Tag: drinking

Home Cooked Meal

Since retiring from my last job and beginning a second career writing, I spend a great deal more time at home than I ever did previously. In fact, I rarely ever leave the house these days. I have become pretty much a stay-at-home dad, except my children are both grown adults and don’t really need to have me around.

I guess that makes me a mostly useless, stay-at-home dad.

Anyway, hurt feelings aside, because I’m spending a lot more time at home, I have tried to make better use of that time by focusing on yardwork, house chores, and general home maintenance. Since I have more flexibility with my time than anyone else in the family, I also run most necessary errands and make myself available to meet with contractors, plumbers and other repair personnel that frequent my house.

Well, that’s not completely true. The kids also have all kinds of free time. They however don’t seem to be in any great hurry to chip in and help with the chores.

Most of the traditional duties of a stay-at-home parent have fallen onto my shoulders. And while that does at times include naps, movie marathons, and the occasional day drinking, it also means I try to have nice meals waiting for my wife when she gets home from a long day at work.

I try.

While I am not a terrible cook, I must admit that dinner at times does not turn out quite the way I had intended it to.

Recently, I decided I was going to make a meal that included turkey meatloaf and artichokes on the side. I have made this meatloaf many times before and it always turned out decent, so I was not unduly worried when I took out the recipe.

Despite several successful outcomes in the past, for some reason things did not go well for me on this attempt. I don’t know if I made a mistake on the ingredients, or if the meat I used was bad, or if food gnomes broke into my house and cursed my oven. Whatever the reason, the meatloaf turned out bad.

I mean, really bad.

I mean, epically, tragically bad.

When dinner was ready, I cut off a slice, sat down and took one bite.

“Nope!” I said and spit it back out onto my plate.

My wife saw my reaction and laughed. She insisted that it couldn’t really be that terrible, then took a taste of her own portion. She did not spit hers out, but she did stand up, carry her plate into the kitchen and dump it into the garbage.

I mean, it was truly, horrifically bad. It could not have been much worse if I had accidently baked a tennis shoe in a meatloaf pan.

I figured at least we still had artichokes. It wasn’t really a meal, but at least it was something. I tasted mine and discovered it was crunchy and badly undercooked. It was also extremely bitter.

Strike two.

EM1 and EM2 were both in the kitchen at this point putting food on their plates. I warned them not to eat any of it. Dinner was a complete failure and while I didn’t think it was poisonous, I told them not to take the chance and to just throw it all in the garbage can.

“Really?” asked EM1. I didn’t really like the look of utter joy on her face when she said it. I know meatloaf is not her favorite meal, but did she have to act like a death row inmate learning for the first time that she had received a full pardon?

“So, what’s for dinner?” asked EM2.

“I have no idea,” I admitted.

EM1 ran out of the kitchen toward her bedroom. She came back a moment later holding her purse.

“I’m going to McDonald’s. Anybody want anything?”

I sighed, still scraping what should have been meatloaf, but somehow wasn’t, out of the pan and into the sink. It smelled like burned rubber, although it hadn’t tasted anywhere near that good.

I told EM1 to get me a double cheeseburger and some fries. My wife ordered the chicken nuggets. EM1 dashed out the door with her younger sister in tow, leaving me behind to clean up the carnage I had created in the kitchen.

When I finished cleaning the dishes, I decided to make one more attempt at salvaging the evening. I rescued a bottle of wine from the back of the refrigerator. I managed to get it open without breaking the bottle or cutting off any fingers (the way the night was going so far, I wasn’t absolutely certain I could manage either outcome), then poured two glasses. One for myself and one for my wife.

We had our wine while sitting on the back porch, enjoying the cool evening breeze. The kids were still out picking up food and wouldn’t be home for another half an hour.

It was a very peaceful half hour.

It wasn’t the evening I had expected when I made dinner plans earlier that day. But as these things go, I can’t really complain about how it turned out.

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Fat, Drunk, and Stupid

I recently read an article in Newsweek that alcohol sales went up 55 percent in the last week of March. (https://www.newsweek.com/us-alcohol-sales-increase-55-percent-one-week-amid-coronavirus-pandemic-1495510) The article speculates that since a large population of Americans are now stuck at home with nowhere to go, they are drinking more heavily and more frequently. Whether this is due to boredom, fear, or stress relief, the article didn’t say. I think it’s probably a combination of all three.

For myself, I have noticed a major increase in the number of nights each week that I have a drink and the amount of alcohol I consume when I do drink. 55 percent actually seems a little bit of a low estimate. I would argue that there are many people in the U.S. right now that aren’t holding up their end of this new statistic. To them I say, “Stop making the rest of us do all the work.”

During the week, I typically get outside for about an hour every morning to take a walk. The rest of the time, I am locked up in my house with no place to go. Just last year, an opinion piece in Vox argued that prisoners held in their cells 23 hours a day was a cruel, inhumane, and unjust punishment for even the most serious of criminals. (https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/17/18305109/solitary-confinement-prison-criminal-justice-reform)

I haven’t committed any crimes and yet I’m being told I have to stay in lockdown possibly for months to come. How is this even legal? Is it any wonder I’m drinking more to compensate? The choices are I either down a couple gin & tonics, or I start a prison riot in my own living room.

I have a television, but so do prisoners. I have access to books and the internet. But, again, so do prisoners. In addition, prisoners are provided three meals a day and all the toilet paper they need free of charge. I have to get my own food. And toilet paper? Well, we all know how that whole deal is going.

The only thing that I used to have that they don’t have is the ability to go hang out in a restaurant with a few friends.

That’s gone.

Now, I have 60 minutes of time in the morning walking around my neighborhood and waving at the neighbors as they stare at me through the windows of their houses. The rest of my day, I can only stand in the window and look outside to see whose turn it is to walk in the yard.

Junk food and booze seem to be the only methods of dealing with the boredom of being trapped. Junk food and booze also seem to be the only things that grocery stores aren’t running short of. Is it any wonder then, that I spend a large part of my day wandering between the pantry and the refrigerator? If I’m eating, I’m not thinking about the fact that I can’t go anywhere. I settle down at night, of course, because that’s when I start the slow alcohol drip that will eventually allow me to fall asleep on the couch.

Alcoholism used to be a disease that people tried to treat. Overeating was similarly recognized as a problem. Today, they seem to be socially acceptable coping mechanisms for existing in a pandemic.

It should come as no surprise to anyone reading this that I have gained more than 10 pounds in the last month or so, and it is likely that trend will continue into the foreseeable future. My heart and my liver seem to be in a race to see which body organ can go into complete failure first. Presently, the liver has a small lead, but my heart is running a close second.

When a vaccine for the Covid-19 virus is finally developed and the world gets back to normal, I am curious to see what the death rates for liver failure and heart disease will be over the next few years. I’m betting that there will be a definite climb in the numbers.

Maybe … oh, I don’t know. About 55%?

In the meantime, I will keep eating whatever junk food I can find in the pantry, and I will keep drinking large quantities of alcohol to make sure I remain passive and don’t attack any family members. They may be annoying, but I don’t want to hurt them.

Even though some of them really deserve it.

(I’m looking at you, EM1. Wash your damn dishes once in a while.)

I could probably keep complaining about this for several more pages, but I can see by the clock on the wall, it’s time for me to go.

The warden has me on a strict schedule and I don’t want to miss my yard time.

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A Moment of Inattention

I’ve heard a lot of stories from couples about how they met. Everyone seems to have a cutemeet story about how they got together with their soulmate while at a concert, or at a bar, or swimming with sharks, or whatever ridiculous activity they were doing at the time.

I hate those stories. They are only entertaining to the people that experienced them. The rest of us listen politely, nod our heads, and wonder how long it will be before we can get some alcohol into our system to make the pain go away.

For this reason, I am not going to tell you about how I met my wife. Instead, I want to tell you the story of what I did that almost made her leave me. To be more accurate, I want to tell you how I almost lost my wife … literally.

Back in college, my roommates and I enjoyed water skiing. My dad had a boat that he kept at Lake Don Pedro, and we were allowed to take it out whenever we wanted, as long as we kept it gassed up and didn’t run it into a pile of rocks on the shore. One weekend, we all decided to head for the lake and do some skiing.

My (future) wife and I had only been dating for about a year. I thought it would be a great idea to invite her along with us since she and my roommates seemed to get along pretty well. My roommates, Dave and Steve, agreed.

My wife had never been water skiing before, and I figured this was as good a time as any to teach her how.

We all drove up to the lake and, with a full tank of gas in the boat, a cooler full of beer, and miles of open water, we started skiing.

My roommates and I went first. We spent the first hour or so taking turns in the water while those of us in the boat experimented with ways to transport a can of beer to the guy at the end of the rope. It didn’t always work out the way we hoped. A couple beers got lost in the water, never to be seen again, and there was a near miss incident during an attempt of “Just throw it to me and I’ll catch it.”

Apparently, a full beer can thrown at a skier who is travelling at 30 miles per hour across the water can be considered a lethal weapon. Who knew?

Finally, it was my wife’s turn in the water. We showed her how to hold the rope and keep her skis in front of her as the boat started to move. The first time she tried to get up, the rope pulled right out of her hands. I told her that she needed to hold on and not let go of the handle if she was going to get up on the skis. She nodded and we tried again.

To her credit, she did not let go this time. We dragged her face-first behind the boat for quite a while and nearly drowned her before she released the rope on her second attempt. When we went back to try again, my wife didn’t want to play anymore. She told us she had had enough fun for one day.

My roommates and I convinced her to try one more time, mostly by refusing to let her back into the boat until she agreed. With no other options, she grabbed the tow rope and waited for me to reposition the boat.

On the third attempt, she managed to get up on her feet. It only lasted a few seconds, but she was so excited by the success she wanted to do it again. On the fourth attempt, she got up and stayed up.

This is where it all went bad.

With my wife hanging onto the tow rope and me driving the boat, we set off across the lake to see how long she could stay upright.

My roommates were sitting at the back of the boat and were supposed to be watching to make sure my wife didn’t fall. I heard Dave say, “Hey Steve, hand me a beer from the ice chest.” He also asked me if I wanted one, but I said I would get one later.

I heard two beer cans pop open behind me. That was when I asked Dave, “Is she still up?”

I didn’t get a response.

When I turned around to look, I saw my roommates enjoying ice-cold beers and laughing about something one of them had said, and I saw an empty tow rope bouncing along the water in the wake of our boat.

My wife was nowhere to be seen.

I yelled, “Where is she?”

Steve said, “Who?” Then, “Oh, yeah. I don’t know. I didn’t see her fall.”

I turned the wheel, bringing the boat into a sharp U-turn and headed back the way we had just come. I slowed down because I didn’t really know where we had lost her, and I didn’t think driving over the top of my wife’s head while she was bobbing in the water would make her feel any better.

We eventually found her a couple of minutes later. We had apparently travelled almost a mile after she fell.

I tried to explain that we didn’t see her fall because beer seemed to be more important to my roommates than she was. She failed to find any the humor in the explanation.

I asked if she wanted to try another run. Not surprisingly, she said no. What was also not surprising was the amount of colorful language she used during her refusal.

The rest of the day was pretty chilly, and I’m not referring to the weather.

I drove her home that evening and apologized for about the thousandth time when we got to her house. I expected that was going to be the last time I ever saw her, but for reasons known only to my wife, she agreed to go out with me again despite my attempts at murdering her in the lake.

It wasn’t until years later that she finally admitted why she didn’t break up with me that day. She told me, “If I broke up with you, I would never see you again. Then how could I make you pay for what you did to me?”

True love is a beautiful thing.

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Enjoying Deep Dark Thoughts? Follow me on Facebook so you don’t miss a post. Just go to my page and click the “Like” button to receive updates on my blog and other projects.

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