In drinking years, I belong to AARP

So I'm hungover today. I fail at not drinking, although to be fair:

1) It wasn't even that much
2) I drank a lot of water in between
3) It was Saturday

So this morning my head was like "You need to keep sleeping BUT I'm going to hurt so you can't, haha!"

And then I was like "Well, fuck you then, I'm going to take some Advil," but my stomach was like "Not if you want to keep it down" and I knew it meant it, so I just had bacon instead. But then my stomach was like "I'm hungry/I'm full/Drink juice/Ack, nono not juice!" and honestly it's just a little ridiculous.

I think they need to lower the legal drinking age to 18 or 19, and I don't care about all the "real" reasons people always cite when debating the point. It needs to be a thing because face it, your years of being able to drink-drink are pretty limited. It would be like if you had to be 30 before you could play professional football - your peak's been wasted. Just like athletes set their career records in their 20s (at least, I assume they do, honestly I don't care about sports so I'm not sure) all of your crazy drinking stories happen when you're young. Once you pass 25, you will never again drink from a funnel or a comically oversized boot glass, shotgun a warm Heineken (so at least there is that silver lining), or even be able to hear the word "fireline" without instantly throwing up in your mouth.

After 25, You'll play beirut (beer pong for those of you that are doing it wrong) in a desperate attempt at a college throwback, and secretly dump most of the beer into the bushes when no one is looking. You'll have to take shots in two gulps and then rub your stomach for ten minutes before even thinking about taking another sip of your beer. You'll buy a 30-rack of beer when your friends come over, only to discover 22 cans of it still sitting on your back porch when you dig out the snow shovels 7 months later. You'll actually have the same bottle of whiskey in your house for so long it starts to taste better eventually. Or maybe you won't do any of those things, but I do and this isn't really your blog anyway, is it?

When I was somewhere around 22, the hubby (then bf) and I split a bottle of absinthe with maybe three or four friends, and we killed it by 10am the next day with the old hair of the dog shot. Now I can't even look at a bottle of that green shit in the liquor store without wanting to vomit and take a nap (not simultaneously, that would be dangerous - I know this because the mandatory "welcome to college, please don't die this semester" freshman class told me so).

Now it's like, someone mentions that whole "hair of the dog" thing and I'm like "omg are you joking? I am never drinking again" which is always completely 100% true. It's just that sometimes, "again" just means "today".

It's hard to accept being drinking-old though, especially when I'm still young for all other purposes. Sometimes I still buy a six-pack of beer thinking I'm going to drink it all on my day off, and instead I watch Netflix and then go to bed at 11. I drink nothing but bottled water all day, or, if I'm feeling adventurous and the expiration date is approaching, maybe I'll go wild and have a glass of milk.

I remember meeting people who were in their mid-20s to early 30s when I was 22 (I feel like I was 22 for like 5 years, is that weird? It's like when I tell stories about when I was a kid and in every single one I'm like "so I was like 11, and...") and anyway, they would tell me how they don't really party anymore, and I'd think they were boring people who didn't like to have fun. I thought of my drinking future in the exact same way that I thought about Disney World when I was a kid, like "Wow, I really hope that when I'm older I will still want to go to Disney World... I hope I don't decide it's lame and only for little kids," except it was more like "I hope when I'm nearing thirty I still think it's fun to play Asshole until I pass out in my chair... I hope I don't decide it's lame and only for college kids" And all I can say in response to that is "well, at least I still do want to go to Disney World."

Maybe the saddest part is that just when I've finally retained knowledge of the rules to drinking card games into the next day, I'm at the stage of my life where being the one that gets fucked by the table actually is kind of a bad thing. (If you didn't get that reference, you probably never played cards with a joker as the 5 of hearts on a coffee table with Jack Daniels ripples in it, and you have no idea what you missed out on.)

I don't know exactly when it happened, but sometime after my 25th birthday, "going out for a few beers" actually became a literal thing and not a downplayed euphemism for getting shitfaced. Sometimes, when you're young, "a few" means "a lot" - usually on the same days that "again" means "today".

I just realized this blog is full of vomit references and random tangents but it is about drinking, so I think it's perfectly appropriate and I'm not changing it. Also, I'm lazy. You're lucky I blogged at all. I pretty much only bothered because my Chromebook was already on my living room couch and the Game of Thrones facebook game wouldn't load.

I think there's also a possibility that I'm being pessimistic about my drinking abilities because I was up until 5am and slept on a couch with my earrings still on, because none of this in any way diminishes my desire to go to Mardi Gras in New Orleans next year.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I am officially drinking-old, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to drinking-retire. I think I'm up for the beerquivalent of bagging groceries in my old-man orthopedic shoes ten hours a week for something to do. Maybe I'll even wink at the cute vodka bottle working the checkout register.