. There are no other portions, because Other Portions (read: having any kind of social life whatsoever) cause me to lame out and smoke.

In other words, I really try not to but I still bum cigarettes in many social circumstances. But, since this is Still Better Than Smoking Every Day, I am counting it A Triumph every time I get to put ‘Cigs: 0’ on my Google calendar, even if it’s only Five or Six, and not Seven, Times each week.

I’ve been smoking for a long time. (Hell, I’ve been quitting for a long time.) Baby steps. Self-isolating, new-habit-building baby steps.

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Not smoking means not drinking, because drinking makes me smoke. Cutting out both for the last month means I have extra munny.

I added up that unspent money and spent it on clothes. I’m expecting a new skirt, thigh high socks, tights, and a long sleeved t-shirt by Friday.

(Since I now ride a bike everywhere, I’ve decided to experiment with a short skirt-and-tights look for those parts of the year that are not winter. All my current skirts are floor length, and periodically get caught in the chain and threaten my life thereby. Boo!)

I also bought two cheap bikinis, because mine are older than the boys who hit on me last weekend, and seriously need to be replaced. (Of course I’m too old to hang out in bikinis a lot, I realize that, but I do wear them under other things, particularly at summer gigs.)

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Yesterday after work I didn’t want to go straight home, so I stopped for a latte. Here’s a picture of my Kindle Fire tablet and my cuppow at Starbucks:

Cuppow

I know, right?

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I’m reading a huge amount of non-fiction right now. All of the following are currently in heavy rotation on my tablet:

Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language by Robin Dunbar – This is the Dunbar’s Number guy, and his premise is that we evolved language in order to gossip in order to be able to manage larger groups.

The Panic Virus by Seth Mnookin – This is indirectly about that idiot who inadvertently brought back a bunch of nearly-eradicated childhood diseases by making false claims against the MMR vaccine, and about vaccination and science in general.

Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner – People kept telling me to watch the movie so I did and it was okay so I bought the book thinking it’d have, like, moar insight, but it doesn’t appear to. Sorta meh about this, considering JUST HOW EXCITED people were when they told me about it.

Liars & Outliers by Bruce Schneier – This is a book about trust, society, security, and cryptography, and interestingly it’s a lot like Dunbar’s book about how humans build society.

AdWords for Dummies by Howie Jacobson – A bullshit book written by someone who obviously has been hocking crap via spam and infomercial for the past decade.

They’re all awesome (except for the last one, which completely sucks and which I will not finish. I was supposed to read it for work, but honestly, that POS is un-fucking-readable and it has pretty much soured me on the entire For Dummies franchise) and if you want to borrow any of them (in Kindle format), just let me know.

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Tonight, I’ll get off work at six and ride my bike home. I’ll stretch, read, meditate, eat tostadas, and knit while watching ancient episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

I will go to bed early. I will not smoke. It’ll be awesome*.

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* Where “awesome” equals OMFG GIVE ME A GODDAMNED CIGARETTE ALREADY.

The blues return briefly. The singing of them, rather.

Music, , , ,

In which I had great big fun yesterday! There was music, there were old friends, there were new friends, and there was vodka!

Since Left Coast Girlie and I are going to see The Taming of the Shrew together next month, sometimes we have to get on IM and congratulate one another on our cleverness. We were doing so last night; I was still at work but not on the clock. It was 103 degrees out but guess who’d worn black? and long sleeves? and didn’t want to walk home in an oven?

Yeah, that’d be me. Me the genius.

I sat at my desk in the A/C and called RB back. Out of the blue (haven’t gigged with him since last December) he’d left a message on my phone yesterday. Turns out there’s a Sapolil gig in September he wants to book me for. Since the other band never called me back, and I still haven’t managed to institute my ‘go to open mics and meet people’ plan for musical world domination, plus I happen to enjoy his company, I was stoked to hear from him. Music!

We chatted for about 40 minutes, and then he said something about “a party for Jimmy the Fox’s 80th birthday tonight” over at Barn Disease. I made noises about being interested in going, even considered walking home to get the truck, and we finally got off the phone. I started to pack up to leave the office, and shot off an IM before logging off:

goblinbox: Okay, I’m going to the brew pub for a drink or three. G’night!
leftcoastgirlie: Have three for me!

“I’m going to the brew pub, for a drink or three,” I told RT, my co-worker, as I was leaving. “LCG told me to have three for her, too.”

“That sounds good,” he said, grinning. “Have three for me too.”

I laughed. “Nine’s too many!” (FAMOUS LAST WORDS.)

“Oh, so you know about nine, do you?”

“I know enough not to do it again!” I laughed as I walked through the lobby.

“Late!” he said as I pushed open the door and stepped outside. “Bye!” I called back.

It was hot out. I walked over to the brew pub. I sat by myself looking like a total dork, texting RT from my iPod and talking on the phone with Baby Girl. She told me about the awesome new convention center, that she and her hubby see shows all the time now, and that there are now near-constant open casting calls…

See? I move away and Fairfield gets all groovy. Stupid town.

Theatre’s been whispering to me lately. It’s been years since I’ve done a show, but people have been saying random things about theatre lately. After I see Shrew, I’ll probably really want to get back on stage. If my work schedule stays the way it is, I’ll audition for the next fun show I hear about. I’m too old and pudgy to play the ingénue any more, but I’m more than ready to play me a wicked old stepmother or two.

I had three drinks and was discussing neediness and exes over IM while getting ready to cash out when RB called to see if I wanted a ride over to the birthday party. “Sure,” I said, shrugging, even though he couldn’t see it over the phone. “Yeah. What the hell. I’m always ready to sing a little!”

He arrived in his giant maroon van and took me to Barnaby’s. I met the guest of honor, 80-year-old Jimmy the Fox from Chicago (or possibly Kansas City), who was wearing an amazing suit and who when I mentioned it went off on a well-rehearsed schtick about suit-wearing black men and the laaaadies.

“This one can sing a little,” RB told Jimmy the Fox, indicating me.

“Oh, oh, okay,” Jimmy said, nodding. “She’ll have to come up,” he said, and walked away.

He sang a bunch of Chigago-style blues, and later played drums. He was really fun, and danced with some of the laaaadies. The guys on the bandstand most of the night were pretty solid, so it wasn’t your usual aurally dangerous open mic.

p_00066

I sat down next to Emilio, gave the bartender my card, and started on the first of LCG’s three drinks. Then I mingled and talked to Mike and Tony and other musicians I know. RB and I sat for awhile and I heard all about his customer speaker cab company.

Eventually we got on stage. We did three or four songs and got the first people of the night out on the dance floor. (I love that McClinton “Shaky Ground” groove; plus there was a horn player at the party who sat in and blew the solo! Sweet.)

When we were done, RB needed to do a few things with gear so I started – only started! – on the first RT’s three drinks. After THAT was gone I was dropped off at home. THANK GOD.

As I was walking onto the porch my phone rang. It was Josus! I love that guy! I laid in the grass in front of my house at midnight and laughed my face off. Then I went to bed and passed out like the lush I am.

People, I need a handler. Three is fine, five’s okay, but SEVEN IS TOO MANY, YOU STUPID BITCH, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING. When I woke up this morning I felt as if I’d been mummified. Even my dog looked at me funny. I got dressed and put on my glasses and as I was walking through the house G’ma said, “You’re losing weight.”

Naw, that’s just wicked dehydration, I thought. “I hope so!” I said. “I gained twelve pounds last year, damn it.” She chuckled.

I thought about toast. Mmm, toast.

I did not brush my hair this morning (it’s still in ponytails from yesterday, actually) and I’m wearing my glasses, but I did get me some breakfast, and I walked the dog before work.

Points for having my shit together so early in the day! You will give them to me!

Tonight I’m going to Dax’s in Richland with RB for another open mic. He needs to schmooze with some people, and he’s taking me because, he says, he likes to show me off.

“Show me off? Like, ‘O hai, I brought this pudgy Irish chick. But look! She sings good’!”

“Yeah, something like that,” he said. “It’s just fun to drag you around and show you to people.”

I’m a pet vocalist now. W00t!

So: after eight hours on the phone unfucking the convolutions of inside wiring for various DSL customers today, I’ll walk home and brush my teeth and then go to Richland to sit in at another open mic. Going out on two school nights in a row!

This is pretty exciting compared to my evenings of late, which have involved walking home from work and… uh… basically not doing much of anything. Relaxing and rejuvenating, sure, but I’m ready to go out now thx. But just don’t ask me to have one for you! Oh no, not after this morning. Drink your own damn booze!

Boycotting Booze

Admissions, , , , ,

In which I contemplate how stupid I am. And then we talk about clothes!

I got wasted on my 21st birthday, of course, but I did very little drinking back then. I started drinking regularly in my late 20’s when I lived in Iowa, mostly because there’s nothing else to do when you live in a fly-over state.

The first year after I left my husband, I drank a lot. It was intentional; I wasted a year being a stupid lump because I needed to.

But now I’m stable. I have a job, a home, and friends. I also have a shitty habit of drinking from two to five cocktails every single fucking day whether I want them or not.

I abstain maybe two or three days per month, which is pathetic. Clearly I’m drinking too much – pouring nearly a fifth of vodka through my liver each week, and I’ve been doing so for the past eight or nine months.

vodkaWhen I wake up pissed off and groggy in the morning and remember that I had three or four drinks the night before, I resolve that today I’m going to give it a rest. But then I work all day, and when quitting time rolls around it just seems like a really swell idea to have an after-work cocktail. Or two. Or three.

I have a few on Saturday nights after Teh BF gets off work, too. And we often have a couple on Sunday afternoons before I go home. Just because we can, and we’re in the habit of doing so.

This is fucking ridiculous.

Exacerbating my drinking problem is the fact that the bartenders at the PnE pour really, really, really heavy, and three drinks there is more like five or six.

And no one needs five shots of well vodka on a school night, not ever.

Alcohol is poisonous. It’s bad for heart health, it’s bad for mental health, and it’s a total waste of money. Plus my kidneys are going to fail if I don’t cut this shit out.

Turning into a drunk because you’re miserable and your life is fucked up is one thing; turning into a drunk because you’ve developed a habit of doing a particular behavior at certain times (“It’s eight-thirty so it must be time to drink” or “It’s Sunday afternoon so I should have a bloody mary”) is just stupid.

Oh, and there’s a history of alcoholism in my family, too.

So. Being that all these things are true, I’m boycotting booze. Starting right now. For at least two weeks. If I go out, I’ll have water or soda. If I stay in, I’ll have water or juice. I have never been a daily drinker, not even in the darkest depths of the post-marriage year, and this is not a habit I want to keep.

Not to mention that all of those empty calories are wreaking havoc on my pudge.

In other news, yesterday I spent my tax return (after dutifully observing Vuboq’s 2nd Annual 10% Refund Challenge) on some new clothes: I got this dress in chocolate, and this hoodie in midnight.

I already have the dress in a wacky bluebird color that totally doesn’t match anything else I own. I bought it about a year ago, and I wear the crap out of it because it’s soooo comfy and it just layers so well! And do you know what?

You: No, what!

Me: The maker said that I can send my old one in and she’ll freshen up the hem and the color for me! Can you beat that?

You: Um, no?

Me: No, no, you cannot beat that! Not even with a big stick!