Read My Lips: No More Tequila Before Bed. Period.

Tequila = long sleepless nights with bad dreams. Sure, it can make anyone the life of the party, but when it’s all said and done you’ll have nothing left but yourself and a week’s worth of bad juju to work out.

Todd and I decided to make Sunday night our “Mexican night,” with nachos, quesadillas, and … of course… margaritas. It all sounded like a good idea. We’ve both laid off the alcohol in recent months – for different reasons – though I found once I quit drinking I lost 6 pounds. This has been highly motivating for abstinence. Nevertheless, it seemed timely to celebrate the advent of warmer weather and really – who needs an excuse for margaritas, and because Idecided they are the harbinger of sun, fun, and deck parties. I’m sick to death of cold air and wind so powerful it could penetrate a bomb shelter.

So, I started with the margaritas, because duh. Everything cooks and tastes better after margaritas. Todd disappeared into the living room for crisis management via cell phone. (Really – I want to know who the hell gave Satan a hall pass for the universe these last 2 weeks. But, more on that another time.) I heard the sound of straw hitting rock bottom and the rattling of lonely ice cubes not more than 20 minutes after. I nursed my glass of luscious limeness while I chopped peppers and onions and broiled the chicken for the quesadillas. The kids went outside and played basketball while I danced around the kitchen like the old days, no bickering and no one climbing up my ass with constant questions.

Todd and I ate over candlelight (provided by Miss Ava) and finished a second round of margaritas. The kids had already eaten dinner, having swindled their dad into buying them the “World Famous” chicken at Royal Farms. (If you haven’t – you must. Best chicken. Ever.)

Eventually it was bedtime for the school children, and I rustled up some nachos for the two of us to go with another margarita we shared. It was a lovely stress-free evening, topped off with a good movie we’ve seen a hundred times.

But, I would soon discover, the peacefulness ends when the lights go out. Todd woke the next morning to tell me he was immersed in another episode in this series of dreams he keeps having, about the world coming to an end and no one knows it but him and a handful of other people and they’re trying to figure out how to save it.

I, however, disappeared into an alternate universe where my house looked nothing like my house and I was having a party of some sort – the house was filled with people, everyone was there. Including my mom, who stood across the room from me and told me (in front of everyone) that the best thing I could do is to put our dogs down. Our beautiful and healthy, albeit smelly and of questionable taste buds, poodles. And I am incredulous that my mom – a shameless spoiler of dogs everywhere – would suggest such a thing to me.

Are you kidding? You must be kidding. And she so totally wasn’t. And I was like, how could YOU suggest such a thing??! We’re not putting the girls down!

Fast forward this dream to a car ride – mom is driving and I’m in the passenger seat, and we’re having it out. Yelling at each other about I-don’t-know-what, and then I just reached over and punched her in the mouth. Just like that – only my arm wasn’t strong enough and felt more like I was flexing an inflatable baseball bat. And she looked over at me and sucker punched me before I could react. So – this is my dream – having a fist fight with my mom in a moving car. Presumably triggered by her earlier suggestion that I murder my dogs.

Dream #2 – I am at a gym somewhere, and testing out a treadmill. But these treadmills are more like video games – they’re all different – they have different designs and different screens to view your stats (like a game format). There’s a portable foot pedal you have to use to change your pace. I change treadmills and forget the foot pedal, so I leave it running and go to retrieve the foot pedal I was using. When I get back, there’s this girl hanging on my treadmill, so I say excuse me and ask her to move. She tells me her friend is using this treadmill, so no – I can’t have it. So I told her I was the one using it, and it’s still running on my settings and that I had to go get the foot pedal. And she called me a liar! Then the friend comes over and they’re both snarky and rude and I suggested that perhaps I should just go get the manager. They told me to go right ahead. I decided to leave the gym instead.

Dream interpretations aside, I am not mad at my mom for anything, and I don’t belong to a gym – though I keep thinking I might like to give the treadmill thing a go again. The foot pedal thing is something related to my chosen profession – medical transcription – and there’s more to relate on this journey that most likely inserted itself into my dreams (again, another post, another time). Furthermore, Todd insists the world is not really coming to an end any time soon, though in the dream he is sworn to secrecy so maybe he’s lying to me?

And this is why you don’t drink tequila before bed, people. You’ll dream about beating up your mom and fighting with gym b*tches and trying to save the world.

One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, floor. ~ George Carlin

A lady came up to me one day and said ‘Sir! You are drunk’, to which I replied ‘I am drunk today madam, and tomorrow I shall be sober but you will still be ugly. ~ Winston Churchill