Sister (uh) Wives
Normally, when I announce to all four cats, my children, The Daver, and/or The Guy On My Couch that “I’m taking the weekend off,” I mean this:
“I’m not actually going to work online – but I’ll be digging trenches, planting trees, mulching weeding, planting, seeding, watering, cleaning out the garage, making 47 trips to Goodwill, obsessing about painting my kitchen cabinets white, whine about my formerly white – now dingy grey – carpets, fantasize about buying attachments for my Dyson, sorting kid’s clothes, throwing away dead frogs, helping color pictures before realizing I have the artistic ability of a squirrel with five thumbs, then dropping into an exhausted heap on my couch to watch shitty television until it’s time to wake up and do it all again. But I mean I’m going to do that WITHOUT obsessively Tweeting. Or checking email.
MUCH.”
I don’t “take time off” like normal people. Or maybe that IS how normal people “take time off,” I don’t know; I write a blog on the Internet where I call myself “Aunt Becky.” I’m not the Poster Child for normal.
But, upon dragging ass outta bed Saturday morning to “not take time off,” I realized that I was kinda…reeling around. Like the drunken spins, except I haven’t had an ACTUAL drink in for-fucking-ever.
(stop gaping at me like that. You’re going to attract flies that LAND IN YOUR OPEN MOUTH AND MAKE FLY BABIES)
Be honest, Pranksters: Drinking at 31 < Drinking at 21
The spins kinda suck, just like making out with that random hot bartender, then vomiting all over the back of a cab is kinda shameful. Now. Then? It was hi-fucking-larious.
“…remember that time Becky barfed on the back of a yellow cab in downtown Chicago while that hot bartender rubbed her back, then made out with her? Bwahahahahaha!”
See? Hilarious.
(See also: why would that hot bartender want to make out with a barfy chick?)
Anyway, I had the spins. I blamed Dawn, who was passing a kidney stone that we’re sharing custody of, for sympathetic dizziness. I’ve never been dizzy, aside from being drunk, but I will note this: I walked into less walls while dizzy than while sober.
That being here nor there, Dawn decided to come over and join Ben (The Guy On My Couch) and I, who were sitting on opposite ends of the couch, playing on our respective phones.
And, because I am used to going! going! going! during weekends, I decided that I wasn’t actually dizzy – just….having issues with equilibrium – and that the only cure for a fucked-up equilibrium was not, in fact, more cowbell, but more mulch.
I pried my dizzy ass off the couch, and off we went to the hardware store. Hey, I needed my fucking mulch.
We were fine, the whole way there.
The problem started when the doors to Lowes, bless their hearts, opened. Suddenly, I felt like the world had been tipped on its side. I grabbed Ben and Dawn to steady me as we made our way to the back of the store for a non-bullshit neck massager.
(awkward segue: of COURSE I mean “neck massager.” I write a sex column. If I wanted another sex toy, I’m pretty sure SOMEONE would give me one.)
We made it all the way back to dishwashers before I began to sweat, the gorge of vom rising in my throat, as the world continued, uncannily, to spin. Ben and Dawn steered me to a set of chairs, where I sat, trying to figure out how to exit the store without:
a) Falling over
2) Alerting the store personnel that I was, in fact, in need of medical attention. The very LAST thing I wanted was to have to tell the world that I was in an ambulance because “I was dizzy.” If I had to be in an ambulance at all, I wanted to be
- delivering a baby
or
- delivering a basket of kittens I’d saved from a burning house.
Since I was “simply dizzy,” I tried to look as non-stupid as one can while flanked by two people who are steering you toward the exit while your eyes are closed.
Yeah, I could feel the stares, even WITH my eyes closed. It didn’t help that I’d chosen, in a moment of personal irony, to wear my Genetics shirt from the Museum of Science and Industry, which proudly asks, “Why Am I So Beautiful?” (the back says, GENETICS).
After what seemed like 82,747 hours, I hit the yawning doors, holding onto Dawn and The Guy On My Couch like we were the last people on the RMS Titanic (the real one, not the one with Leonardo DiCaprio), I’d figured I was done with the humiliation of it all.
That is, until Dawn screamed, “Don’t judge our love!” at some couple gaping at us. I’d have grabbed both of their asses for effect, but I’d probably have toppled over only to be run over by a frantic couple from Delaware, desperately looking for some refuse bags.
Upside? I’d get cross two items off my (non-existent) bucket list.
1) Meet someone from Delaware
B) Get hit by a car.
Downside?
I’d have probably been dead. Dying over refuse bag purchases is just…pathetic.