I got drunk and I fell down.

Yeah, so everyone's sick of the disappointment that comes with typing in your favorite url (cough), waiting for the page to load, and seeing a very old post. About apostrophes, of all things.

The shortened week made for a mad scramble at work, and I am sorry for making everyone's workdays just a little bit duller (not to embiggen my worth or anything). Lucky for you, I'm scrambling a little less, and have a goodly number of things to post about.

First and foremost, the events of Thursday. I worked late and met up with a coworker for a beer. The wife (not, ahem, in a New Paltz sense, so much as a we've-been-roomies-forever-and-we
have-three-cats-sense... these two things can be mutually exclusive, I swear) was catching up with a friend from nursery school for happy hour. I was home by 9:30, settled in for an episode or two of Slings & Arrows on the DVR.

An hour later, Claire saunters in and stands in the kitchen doorway, swaying like a sapling in the breeze. She makes the announcement: "I. Am very. Drunk."

The worm she turns, eh? I have been the one who's unsteady on the pins on a weeknight looking at a hungover commute, and nothing pleases me more than not feeling like the only one who misbehaves.

And what kind of pseudo wife would I be if I did not heat up some food, pour a big glass of water and force her to stay awake while I took a bit of photo-documentation? A pisspoor one, that's what.

So here for your pleasure is a photo of Ms. Claire and her spoils of war (that's right kids, she nicked four glasses from the bar):
After the initial hilarity of drunkenness calmed and I had scraped her off the floor, the de-drunkening of Claire went rather smoothly with only mild verbal abuse sustained by me. A representative sampling:

"I've got your water right here, bitch" (this was via IM after I shouted an inquiry as to whether she'd finished her current glass yet).

"Texas is my balls" (in response to me reminding her that Seth would be away for the weekend in, you guessed it, Texas).

"This water is tepid! What are you trying to do, poison me!" (apparently I did not run the tap long enough).

Those of you present for our formative months as freshmen at Vassar will remember The Night of the Fallen Soldier. These events were, to my thinking, rather similar, though I'm better equipped to help someone sober up nowadays (thanks, bartending school!).

I am pleased to take credit for Claire's complete lack of hangover on Friday morning. And I believe that Gus has gotten over being stepped on.

In case anyone thinks I'm posting this to be mean, I am not. Of the two of us, Claire experiences very few nights of heroic drunkeness and very few mornings of epic hangovers. She demurely retires from the bar at 1am. I go for that ill-advised fourth (or fifth if it's been a long night), followed by a late-night slice and final collapse at 4ish. It was mightily amusing (for both of us, I think) to return to the state in which we first existed, when she was drinking malt liquor and I was afraid of alcohol entirely.

Those were the days.