Margarita

Back in the day, when I was a recent college graduate, my BFF and I used to partake in the occasional mid-afternoon drink. Our favorite thing was to go to Chili's, order queso and margaritas and get pleasantly buzzed. This was super easy for us because we were recent college graduates with no jobs. (Disclaimer: I do not recommend doing this if you have work people pay you for.) Then we got jobs and she eventually moved away so that effectively ended that. Also, it turns out that drinking at 1:00, going to your best friend's house and drinking for a few more hours on a Tuesday is actually not acceptable once you've been out of college for six months. Apparently, college is supposed to teach you three things: your social security number, creative parking and "knowing better." Before long I learned to confine my drinking to normal business drinking hours, also known as 5:30 to 9:30 on weekday evenings and 3:30 to midnight on weekend night unless there was a football or baseball game...but now we're getting complicated. Then I got pregnant. If you want to get a reaction out of people just tell them that you haven't changed your drinking habits since becoming pregnant. This works better if they know you drink three beers a night during the week and um, more than that during the weekend. Obviously giving up drinking during pregnancy was a given but I didn't plan to stop for good. That was boring! And more importantly, boring! And I liked beer! Then I started to give it some realistic thought. I was drinking way too much. It was making me chubby. I didn't like how I felt. So with that I decided that I would give up drinking. It was easy to give it up initially since I was still pregnant and didn't want to turn my baby into one of those kids you see on the news while their parents are being arrested. The challenge would be maintaining my commitment to being alcohol free. Shortly before Bear was born this was made easier when someone very close to me also gave up drinking. I had someone with whom I could be sober and mock people who were drunk! Hallelujah! i won't say that I haven't had a single drink but my drinking now is very minimal. I can tell you honestly, hand on heart, that usually I miss it very little. And then. And then. I have a day like today. It not only makes afternoon drinking look good, it makes late morning drinking seem almost acceptable. I needed to clean my house in a serious way. Even though I have a handy-dandy cleaning guide, sometimes I get behind and need to spend a few hours cleaning our whole house. I'm anal-retentive so I have a very specific system I use when I do that. I start at the back and work my way to the front, which means the master bathroom is the first room I take care of. I got started and halfway through the baby needed to eat. Earlier Bear asked if he could help so I gave him a spray bottle of water and a rag and let him have it. Since he is clever and was most likely bored the minute I left he climbed up and turned on the sink faucet. I wasn't too alarmed when I heard the water starting to run. I just put in a new faucet with a swivel head and he likes to turn the water off and on and wash his hands over and over. I assumed that was what he was doing. The baby finished nursing, I put her down for her nap and went back into the bathroom. Well, in my absence Bear figured out that he could turn the faucet head and let the water run all over the counter, down the cabinet and all over the floor where it caused a minor flood. I've told him before to leave the faucet alone. So needless to say I totally lost my temper. It was bad. I completely overreacted, which left Bear sobbing and me on the verge of tears. I can't tell you how terrible I felt, I was mad at him but mostly I was mad at myself for not keeping my cool. We wiped up the mess, had a hug and spent some time snuggling and watching "Tangled." And then I thought, "Hm, maybe it is ok to have a margarita at 10:30 after all."