I’ve been buying alcohol legally for 14 years, but I used a fake ID for 4 years. Fourteen is quite a lot longer than 4, yet every single time I buy myself some beers to drink on my patio, my heart pounds and I get an adrenaline rush just like when I used that fake ID. It was a perfect ID, too. An actual ID that belonged to someone who looked like me. Back in those days, if you found an over-21 person who looked a little bit like you, you could say, “Hey, I’ll pay for your new license if you give me your old license,” and (if they were in love with your older brother) they would say, “That sounds like an excellent plan! I’ve been wanting to spend some time at the Secretary of State’s office! Super!” And the person with poor taste in boys could just take another form of ID (just one!) and say, “Uh, I lost my license,” and they would make her a new one lickity-split! Win/Mother effin’ WIN. These days, though, thanks to 9/11 and, uh, reality teevee, I bet the kids can’t do that anymore. Score one for being old!

That ID was awesome. It was only questioned one time and that was in a Chesaning gas station, where the clerk looked at the ID, looked at me, and said, “I went to school with that girl, and you ain’t her.” Luckily, I had cat-like reflexes and I grabbed the ID real quick and snarled, “What. Ever. You’re, like, 30 years old! Ugh!” And then I ran away. To the gas station next door. I didn’t care, because Boone’s Farm was 3 for $5 everywhere, so I didn’t need that stupid gas station!

What is my point? Body memory. Yes, that’s it. I think it’s interesting that my body remembers, “Hey, we’re buying beer. Let’s be scared!” I would think that the eyeballs would tell the heart, “Dude, it’s not Boone’s Farm and Busch Light, so I think we’re legal now.” So when I talked about Spring being stupid last month, and didn’t want to cut myself some slack, that was dumb. So the slack has been cut now. I get it. And when I forget, I’ll buy myself some beers in order to remember. Win/Mother effin’ WIN again!

This is going to sound like a commercial, but it’s not a commercial, I swear. I care very deeply about personal hydration and I am very excited to have all of my personal hydration issues solved (taste and portability) after so very long.

If you know me, you know I love food and alcohol and I run a lot. All of those things mean that I have to make sure I’m hydrated. Oh, also, I used to feed children (sometimes 2 at a time) with my breasts. So hydration is a big deal for me. I’m super cheap I care very deeply about the environment (I do now, but I didn’t back in the day) so I’ve never been one to buy bottled water. I’ve only ever carried a reusable  bottle around and, back in the day, that meant that I was always lamenting the plastic taste of the water and lamenting the fact that the taste I was lamenting was the taste of cancer or whatever. Anyway, I dealt with the plastic taste all of those years and then, when I was able to leave the house without a diaper bag (Oh, glorious day), I had another problem: WHERE’M I GONNA PUT MY WATER BOTTLE? I suffered, lo, this many years by carrying my water bottle IN MY FREE HAND because I couldn’t put it in my purse because my purse didn’t have a handy bottle carrier thingy and if I shoved the bottle in my purse, the condensation would get all over my library book and my wallet. I don’t like to pay for library books, so this didn’t suit me.

So, 2 problems: Taste, and carry around-ability. With me? Ok.

Ok, so remember when Baying Hound gave Liberty a Klean Kanteen to try? Well, then I bought 3 more because it solved my problem of taste. Yay!

So, the Klean Kanteen solved 1/2 of my problems right away, still leaving me with the portability issue.

Anyway, guess what I stumbled across at Baying Hound? You won’t believe it! Look:

The answer to all of my problems: A frickin’ neoprene carrying-case thingamajig that, yes, I could totally carry, but more importantly for me, I could stuff it in my purse and the Klean Kanteen can’t sweat on my library book!

You guys, I am soooooo happy about this, you have no idea. I just keep stuffing my be-neoprened Klean Kanteen into my purse with my book and I actually can use my free hand to wave or flip you off or whatever! Isn’t that awesome? I never thought I could be this happy.

A word, if you please, about price. Now, if you’re like me, you might say, “Hey, a Klean Kanteen is $x and a Thirsty Tote is $y and that is more money than I usually spend on personal hydration.” And then I would say, “LAME! Proper hydration is priceless. You can’t say, ‘I had lots of fun drinking those beers last night,’ if you’re not properly hydrated. No. Do you know what you say when you drank a lot of beers without being properly hydrated? You say, ‘My head hurts. Shut your damn kids up!’ And nobody wants that.”

Dos, a beer, a Mexican beer

Ray, the guy who buys me beer

Me, the guy Ray buys beer for

Far, a long way to the bar

So, I think I’ll have a beer

La, A la-la-lots of beer

Tea, No thanks, I’ll have a beer

Or something like that. I’m not clear on the details, but it’s much more entertaining (and, frankly, it makes more sense) than that other song. Until you hear your 10 year old singing it. To be fair, I didn’t set out to teach them the song. When Maya asked about “Do-Re-Mi,” we were in the car and after singing that, I giggled. I said to Bryan, “Remember that beer song?” and then we both giggled and Lena (I think it was Lena, though it could have been Liberty. It’s hard to keep these things straight. It was a 10-year-old girl hollering from the backseat) asked, “How does the beer song go, Mummy?” And, at first, I said, “Well, Precious, beer songs are only for those 21 and older. I’ll not sully  your soul by singing it. Merely hearing the song might make you want to drink a-la-la-lots of beer.”* To which Lena (or Liberty) replied, “Oh, thank you, Mummy. Thank you for always keeping me pure.”

But then I sang it anyway because it’s funny.

This is my Feckless Friday post. You know you want to play along.

*What do you mean “that doesn’t sound like something you’d say”? You don’t know me!**

**Fine, none of that ever happened. I just sang it right away. FINE!

Don’t mind if I do!

I needed something to go with tonight’s popluck* guacamole so I bought some margarita stuff. It just made sense to me.

I’ve never made margaritas at home and Meijer didn’t have any Cuervo tequila for some reason, so I hope they turn out ok. I didn’t feel like hunting down a liquor store to find the good stuff. For you non-locals, you can’t just go to the next grocery store to get your liquor. You have to go to a real-live liquor store. Usually in the bad part of town! Across from the plasma bank! Isn’t that sexy? Are you intrigued? Do I get city-girl points for that? The whole reason I went to Meijer instead of Kroger was to get the liquor because Kroger only sells beer and wine.

Happy Friday!

*Maya calls our potluck “popluck.” Solid. “Bridge Club” just didn’t stick so I’m going to go with Maya’s version.

The maths are wrong, baby, cuz your hotness is rockin’!

Easter was lovely, except it needs to last much longer so my family can stay much longer and we can have, like, an 8-day feast instead of a weekend binge where we drink and eat too much and hurt ourselves. If we knew it would last longer, we could pace ourselves. I promise we would pace ourselves. My sister and I discovered that it doesn’t really matter what kind of wine a person drinks. If that person drinks too much of it, that person’s belly gets mad at them and punishes them. In other words, it’s not the quality, it’s the quantity. My sister-in-law is wise and she knew that already. She and my brother and brother-in-law, along with Bryan, were able to go to the Ohio Deli (as seen on Man vs Food!) and eat and eat on Saturday, while my sister and my mom and I stayed with the kids. Well, my mom stayed with the kids. Tracey and I just laid around and said, “Shhhh!” But now we know. Damn.

My Columbus friends were able to meet my family and that was lovely. I felt like I should be more nervous about it for some reason, but I wasn’t because Kristen, Dawn and Lynne are just Ohio versions of me, my sister and my sister-in-law. I don’t branch out much in my friendships. And the husbands? All of the husbands are beaten down by perfect matches for their loud and lovely wives, so we love all of them, too. Even my brother. I never found the bellybutton lint he hid here, but I have a feeling he hid it on my pillow. Just thinking about it gives me chills. Or, maybe he unscrewed the screen on the showerhead and put it in there so I shower in lint leavings every morning. Ew!

With that, I’ll leave you with another disturbing image. Everybody knows that My L1ttle Ponies love Easter. I just didn’t know how much they love it until I walked in the bathroom and found this little filly enjoying Maya’s Easter basket. In front of the mirror. Seriously, H@sbro, who designs your baskets*?

*I didn’t buy this basket. My mother-in-law bought it for Maya 2 or 3 years ago. I didn’t even notice what the little pony was doing until I saw her watching herself in the mirror with that look in her eye.

P.S. Don’t ask me what Maya’s basket was doing in the bathroom. Nobody wants to know.

I’m sure life will go on as usual around here while we’re reveling, but whatever.

If I were the sort who sent out Christmas cards, I would totally send you one. But I’m not anymore because, for me, it’s all about the kid picture and my kids are all over the internets between here, Kids Know Stuff, and our Flickr page, so I don’t even bother anymore unless you’re an old person who doesn’t have the internet. Then you get one. If you got one and you didn’t know you were old, now you know.

I do like to give my brother and sister a holiday card, though, so I went to someecards.com and made one for them. It was inspired by true events. I’ll share it with you:

” alt=”MCMF” />

We laugh, my family and I. And we laugh more when we drink. And we drink more when we laugh. It’s a vicious circle. Or a vicious cycle, depending on who you ask. Or whom. Whatever. I should be packing.

If I were a good person, I would have written something more like this, which when I found it in my inbox today from my friend Melissa, made me cry a little. So you all should watch this and pretend I wrote something like it for you. Because I would have. If only I had a soul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_4qwVLqt9Q

We’re in Chesaning right now, so I haven’t had time to really think about a post or anything, but every once in a while my brain goes, “How in the hell do we trample a Wal-Mart worker on Black Friday?”

I’ll admit my bias here: I worked retail for 5 years and, since then, I’ve never set foot in a store on the day after Thanksgiving. To me, there’s no sale worth that hell. I feel so strongly about this that I really believe that if it came down to Black Friday sales being the only way Christmas could happen in the Aldrich house, then Christmas would have to wait. I don’t like it. I don’t like that they advertise a super-huge deal on something fancy and then only stock 4 of them. That makes people want to kill each other, so maybe we shouldn’t do that. I don’t know.

Anyway, my brother-in-law’s dad died the day before Thanksgiving so we’re up here for his funeral today. And the snow is all piled up. Incidentally, piled-up snow is another thing I don’t like. Feeling curmudgeonly today, apparently.

Something I do like: Going to Dave’s Bar with my sister and brother-in-law and reminiscing about his dad. My brother-in-law is the youngest in his family, so he’s definitely more like an older brother to a couple of his of-age nephews who were at the bar, too. It was lovely to hear these men speak with such affection and, at times, derision (in a good way) about the family patriarch. Rolly will be missed, but he has most definitely left an enduring legacy of humor and sweetness that can be seen in all of his grandkids. Especially my sister’s kids. I’m super biased like that. I wish they were old enough to hang out at the bar with us. I told my sister they could because I used to when I was little and nothing’s wrong with me, but for some reason, she laughed at that. It wasn’t really a laugh, it was more of a “HA!” I don’t get it.

I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving for lots of reasons, but my number one happy reason is because, after it’s all over, then I can stop screaming obscenities at my car radio every time I inadvertently come across one of the stations that plays all Christmas music, all the time. It started on November 1st and I’m too lazy to re-set my pre-sets, so I keep stumbling upon effing Christmas music. Since the day after Halloween. It’s not right. And I will stab somebody. I know I should be thinking about effing Christmas. I know I have to buy people stuff. I know, I know, I know. I don’t need stupid songs to remind me. Kids Know Stuff is backfiring for me because, while I’m getting good gift ideas for my kids, my kids already have the stuff because they had to review it. I should’ve thought this through a little better. It works out well for you, though, because you could win a bunch of cool DVDs from my kids. You’re so selfish. I would try to win them, too, but my kids already have them. I can’t even re-wrap them for Christmas because that might be a touch meaner than usual.

This Thanksgiving, I’ll be running the Turkey Trot 5-miler for the 3rd year in a row. This year is different, though, because Mechelle won’t be here (boo!), and my husband is running it with me (yay!) Bryan is a natural sprinter; he does not “try to kill himself” by running more than a few miles at a time at super-sonic speed. The one time he tried to run with me, he had to shorten up his stride so much in order to stay slow that he got injured. I’m slow and short, with no competitive edge, enabling me to run long(ish) distances without ever having a heart attack. He’s fast, tall, competitive, and generally has ants in his pants, so it’s hard for him to pace himself. This should be interesting. The best part is, I don’t have to use my endorphins as energy for cooking Thanksgiving dinner because Kristen is doing that! Isn’t she sweet? That means I’ll be able to use that energy high for things like drinking. And pouring drinks. Should be fun. Also, Kristen‘s husband and son are running with Bryan and me. I hope they remember to wait for me when it’s over. And I hope Bryan doesn’t weep because he doesn’t come in first. The last time he ran races regularly, he usually came in first and colleges watched him and sent him letters promising money to him for the pleasure of enjoying his long, lean legs and his powerful stride. Or something like that. That’s him winning. *sigh*

]]> http://sundayswithstretchypants.com/index.php/2008/11/two-more-days-until-i-can-stop-hating-christmas-music/feed/ 7 http://sundayswithstretchypants.com/index.php/2008/11/our-parents-are-old/ http://sundayswithstretchypants.com/index.php/2008/11/our-parents-are-old/#comments Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:11:05 +0000 Abby http://sundayswithstretchypants.com/?p=443 And it’s a little bit freaky. Because they’ll die and then we’re next.

Bryan’s dad turned 59 on Monday and Bryan and I talked all night about how that’s almost 60 and we remember when our parenst were 33 and 34 and weren’t they old? Yeah, but we’re not old, right? Nah! And our kids will be doing this when they’re in their 30s and they’ll talk about us like we’re about to die and that’s not cool! Those kids are mean! Let’s wake them up and beat them, thus proving our youthfulness. They’ll remember that, I bet!

My parents will be 60 in January and April. They’ve never seemed old before, but 60? It seems kind of old. Not because they’re old, but because I’m too young to have parents in their 60s. It’s about me! My parents were 26 when I was born, which is pretty young, so if they’re old, I’m old. It’s only logical.

Speaking of my parents, do you know that I still know the phone numbers to all of the bars in Chesaning, even the ones that are closed now (I’m looking at you Rathskellar and Farmers Inn) and the golf course? And of course Dave’s Bar, which has outlasted them all. I do. Because I used to call them a lot when I was a little girl. (No, not to order stuff, but if you know me in real life, I can see how you would think that). I’m not judging, but I can’t imagine a scenario in which my kids regularly had to call me or my husband at the bar. My parent shame would be unbearable and my wife rage would be, well, extremely unpleasant. Like the kind of unpleasant where you say, “Wow, this gunshot wound is extremely unpleasant.” But I guess if our kids had to call us at the bar, they would just call our cell phones and it wouldn’t suddenly hit them in adulthood that they know all of the phone numbers to the bars where they grew up. I guess that means we should go to the bar more often. Then we can forget about all of this oldness nonsense. Problem solved.

Adding to the oldness problem is a little theory that Bryan and I have. We believe that if you had kids before you turned 30, then you have to add the age of your oldest child to your actual calendar age and that gives you your true, social age. So we’re not 33 and 34. We’re 42 and 43, socially. It’s true. When we hang out with real 33 and 34 year olds, we have no idea what we’re doing. None. They talk differently. They drink differently. They care about different things. If they have children at all, they probably only have one so they’re still operating under the illusion that their child is interesting to other people. And it’s awkward when we laugh at them when they tell us their 18 month old is gifted. Because we think they’re joking, but they’re not. And then they think we’re mean, which we are, but that isn’t the point. The point is, we’re way older than everybody our age. And we’re all going to die. And now I have to take pictures again.