Sunday, November 16, 2014

November 16 Day 7 back

I was trying to remember what I thought would be such a great post tonight. Must have been lost by my synapses. If I think of it, I'll wake up and come downstairs and write it.

During my 100 days, I started doing the NYTimes crossword puzzles again. It took about a week to get back into the swing of it. Believe it or not, it does help to do a lot of them. Like hundreds. Then you slowly get back into the wordplay. If you haven't seen the documentary actually called Wordplay, you've missed out. http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/wordplay/  Every year I get a postcard from the people who run that crossword competition- but I think it is in New Jersey? In the winter? Alex wants me to go. I am just not sure I could face the competition.
It's like Jeopardy. I can pass the test for it but I don't know if I can recall the answers that fast with a television camera in my face. I know I can pass the test because I did. Like 8 or 9 years ago I think it was. They didn't call me in though. I was sort of relieved. I think of my brain as a filing cabinet- and every now and then it gets locked  or jammed. Time is not my friend on those occasions.

My Seahawks lost today. The minute they took out Max Unger, we were done for. Our team can't stay undamaged. It is just terrible for them. We shall see. Football is really brutal. I love my team. I am just so sorry that they are broken because when they are all there, it is magic.

I didn't win at the bingo tournament last night, but it was fun. Ryan came with us and he WON- heh, well, he won free two mother's day buffets. I'll take it. I am glad one of us won.

There was a lot of wine consumed. I have addressed this before on my blog- I'm not a wet blanket kind of girl. I drank my fair share, and in NOLA, that means you start drinking at 15 or so and keep it up through college, and then you have a decision to make. Because the big drinkers who don't quit wind up being full blown alcoholics a lot of the time. Thanks to years of experience, a lot of them become high functioning alcoholics. But they are alcoholics none the less. And that is a terribly stressful and dangerous way to live. It used to be fairly obvious, because it wasn't really socially acceptable to down 4 or 5 shots on the rocks at dinner. But wine, oh my, wine- you can convivially order bottle after bottle and not ONE person at the table will think you have a problem or that they themselves might. And by problem, I mean you are sort of sloppy and loud and your friends are also sloppy and loud and none of you NOTICE it. When I was almost newly 21, I graduated from college and went to work in a very demanding job in an ICU on the 3-11 shift. I took every extra shift I could. And I realized that even one drink was not going to help me get through anything like that. So I quit. I may have had a beer at dinner on a date, but that was it. No more social partying type of drinking. Wine wasn't really a deal when I was a young adult. It crept into the general society on little cork feet and jumped on the back of every damn dinner and party. People became snobs about stuff that REALLY tasted the same. I get that orange rock and thunderbird aren't the same as Silver Oak. But if someone tells me that wine accentuates the food they eat- I will tell them they need a new chef. You can't poor acid on your tongue and claim your dinner is better. It's not like I've never HAD wine. I have been very polite and social and had my glass to sip on. And I've sipped on some expensive stuff. The best I've ever been able to do was a nice light pinot grigio. Very cold. That's it. The reds are like drinking acid. I don't really have anything against people who LIKE wine. Hell, I like beets and I don't care who does or doesn't. But I've cooked some lovely dinners only to have a friend go throw it back up because the very pricey wine became the focus of the meal. I've watched someone open a car door and throw up on the freeway. I've seen people get in cars and drive home because, well, it was JUST wine. I've seen them carrying their wine onto a dance floor and spill it on other people.   I am just sad. Last week an article was in the paper about how wine is becoming so popular because younger people are now preferring it. They prefer it because it seems more sophisticated than beer. But it is all the same thing for the same reason.

I think people who like beer (me) can be judged as lower class but wine is seen as something you must learn about because successful people drink wine. It is all BS. It is all alcohol. And if I am going to have a beer, I will have a Bud Lite, not some beer that is thick and grainy and really fattening. But I will not have any more wine. I find it painful to drink and I find it gives me headaches- not the screamingly bad headaches that champagne gives me, but enough pain to make it not worth my while.

Middle age is a time when everyone should ask themselves if they care about when or how they die. Or if they care what sort of damage they do to themselves. Or if they care what sort of role model they are for their adult children and grandchildren. I get it that being a little tipsy every night can "take the edge off" of just being alive. It certainly is the easy way to get through life. I'd rather have half a joint if I could find one.  I get that we are all human and humans are just not comfortable in their own skin- particularly as we age. I know for a fact I am never as relaxed as my cat. But I would love it if all of my wonderful friends and family could actually ask themselves in the most heartfelt way if they really need to drink so much. If we really have to see wine merchants as legal drug dealers.  Yeah, I know, I don't have any right to criticize behavior that is perfectly legal. I'm not Carrie Nation. But no matter what any article tells you, Nurse Lynn can tell you that alcohol is a carcinogen. It can cause cancer anywhere that it touches or is excreted through. Why up your ante?

Okay, I'll quit. I love my friends so much. I miss not seeing them. But I would be horrified and grief stricken if any of them died by something that they could have prevented. I want them all well and happy. Selfishly, because I want them there for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCkK0N0x57s



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