Whine

I've never been what you would call a big drinker. I'm not like, morally opposed to it or anything, it's just not really my thing. And actually it's kind of odd that I'm not more into it because both my parents drink a lot. When I was growing up my dad drank in the car while he was driving and I never even realized until a few years ago that it's not normal to drink beer in the car while driving your kids around, because he was always drinking. My mom can also put it away, although she and my step dad are the classy type of drinkers where they seem to know a lot of about wine and they have happy hour every single night starting at 5 oclock. The happy hour drinks vary by season, but not by a lot. (Martinis in the winter, gin and tonics in the summer). Then they drink wine with dinner and then sometimes they have drinks after dinner. Now that they live in France they have chucked off even these so called rules and the wine pretty much just flows like water, all day long. I personally dig the happy hour concept because it reminds me of my grandmother and the east coast and silver dishes with salted nuts and all that lad di dah, plus there are snacks involved, but I only bust out happy hour on special occasions or say, on camping trips. Otherwise we just have dinner and sometimes Mr. E drinks some beer. So although you could say I am predisposed to the sauce, it just...isn't really for me.

For one thing I just don't really like the taste. I did do the usual college drinking and to this day I can't even look at a bottle of peach schnapps but overall I am not committed enough to anything to be a drinking every night type of person, and besides I have this weird beverage drinking OCD thing where no matter what beverage it is I am physically incapable of finishing it, ever. To be honest with you I don't do it intentionally but when I stop to think about it, the last two inches or so left in a cup do sort of gross me out. It's always too warm and by the time I think "Oh, I should finish that" I've moved on. It's why I used to wet my pants all the time when I was a kid. Too busy to bother.

There are a few things I really enjoy drinking but even those seem kind of pointless. For example I found out after Mr. E lugged home two bottles of it that I love Dominican Rum. Just on ice. Damn, that's good. But once it was gone, I mean, I can't just walk into Safeway and get some Dominican Rum, and I don't like regular rum. Then I discovered my most favorite of favorites, Bailey's Irish Cream, and right after consuming about nine hundred mini bottles of it over ice (although never getting even a slightly noticeable buzz) I discovered that I was basiscally drinking straight fat and that as best I can tell 1/5 of a cup of the stuff has aproximately one bajillion calories. And when I started Weight Watchers just like everyone else I could indeed tell you how many points were in a very teeny glass of wine but after awhile it was like, what was the point? I just don't like wine enough and then when I got down to 20 points a day and couldn't even eat my flex points, anything that didn't make me less hungry wasn't on the menu. It's the same reason I ate nuts instead of baked lays. Baked lays don't fill you up, wine doesn't fill you up. Nuts fill you up, so that was where my points went.

All the same whenever I would go out or go to parties, which was not all that often, I drank, because to be honest I am a socially awkward person and I just needed it to be able to make idle chit chat with random strangers and not die of ten thousand tiny awkward social moments. Most often I would end up getting sort of bombed because I would refuse to eat anything at these parties due to the fact that I knew I was ingesting too many booze calories as it was and so I would just drink my dinner and that's why last year I fell off our porch at a party we had and ended up killing a bush. Good times, good times. I'm not saying weight watchers turned me into an alcoholic so much as it highlighted the fact that while I don't drink every night and I don't even really like beer or wine and the only booze I like I can't have, sometimes there was social awkwardness and what can I say, I needed some drinks.

Now that I am pregnant I have not had any alcohol for 24 weeks. A LOT, I mean A LOT of people have told me that so and so who they once knew's best friend's doctor told them that it's ok to have some wine or some beer or whatever when you are pregnant. That is all fine and good and I am happy for those people, but I am not in the habit of taking third party medical advice from friends of friends doctors and my doctor who is a safety gal such as myself told me not to drink and so I do not. And honestly in the first four months of vile pukeness known as pregnancy the site of a wine bottle was enough to make me gag and run for the hills, so it wasn't much of an issue.

But now here the holidays are almost upon us and we have started to attend actual social events with actual people that we are trying to meet in this new town and it's a whole new level of social awkwardness and I cannot have my three wine glass buffer to smooth things out and it SUCCKKKKKKS. Big time. Last week we went to a wine bar to try to socialize with new people and the obnoxious woman who was sitting next to me who I was trying to be nice to in spite of my opressive and total soberness actually explained to me as if I was twelve years old what a flight of wine is and I knew when I had to sit on my hands to avoid stabbing her with my fork that I had never ever appreciated the way that even one glass of wine takes the edge off. Imagine what a whole flight could do.

Even when it's hanging out with old friends it sucks because everyone else is re living their college days over a costco sized bottle of jack daniels and making total asses of themselves in a terrifically boozed up way and having fun and being drunk, and I am sitting in the corner, sober and quiet and boring and lame. Pretty soon we are headed to Detroit for the holidays and I will only say about that that when I remarked to my sister in law recently that being the only sober one in a group of drunks bites the big time, her answer was "Huh? Does it?". Uh huh.

Perhaps it this would be a good time to reflect on the fact that I self medicate my awkwardness and shyness and various social disorders with booze and that maybe that isn't a good thing, but to that I say, no thank you. To that I say, hey, you have your medicine, and I have mine, and how many more weeks do I have to be pregnant?

The light at the end of the tunnel is that I have read, in an actual book, that drinking is not strictly verbotten while breast feeding. And I am looking forward to experimenting with my tolerance once I push the kid out, because I have the feeling that it may be the only time in my life that 1/5 of a cup of Bailey's gets me straight up drunk. I'm really hoping there are mini bottles at the delivery.