Oh, yeah, that's why I don't drink much...

This is not going to be an award-winning post. Currently, I'm having trouble forming whole words. And my mouth is like the Sahara, despite my periodic gulping of water.


Here's the deal: My mother-in-law has a practically-family friend Judy. They grew up together and are best friends. This is true to the extent that Judy's kids are considered 'cousins' of Tim and his brother.


So when Judy's mom had an 85th birthday party (though I questioned the idea of a surprise party for an 85-year-old woman, since it's practically the start of a bad joke) we needed to be there.


But the additional treat (besides getting a whole table of food laid out for us for the second time in three days) was that Judy's daughter Patty was able to attend at the last minute. Tim never gets to see her, so we naturally decided we should go out.


As you can guess from the title of this post, we whooped it up. It ended up being me, Tim, Patty, her boyfriend, Shannon (Judy's oldest daughter) and Shannon's husband. And since I wasn't driving for a change, I decided to go ahead and do some drinking.


We found some affordable well drinks, so that we could have fun without going overboard on cost. All this would have been fine except:

1. Since I am usually driving, Tim hasn't really seen me really, really drunk.
2. The earlier party was at 2 p.m. And since we woke up late, we didn't have breakfast. And since the party ended around 5 p.m., we didn't really have dinner either. After the party, we scooted back up to the in-laws' place and got ready to go out, thereby skipping supper.
3. Tim didn't know that, if someone keeps handing me drinks, I'll keep drinking them and forget to keep track.

I think you see where this is going. Things got a little hazy toward the end of the night. I know we did a very badly organized group rendition of Love Shack, which is the first time I have ever actually agreed to do karaoke. So I must have been plowed!


I will spare you lurid details about Tim and I getting sick, given that it was rather well deserved. We finally passed out a bit before 4 a.m. Then I woke up at 9 with a painfully dry mouth but also a head apparently set on "spin" cycle.


Every time I moved my head, I was distinctly uncomfortable. Thinking it was dehydration, I gulped a couple of mugfuls of water for as long as I could actually remain vertical. Then I went back to bed, only to be reminded that alcohol exacerbates Restless Leg Syndrome something nasty.


So I ended up out in the living room, still chugging water whenever I could get to my feet, and watching TV. Eventually I even had enough brain power to realize that, since water wasn't working, a completely empty stomach might be to blame.


I felt better enough to drive home, but after getting home, I started getting dizzy again. Being a bright girl, this time I ingested water and food. (I was an honors student, you see.) Luckily, Tim came to the rescue and walked down to the corner store to pick up some Gatorade.


I'm finally about back to normal. Still woozy, though, and reminded why I don't drink heavily anymore. Always good to remember these sorts of things.


Meanwhile, I'm back in Seattle. Presents were well received by all, except for the three items that didn't arrive in time thanks to the crummy weather. Sigh.


The other big present missing was our gift for Tim's parents. The $50 gift card didn't arrive in time. I had a $25 gift card, so we decided to just eat the cost. Then I found out that pretty much every store near us and his parents had the things sold out.


Wasn't this going to be the Christmas where no one was buying? There were a few different items I was looking at right before the 25th, all of which were practically sold out.


Some people think the stores underestimated the demand. I think that once again people's consumerism got away from them. I read an awful lot of PF blogs by frugal folks gleefully hitting the stores' desperation sales.


In the end, I printed out a picture of the device and wrote "Coming soon..."


Did anyone else have to do the IOU thing for presents?


I'm going to toddle back to bed, after another glass of water. Hope everyone had a good holiday. Now back to work -- for two and a half days.