A sober experiment

Last week we got the great idea to quit drinking. I don’t recall how the decision was made, but I’m guessing it wasn’t made while drinking, because then we would undoubtedly have yelled WE WILL NOT QUIT DRINKING BECAUSE DRINKING IS THE MOST FUN EVER OMG DID I JUST SET MY HAIR ON FIRE? I’m guessing we didn’t decide when we were hungover, because as Irish science has shown, any decision to swear off booze when you’re eating Advil and a four-pound burrito and fries is an invitation to drink not only that night, but the next morning before going to church. Teetotaling proclamations shared with the Internet are also likely to involve tweeting acts of falling off the wagon after a grand total of four hours and quite possibly kissing your yellow lab on the mouth. Yes, I’m looking at you.

Suffice it to say that the decision was made and pinky sworn to and it’s been a week and a half since I last had an alcoholic drink. As I write this, I’m forced to count the days out on my fingers – nine – so I’m taking that as a good sign. I’ve noted that my hands are steady while doing so, bringing with it great comfort that I wasn’t in DEFCON 5 drinking status. Both matter not. I just didn’t like the way I felt. Weekends, while glorious fun, were often spent in partial recovery mode. Repotting plants and cleaning air filters would have to wait. Teeth were not brushed until noon and cat nails were clipped after the couch had been scratched. The days “after” became the back burner of life, a pile of to dos that I’d get to when the date demanded or I’d run out of human or cat food. I knew I was losing that time for relatively no reason. I’d sigh and vow to do better.

I hated the side effect that alcohol had on my speech, not while drinking – when I was a complete laugh riot and the Laroquette of my Night Court – but after. Precious, simple words always escaped me. “I’m amazed that Rob is such a good cook,” I’d start. “How do you think he made that . . .” I’d find myself searching for the word, whatever its elusive self was, scanning the walls and skies and faces of my comrades for a clue. “That purple thing,” I’d motion with my hands. “The long, firm purple thing,” I’d continue, knowing full well that everyone at the table now assumed I was talking about Rob cooking his own penis. “Eggplant?” someone would finally offer, relieving my momentary anxiety and reminding me that I had little mastery over my first language. How I hated that.

I hated too that drinking left its marks on my face. I may not put salt on my food, but I love it in all things I eat. Tortilla chips, pickles, ketchup. Salt is one of the gifts Oprah gave us, and I’m not shy about licking it from containers and the skin of sweaty homeless men. Combine this with a relatively steady intake of wine, and my face was starting to resemble a baby leg, not the smooth and sweet parts, but that bit from the thigh to the upper calf, the part that when mushed together looks like a head made of sausage, one with black dots for eyes and, in short order, a burrito and fries for a mouth. Bloated is a word used to describe dead bodies and celebrity faces, and wasn’t something I wanted to remember fondly over pictures of me in my thirties. “Grandma Kris?” some wee kid clearly not of blood relation would someday ask. “Were you related to John Belushi?”

I’m now listening, watching, trying to see what sobriety can show me. For example, did you know that Saturday mornings start before 11 am? THEY DO. In fact, there is an entire segment of society that is up and at it before 9, some as early as SEVEN, some picking up freshly brewed coffee while others chastise their children directly under your apartment window. People also run at these hours and cycle and make pancakes from scratch and grocery shop, things I’d avoid doing with even the mildest hangover. After all, hangovers demand easy. They’re the result of bad decisions that only translate into more, into food ordered in, calls left unreturned, unread library books abandoned on the night table, early afternoons spent zoned out on the couch. The evenings are similar. When you aren’t drinking, you have lots of time to do those things that you always complained were out of time’s reach. You do laundry. You write letters to friends; you return emails. You watch television shows that require more than the knowledge of four sexual bases and pick out clothes for the next day’s event. On rare occasions, you iron and remove toothpaste stains from the mirror before they eclipse the view of your entire face. “This must be how people are able to raise children,” I said two days ago, completely without a hint of sarcasm. When you’re sober, you’re able to do.

When you’re sober, you’re also able to feel. I was more than slightly anxious about attending a weekend social event without a drop of booze in my system, not because I’m generally so hammered I can’t function, but simply because I am used to it. Drinking is what I know. A summer night often consists of a cheese plate eaten on a patio, surrounded by friends and loud laughter and a cloud of humidity, accompanied by at least a drink or two. It’s nights like these on which conversation flows and so does my wit. When in social drinking mode, everything involves less effort. Topics seem to spring to mind and comebacks are at times two deep. Without wine, I worried I might be dull, my jokes might fall flat, I might have less to say and much more space in which to say it. This is a hard spot for those who cart around undiagnosed social phobias. It’s taxing enough to worry about being accepted as I’m used to being. Subtract my norm from the equation? I might as well be naked on my high school auditorium stage. And not in the good way.

I felt awkward that night, to be sure, slightly separated from the crowd and more than a little bit ancient, the older woman who decided to climb up on that wagon. There isn’t a way around it. I felt like a bit of a chaperone, the one who realized that even those two beers deep might be irritating folks nearby, who cautioned the tipsy to watch their literal steps and take Metro home. The pleasant surprise? I was eventually at ease with where I was. I was damn funny, or at least I’ll tell myself I was, and at the end of the day, that’s really all that matters. I downed a baseball park soft pretzel with extra salt and drove home free from the need to conduct blood alcohol analyses in my head. I washed my face and changed into clean pajamas like a real, live human adult. I woke the next morning with enough clarity to know that the cats should get the hell off the bed at 6 fucking a.m.

This won’t last forever, of course. I love the taste of both wine and gimlet and have a passion for indulging in all good things that come along with both. But when I do go back, it will be nice to feel like I’m making a choice, that drinking is more than a mindless go-to like putting on mascara without a mirror or making fun of Miley Cyrus. Drinking is an option, just another part of this bright and silly, glorious life, just like shiny pink nail polishes and guilty pleasure television watched with girl friends. Just like burritos and French fries.

On Not Going to BlogHer

It’s over. BlogHer is over. If you even dipped your toe in the blog pool this weekend, there was no way you could escape it, what with 2,400 estrogen-fueled writers descending on New York City for three days, many of them chronicling every moment of their trip via Twitter. And Facebook. And their blog(s).  And comments on others’ blogs. It was enough to make the gals who stayed home feel a little like misfits. Because BlogHer is made out to be something of a prom, a place where magical things happen and gift bags are bestowed upon the masses. Both are true, of course, but no one ever mentions anything remotely negative. The fact that the vegan hotel options totally blew or that Blogger X was kind of a bitch in person or that thighs all over the great land were sticking to seats courtesy of the great humidity of 2010. So don’t feel too bad if you didn’t make it, because I bet at least two of those things actually happened. There were also quite a few of your peers who didn’t go this year and they will continue to be incredibly popular on the personal blogs they may neglect from time to time. (*cough*) You didn’t go this year, but you will survive.

There are many reasons, however, that you should try to go next round if you couldn’t make this one. The fact of the matter is that for the most part, the conference really is all it’s cracked up to be. It’s become a little like college in my mind: it will be what you make of it. Want to hang with fellow cooks and spend your nights dining out with like-palletted foodies? Can do. Want to see and be on the scene, attending every party known to bloggerkind and sleeping well through the next day’s morning sessions? You will not be alone. Want to build your brand during the day and focus on city sightseeing at night with your family in tow? Your people will be there, too. It’s a big blog world out there.

And those pictures of bloggers gleaming while standing in packs, breast to breast, squeezing: they’re real too. See, like college, these are adults, but unlike college, you know so many of these people even before meeting. You’ve known them through breakups and deaths and marriages and the birth of their babies. You know they hate robots and just what pictures to send them that will keep them up at night. You know one that recently moved in with a beau and another battling her weight loss demons. And all that stands between someone becoming one of your IRL closest is an introduction.

I don’t minimize how difficult it feels to take those first steps. I’m an introvert, a woman much more comfortable alone in my hotel haven than in a room overflowing with hundreds, even some I’ve written with for five years. I’m likely to make a mad dash through the lobby under hat and mustache, signing in under an assumed name. I like my anonymity. After all, that is a reason many of us write here. It’s a place where we can feel welcome and accepted without being known. I just encourage you not to let those fears hold you back. We’re all a part of a tribe, you see, and the vast majority of us feel the same nerves and pangs in the first moments and hours that we’re there. Can we do this? Will they really like me? Chances are if they like you on paper, they’ll like you in person. Jump into the pool and see. What’s there to lose, really?

I did get a giggle over just how neurotic we’ve all become in the weeks leading up to the event – I saw at least five posts pimped in my Twitter stream promising inside information as to what bloggers should pack for the conference. I find this to be pretty funny, folks, because a) I’m quite sure most of these very accomplished women have left their homes before and 2) it’s a conference where you are sure to be surrounded by 90 percent women (most men on site? They came with a woman). That last part is incredibly ironic, and I tweeted to that effect: I would guess that more attendees bought new dresses for a BlogHer 2010 party than for their last big date with their spouse or significant other. According to your tweets, more toenails were painted and eyebrows waxed last week than in all of the last year. Just the facts, people. In the end, it’s all kind of unnecessary. I bet they liked you regardless of that dress. You weren’t wearing it for your first 300 hundred posts, after all.

I’m pleased to see that with the exception of (quite) a few travel travails hit on the way home, most of you had lovely things to print about your experience and your fellow attendees, this year more than ever. For most, their time in NYC seemed to be a fulfilling experience, no matter the path they chose. Women seemed to love meeting the women they’d followed and read for years. The content of the sessions seemed stronger, as well; all the quotes I read from participants let me know that the messages being conveyed were strong and important ones. While things have ended for this year, the recovery, the aftermath, the I’m-home-and-missing-new-friends tweets are reminders of the impact that this community’s members really had on one another. And they make it sting just a little more to not have been there for 2010.

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Tickets to BlogHer 2011, to be held in San Diego, CA next August, are on sale now.

Mad cow

Bobby Flay is making pizza on the Food Network and I’d like to make sweet mouth love to it. It’s a Chicago-style pizza, not my fave, as it’s a well-known fact that only the sluttiest tomato sauce leaves the house without a dressing of cheese. But it’s still pizza, and pizza is nature’s finest food. It’s the combination of sauce, cheese, and bread that does it for me, one I’ve recreated in simpler form on many a drunk night. High fiber bread. Slices of fat free American. An open jar of Prego. Instant satisfaction. It is taking everything in my power for me not to order something in, something that follows this formula, given the extra strong cravings I’ve been having since I found out I was pregnant. It’s also 100 degrees outside, and 82 in the apartment, and this leaves me with little desire to use the bathroom properly, let alone turn on the stove. Both cats are on their backs on the hardwood and I’m spilling out of a sports bra and shorts, and I’ve a wedding to attend in Hawaii in less than two months. No, I will not be eating pizza. And no, I’m not really pregnant.

Truth? I haven’t had meat in 93 days and it’s driving me batty. I made the mistake of watching Food Inc. in an Albany hotel room and I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t recommend the film for those of you who thriving on merry Manwiches. Because trust me on this one, friends: the lambs are, indeed, screaming. The transition hasn’t been as difficult as some make it out to be; the world is full of plenty of awful fruits and vegetables without mothers or faces. There are green beans and green apples, not to mention the green mushrooms which have been sweating in my fridge for over a month. I’m living on pasta and Ohio’s allotment of pizza and lots of things labeled organic, a quest that has resulted in countless hours of Internet research yet little decline in my size. But I miss meat. I miss it so much that I’ve dreamt twice of hamburgers, of well-done beef slathered in multiple cheeses atop a sesame seed bun. The current challenge is not only to find a farm where cows and pigs graze without restraint, but one at which they’re voted Prom King just before dying in their pens. Pens lined with silk sheets and a Gideons Bible. I’m still looking.

I hope to keep this up, just as I do many of the other things I’ve taken on since I last saw you here. Training for a 5K. Allowing myself to open my heart again. I plan to document it all, even in retrospect, because as I’ve found out over the past few months, not writing makes Kris a very, very dull girl.

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