Consuming Consumption

I never drink before five o'clock, never more than four beers, never have a hangover and yet my consumption of alcohol consumes me. Not that I'm constantly thinking about drinking, what I mean is I'm constantly wondering whether I'm drinking too much. Which means, I guess, that yes, I'm constantly thinking about drinking.

The constant worry affects my life infinitely more than the actual drinking. The drinking is two or three hours of nice and then bed. But the worry, the anxiety, it's always there. A backpack full of enormous college textbooks strapped to my body weighing me down and wouldn't it just be easier to take off the fucker?

Probably. But can I not enjoy this one damn thing or does my brain have to constantly analyze causes and effects and whys and why nots? My whole life is an over-analysis of my whole life. Look at this blog. A manifesto of over-analyzation. I cannot escape. Analyzation is as much a part of my being as breathing. So, give me this, dammit. Let me have this, my three beers at night. Because, GOD, I'm not drowning any sorrows in the amber stuff, not masking any pain...Okay, maybe a little pain but not big pain, just the usual scraped knees and paper cuts of life. Maybe a couple wounds here and there that required stitches, but they're healing nicely, mostly no big deal!

The beer stealthily sands the sharp, jagged edges of the day into smooth, graceful lines. Isn't it ever so nice to run fingertips across silky smooth banisters instead of having to stop and dig out slivers? The days are filled with slivers. And the beer, it slows the analysis. He takes a Xanax for his anxiety, she takes a Valium for her thing, why can't I have three beers for my thing? What's wrong with that? And yet even just rhetorically posing the question here is the starting gun that prompts a million voices in my head to trip over themselves in their anxious effort to answer... That's how it starts. That's denial talking. If you have to ask you already know the answer.

But I don't! I don't know the answer! It's three silly beers. Sometimes four. And besides, it was a rhetorical fucking question, you asshole.

And then I'm stuck right back where I was when I wrote this post. I went back and read all the excellent comments again today and one really stood out for me:

Personally, if I were spending my day watching the clock, waiting for the drink to be officially OKAY, and then spending the next two hours fretting about the drink I just had, that would be a problem FOR ME.

I don't clockwatch but usually glance up and it's nearly five or after five or whatever and I'm like, All right! Time for a drink! Yes, that's an exclamation point. Two exclamation points! I put them there to demonstrate that beer time makes me excited. It does. What is that you're doing? Is that a pencil? Are you taking notes? Did you add the exclamation points to the list of things that point to alcoholism?

So the part of her comment that really stood out for me is where she says spending all that time fretting about having a drink would ruin it for her. Because that's kind of what's happening here. I enjoy my drinks and we go to bed and then I wake up in the morning and I'm all, you're so silly. You don't need to drink. It's just extra money and extra calories and a whole lotta extra stress.

I maintain that party line for the rest of the day, mostly. But, just like the morning mist slowly evaporating as the sun climbs a ladder of clouds into the sky, so does my You Don't Need To Drink sentiment. I don't need to drink but I want to.

And so what?

I write my stuff and shuttle kids to and fro, maybe go to the park, deal with a tantrum or two, put the kids in their rooms - rolling the dice on some afternoon quiet time to finish up some more writing and then, before I know it, Dinner Hour is once again making my acquaintance, his twin brother Cocktail Hour in tow, and the whole thing starts all over again.

And really I just want to annihilate the part of my brain that engages in this fucking square dance because can I not enjoy myself for two fucking hours at night if I'm dotting all my I's and crossing all my T's the other 22 hours a day? Life is short, man. But maybe that entire thought process is the last bastion between me being a functioning human being or the star of the next episode of Intervention? See. There it goes again...

Round and around and around we go...

Afternoon Siesta

After a particularly harrowing park visit during which Henry refused to leave and delivered a tantrum that would make Christian Bale blush, we all came home and retired to our separate quarters before shit got physical: thrown toys and books, knocked over chairs...The kids can get violent too so it was best to just call a family time out.

An hour later I found Violet cuddling with Dad. The dog humping Serge leads me to believe he must've already been asleep when she crept into his room and kicked off what looks to be a pretty hardcore animal orgy.

Style Staple: Vintage Dress

I am obsessed with Ruche. Specifically I am obsessed with their vintage dresses. AFFORDABLE vintage dresses. Seriously. Any and every dress on this site rocks my world. I forced Serge to bookmark Ruche, told him "anything in medium" and he's already bought me two dresses, one of which you can see in the photos here.



I like this one because it feels a tad conservative, librarian-ish even, what with the necktie but also kind of sexy as it's on the short side, but not too short. Sexy librarian: the ultimate porno plot. Oh, and the super forgiving elastic waistband is a mom's best friend. I wear this dress to drop off the kids at preschool, to the grocery store, out for drinks with friends and even in the garden pulling weeds because it also feels a bit like a country sundress.



It's called the Georgina Checkered Dress (in a medium, which fits just right for me at 5'3 and 135 pounds) and the best part of all is this dress costs $39.99. You can find it and a ton of awesome spring/summer vintage dresses at totally reasonable prices on Ruche. Check it out.

P.S. I am in no way affiliated with Ruche nor is this post sponsored by them. I just dig their stuff. Also, thanks to Serge for pretending to be a photographer "A leetle to the left, YES. YES! BEEE-YOOO-TEEE-FULL. Make love to the camera!" while I pretended to be a model.

P.P.S. Comment #4, Adriana, was the winner of the Bibbles Bib and will be contacted via email. She's pregnant with her first baby, so it's kinda cool that she won. Yay Adriana!

You Never Can Tell

_{The judge who agreed to marry us, Serge and yours truly: young and dumb and just married with no fucking clue what was just around the bend.}

I've been thinking about marriage, specifically whether or not it's important to really get to know someone before grabbing hands and taking that blind leap off the cliff of singleness into the stormy waters of matrimony.

The dictates of polite society generally shove us none to gently in the direction of carefully excavating your lover's past, present and future before hitching your wagon to their star. And I agree with that sentiment, I do, it's just that I no longer think that really getting to know someone before marriage is the key to a long lasting marriage. In fact, other than agreeing on the basics - money, marital roles, amount of kids, where you're going to live - there ain't a whole lot you can really do before marriage to assure success. It's what you do after you walk down the aisle that matters so whether it takes you two weeks or two years to nail the aforementioned basics down is irrelevant, is what I'm saying.

The whole rumination on marriage happened after I fell into the Facebook space-time continuum last week. You know how it is; one minute you're logging in to just reply to a message real quick and three days later you come up for air with greasy hair, furry teeth and a razor sharp knowledge of the names and accomplishments of the kids of everyone you ever ate lunch with once in high school and maybe, if you're an asshole like me, a smugness you half-heartedly attempt to suppress over the hot girl that gained an assload of weight since she last tossed you her trademark I'm-better-than-you stink eye in the halls of your educational institution.

So I was looking at the photos of some friends from high school. Specifically the photos of this one girl I knew who got pregnant at sixteen. Both she and the sperminator were friends of mine who had been hanging out together for a couple months when she discovered she was pregnant.

As usually happens in the cases of most teen moms, she dropped out of school and I heard about her infrequently; small fluffs of information randomly whispered between mutual friends over the years like dandelion spores set adrift by the sweet breath of a kid after making a wish. She had the baby, a boy. She named him XYZ. She married the dad. And then, as we all scattered across the country and settled into our own lives and pregnancies and babies, I forgot about this girl.

Until Facebook, of course. And then, like running into her at the local mall while shopping with my mom on a Thanksgiving visit home, there she was staring out from my monitor. Still beautiful and, yes, still married. I admit I was shocked to see she was still married. Not that I wish her anything but the best but the odds were admittedly stacked against her. Knocked up at sixteen by a boy she'd only been dating for a few months. But here they are all these years later, the all-American family, seemingly. The boy, whose tiny spark of an existence first ignited this family, now almost a man himself at eighteen. And two more girls.

It makes me happy to know they beat the odds and yet I wonder about their dynamic. I want to message her and inquire about her secret to marriage. I would never, of course, but I'm curious as hell. I'd love to see a movie of their relationship from then to now, ages sixteen to thirty-six. What was each year like? Did they ever separate? Did they ever talk about divorce? Or did they just get lucky and learn to love each other and keep on loving each other as they grew into adulthood together?

Who knows about these things? Some people jive and some don't. But that's doing her marriage a disservice because maybe it wasn't so much jiving as hard work to get to where she is now; mom of three gorgeous, talented kids. One already in college even, which is particularly weird to me, seeing someone my age send a kid to college when my own kids are experiencing the sunrise of their journey on the planet.

There is another good friend of mine from childhood who got a girl pregnant that he didn't seem to really care that much about. Although he married her at eighteen and went on to have more children he seemed quite unhappy. Cut to fifteen years later and a look at their Facebook story tells me they're more in love now than they ever were. Vacation snaps, photos of kids and parties, little love missives shared via Facebook... I can only surmise he fell in love after he got married. Years after he got married. Who knew? I was positive both couples I mention here were on the fast track to certain divorce.

Then there is a third couple I know who I last saw at a wedding around fifteen years ago. Sweetest couple, dated for years out of high school before getting married. Could not have seemed more in love and yet it appears they've divorced.

You never can tell. While certain statistics seem to paint a dreary picture when it comes to marrying too quickly, a lot of what I've observed, including my own experience, begs to differ. Is it better to wait to get to know someone before you marry them as opposed to getting hitched in a hurry? Not necessarily.

Thing is, people are constantly changing. You aren't the person you were ten years ago and ten years from now you won't be the same person either. Same goes for your spouse. So what good does all that pre-marital getting to know each other do when we're all just changing all the time anyway? Arranged marriages aren't A Thing for nothin'. In fact, you might argue that all that getting to know each other can work against you. Get to know someone and become comfortable with who they are and what happens when they up and change?

Another detriment to really getting to know someone before marriage... You'll never want to marry them. Seriously. Think about it: if you had to deal with some of the shit you deal with in regards to your spouse BEFORE you were married would you have made it down the aisle?

If Serge and I had dated for a year we probably never would've gotten married. Sounds harsh but at the time, during that first year of marriage, we stumbled through so many roadblocks chances are if we'd encountered the same issues while just dating we both would've tossed in the towel. Not that I didn't love him but sometimes things became so hard I know that merely dating him probably wouldn't have kept us together. As I did others before Serge, I likely would've broken up with him as opposed to knuckling down and working through the tough times. But the act of being married meant something to us and so we kept on keeping. Here we are nine years later with a family that is the most important thing in the world. Wouldn't trade it for anything.

What I'm saying is all the talk about how to prepare for marriage or advice on not rushing into it or living with someone or not living with them or you only dated for how long? or you need to see a therapist before you get hitched; it's all bullshit. Nobody knows anything. Nobody can predict anything. Your marriage, however it goes down, is its own universe. Nobody can really say this is what it takes or that's what it takes to create a successful foundation for marriage because you never can tell. People get married for all sorts of reasons. Sometimes they don't even know the real reason they're marrying until years down the road and by that time the marriage has shape-shifted into something completely different. Could be better, could be worse. Point is, the reason you get married becomes irrelevant once your married. It's what happens after that makes all the difference.

What about you? Why did you get married? Love? Lust? Pregnancy? It was the next logical step? How long did you date? Would you change anything? Examine your first year of marriage. At the end of year one would you have still agreed to get married? What about now? If you knew then what you know now would you still have gotten married?

Reader Appreciation Giveaway: Bibbles Bibs

Speaking of kids and food, I've got a little giveaway for you. It's from an adorable company that makes bibs that play music. The couple who created Bibbles Bibs says they found themselves singing to their babies to entertain them while eating so they decided to create a bib that not only keeps your kid clean but entertains too. Good call. Because who hasn't pretty much put on a Broadway musical to keep their baby or toddler focused on taking in just one more spoonful of food?

Now, instead of you providing the entertainment, the bib will do it for you. Bibbles Bibs play music that encourages your kid to count to ten, repeat the ABC's all the good stuff to entertain and educate. But it's not just for eating. Kids drool and bibs come in handy all the time. Keep the bib on while you're on the go. Baby fussing in the back seat? Squeeze the bib for some distraction tunes.



The other good thing about Bibbles is that the bibs are waterproof and have the little pocket at the bottom of the bib to catch all the food that doesn't make it into your kid's mouth, which, if you have any experience at all feeding kids you know more food makes it onto the bib or your kid than into the mouth.

Bibbles Bibs are usually $15 but the company is offering The Girl Who readers a 15% discount if you purchase a bib using the discount code "Lancaster." Got a baby shower coming up? A three-pack of Bibbles at 15% off makes for an affordable, unique gift.

Today, I'm giving away a Baby Count To Ten bib, courtesy of Bibbles. To enter to win leave a comment (email included) telling me your baby's first word. If you don't have a baby tell me your first word, if you know it. Winner announced Thursday.