Hit by a Pitch

Although I talk about drinking all the time, I don’t actually drink all that much. I’m not, like, one of those moms carrying a flask of vodka to playdates or throwing back cosmos (Do people still drink that shit?) at girls’ night out. And although I don’t always drink, when I do drink, I prefer, well, beer. As a general rule, I don’t touch hard liquor aside from maybe once or twice a year at a Mexican restaurant.

This is more poor photography than alcohol.

I hadn’t been what I refer to as “shitfaced” for a long time. I can’t remember when I last got good and drunk. It didn’t even happen at Beer Fest — I got a good buzz there, but I wasn’t anywhere near shitfaced. Not getting shitfaced at Beer Fest is kind of crazy, but it happens. You move on.

It started innocently enough, which I suppose it always does. Ben and I had been working our asses off getting ready for Soren’s party — cleaning (both of us), baking (me), and cooking (Ben). We were kind of worn out. Shortly before our guests started arriving, I figured it was beer o’clock. Then our guests started arriving and it was time to start making margaritas, which was my job.

Margaritas are pretty much the only non-beer alcohol I’ll ever drink (I’ll also have the very occasional glass of wine or champagne, but last time we had a bottle of wine in the house it eventually turned into vinegar). Last year, we meant to make margaritas for Soren’s birthday party — I feel like you kind of need an excuse to make margaritas, or at least you need to have a bunch of people coming over because otherwise you’re going to end up shitfaced. Of course, that’s going to happen anyway, but maybe it seems more noble to undertake the margarita-making endeavor when you’ll be able to share the results with friends.

Last year, I became obsessed with making margaritas “the right way,” which to me meant squeezing fresh lime juice, making some sort of sugar-water concoction in a cauldron acquired from a secret cauldron store located behind that exclusive speakeasy on Larimer Street, and serving them in a set of perfectly mismatched glassware acquired from various upscale estate sales in the Wash Park neighborhood. Of course this failed and, if I recall correctly, we just had beer.

This year, I set a more modest goal, which was to make margaritas without using margarita mix. I followed this recipe exactly, with the following ingredients: All Natural Freshies Sweet -n- Sour Lemon Squeeze (no HFCS!), Hiram Walker Triple-Sec, Olmeca Altos Reposado Tequila, Grand Marnier, limes, and sea salt.

I had one margarita in a glass I forgot to salt. Unfortunately, having failed to acquire a set of perfectly mismatched glassware before the party, we were woefully lacking appropriate margarita-drinking glasses, so it wasn’t like I could pour my margarita into an appropriately salted glass. Of course now that I think about it, I realize I could’ve poured my margarita into an inappropriate glass, washed my original glass, appropriately salted it, and poured the margarita back in, but geez that’s a lot of work. So then I had another one because I had to have one with salt. It was pretty good.

This was around the time I realized something kind of amazing. My child was in another room having a blast playing with friends and adults who aren’t me or Ben. One of our friends was cleaning our kitchen and putting dishes in the dishwasher. At that particular beautiful moment, I had nothing in the world to do but, like, have fun. And also I was kind of shitfaced. Anything stronger than beer tends to sneak up on me. I’ll be fine . . . fine . . . fine . . . and then shitfaced, just like that.

Fortunately, I didn’t do anything too embarrassing, other than just talking way too much. Oh holy mother of hell I talk too much when I’m drunk. I haven’t even been able to write a proper blog post for days because I’m so sick of hearing myself talk and writing a blog post is kind of like really intensively listening to yourself talk. (For the record, although I skipped this week’s fantasy football post, I did win again — evidence here.) Get some tequila in me and I’m all blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and even I want myself to shut up but I just can’t.

Getting kind of shitfaced at my kid’s birthday party wasn’t my finest moment. I mean, it was fine and nothing bad happened and I think people had an okay time and most important of all, Soren had a super-awesome day basking in the attention of a bunch of people who think he’s the bee’s knees, which of course he totally is. But I generally try to learn something from moments that are not my finest. So if I learned things from this experience they are:

• I probably should make more of an effort to have a social life. It turns out I really like people! I just don’t often hang out with them. I kind of thrive on being a lone wolf and have pretty much no time to put into cultivating much of a social life, but I really should try to get out more. It’s one aspect of my life I totally neglect.
• I can count the number of times Ben and I have gone out without Soren in the past two years on one hand. We think Soren is awesome and love hanging out with him, but we should get out without him more often. This is hard for a few reasons — we’re broke, we have no local family, and I in particular have a very hard time asking people who aren’t my parents or Ben to do things for me (this means people pretty much have to beat me over the head with a written offer to babysit for free, which, thankfully, people did and we’re going to be taking them up on their offer for real).

Obviously, Ben and I enjoy alcohol, particularly beer. I hope that as Soren gets older and begins to understand these things, we set a good example of enjoying alcohol in moderation most of the time, with only occasional shitfacedness. Maybe he’ll talk even more than I do.