What I Learned This Weekend

I can be slow. This is not news.

Actually, I'm quite brilliant about many things, but I remain extraordinarily stupid about math and alcohol. When those two worlds collide, my stupidity increases by a factor of 10 (at least).

So, here was the plan. We know Wine is the Enemy. My steadfast resolve to have two glasses, and not a drop more, never works. Once I start, I might as well say goodbye to the rest of the day, because the next thing I know it will be tomorrow morning and I'll be trying to remember if I ate any dinner the night before, and where my underwear is. Since this game gets real old real fast, I decided to see what would happen if I drank some Mike's Hard Pomegranate Lemonade instead of my sneaky, seductive, fermented friend. (Wine, in case you lost track.)

The results? Discouraging. I discovered I can absolutely drink six of these beverages and feel about the same effect as a half glass of wine. However, as a gastric bypass patient with extremely low sugar tolerance, these artificial fruity-flavored beverages are a Very Bad Idea. Did I get drunk? Not from this stuff... from the wine I drank afterwards, yeah... and no, I am not proud of that. But from the lemonade, did I get a deadly sugar-rush? Oh, yeah. I laid on the couch and had cold sweats for a half hour. I know better than to not carefully monitor my sugar intake... but neither the bottle nor the carton had any information about sugar content, so I decided not to worry about it. (Yes, I am an idiot.)

The other thing I learned is that fruity-alcohol sugar rush, followed by wine consumption, has the potential of catastrophic kidney failure. (I'm exaggerating here, but only a little. Very little.) I did, in fact, spend most of Sunday on the Sofur with a heating pad wedged under me in the region of my kidneys. Lower back pain of epic proportions. Know those squooshy little stress-relief balls that business executive types are supposed to squeeze when they feel overwhelmed? Well, some nasty little invisible troll had moved into my lumbo-sacral region and was doing that to both my kidneys simultaneously. Trolls, according to popular urban fantasy novels, are immensely strong and can crush rocks with their bare hands, in case you were wondering. My kidneys, being significantly more malleable than rocks, never stood a chance.

Yes. I know. I brought it all on myself. I try not to be a moron in the same way too many times, but I never seem to run out of entirely new and creative ways to be a moron when it comes to drinking. The whole reason behind this experiment was the upcoming trip to Giant's Ridge with Dr. Vet-Friend Two, her husband, and two other couples. I thought, "Hey, if I sit and drink wine with these folks, I won't even remember leaving my driveway. But if I can sip on this stuff, I can party a little, be sociable, and not be the drunkest person they have ever seen!" Now I know that if I expect to be able to stand upright at any point in the weekend, either due to drunkenness or kidney failure, I'd better leave the "flavored malt beverages" out of the picture altogether.

Today has involved drinking massive amounts of water.

To summarize...

There are no tricks or easy answers when it comes to alcoholism, other than to simply not drink. If you choose to drink, knowing the probable outcome, you'd better be in a secure location where you are unlikely to harm yourself or others, and anyone you are with should not be the type of person who will take embarrassing video of your drunkenness and post it on YouTube.

On a much lighter note, the other thing I learned this weekend is that Darwin WILL sneak into the pool. He did this on Sunday. If I could have stood up straight, I would have either laughed or killed him. As it was, I clutched the wobbly iron railing on the deck steps, made my way down to the patio area, and put Soaking Wet Bad Dog out into the main part of the back yard, and gated him out there till he dried. This only took about five minutes, because he was doing speed laps along his fence, creating his own dog-powered high-velocity dryer.

Even when he's being sneaky and naughty, he's just so darned cute.