Names are preposterously changed to protect just about everyone

You know what helps you quit drinking? A hangover, that's what!
My friend was in town, let's call her Rosalee, and she said "Let's go out for drinks!"  Now, I had no reason to be scared because she'd said this before and we'd gone uptown to an empty bar and had 2 drinks before going back home to our kids. I swear to you, this is what I expected this time.
So I did my hair (and by "did" I mean I didn't pull it back into a soccer mom ponytail and I put leave-in conditioner in it), dressed up (and by "dressed up" I mean I wore real shoes and my best paisley tee shirt) and we went to the bar. And it was empty, and we had 2 drinks, and we talked. It was nice. Then we went to another bar. This one was less empty, and oddly well-lit (since when are bars well-lit?), and we had 2 more drinks and talked.  Then we went to yet another bar. And the more I felt like it was getting late and the bars were getting louder, the more Rosalee seemed to be in her element. And by "element", I mean twenties, even though she is the same age as me. See, I always forget that while I'm a the-mom-from-Home-Improvement mid-thirties, Rosalee is more of a Robin-from-How-I-Met-Your-Mother mid-thirties. And I cannot keep up with her.
At the third bar we ran into so many people. The neighbor kid who just turned 21 was there and of course Rosalee, who'd only been in town a week, knew him and convinced him to stay and hang out.  This lady who used to work with my mom at the courthouse until she threw the entire probation office into a drug fueled sex scandal was there (I use no names but trust me, there haven't been all that many drug fueled probation department sex scandals here so it shouldn't be hard for locals to identify her). And some old guy who kept falling off his bar stool, crying, and whose nose ran down into his beard the whole time we were there, was there. (Seriously, this is why bars need to stay dimly lit!)
So then we left the bar, but we went to Rosalee's friend, let's say Umberto's, place.  Umberto's place had, and I am not making this up, a laboratory in the kitchen.  Not a lab-ruh-tory. A lah-bore-atory. Like mad scientist shit. I don't know what it does but he says it's legal and it involved odd glass jars of colored liquids.  It looked nothing like Breaking Bad and it didn't smell, plus I was drunk, so I wasn't worried.  I think Umberto may be an alchemist.
So we're sitting at Umberto's place, Rosalee and the neighbor kid and I, and this girl walks in whom I only know because I know her parents socially.  Now this may make sense for Robin-from-How-I-Met-Your-Mother types, but I'm a Jill-from-Home-Improvement type and I feel really out of place here.  As the night wore on I was feeling older and grayer and fatter by the minute.  I may have started out Jill-from-Home-Improvement but by the time we left I felt full-on Doris Roberts.
And then we left.  And the neighbor kid drove us to our homes. And I went to bed at 2:30am for the first time in years. And the next morning I woke up to find a text I never recalled sending to my brother on my phone, and a horrible case of the bed spins.  And after I laid in bed for an hour, a full hour, before I could sit up, I thought to myself "I am too old for this shit, and (say it with me) I am never drinking again."
And guess what Rosalee texted me.  This:  "Last night rocked! Hope you had as much fun as I did."

As the night started.

As the night wore on. Minus Shooter McGavin with the gun there.

Random thoughts from a sleep-deprived mind

I stopped drinking, and taking Xanax, so I'm having trouble sleeping. So here are some disjointed thoughts from my insomniac brain.

Essential oils aren't essential to anyone. Even a hippy could live without patchouli.  The only thing an essential oil is essential to is the thing they wring it out of to sell it to hippies. So ha ha on all the patchouli loving hippies out there funding an entire industry of patchouli killers. You suck out their essence to rub on the unwashed and then the patchoulies all die! Really, wouldn't a Lady Speed Stick be better for everyone?

WTF is a patchouli, anyway? I know what it smells like, but not what it is.  And for the record, it smells like a Big Lebowski fan, that's what it smells like.

Why is it that you can drink as much as you want if you never want to drink again but you have to stop drinking in order to retain your capacity to drink?  And also, why is it perfectly okay to have a couple glasses of wine after a hard day, but not to drink an equal number of beers, for women anyway? 

I mean, it's not the recipe, but it's a decent math analogy

Tom let the boys eat donuts, ice cream, and candy bars for supper tonight, and Danny puked in the basket of Hot Wheels five minutes after Tom went to bed. Then my mother's chihuahua ate a whole bowl of cat food and shit some sort of biological warfare all over my kitchen. And Tom, who won't be home tomorrow at all because he has to deliver in Missouri on Tuesday morning, told me on his way to bed that he not only ordered 2000 crickets by mail, but also 150 live meal worms. As a treat! 
Every day I swear, no beer tonight. And then every night I have just one more beer. Dog shit + toddler barf + live meal worms = beer.

So now he knows why.

There are days when after dealing with a toddler, an almost-toddler, and a sullen teenager, I need a beer.  I feel that this is okay. I put the baby down, I know I have hours until he'll want milk again, so I have a beer. Tom looks at me sideways but he doesn't say anything. And yet I know he disapproves (not because of the nursing but because he disapproves of drinking in general).
Yesterday I left at 2:00 pm and got home at 9:30 pm.  He got the boys up from their naps, made dinner, fed them dinner, cleaned up after, and then dealt with the pre-bedtime and bedtime routines. When I got home, he had a beer.
Life is funny.