Thanksgiving Troubles

                Since my last post was about the night before Thanksgiving, I feel like it’s only appropriate to make this post about Thanksgiving (obviously, well after Thanksgiving though because I don’t quite understand how “fashionably late” works).   What should be more impressive to everyone is that I’m making this post only a day after my last one (don’t get used to it; I can’t handle that kind of pressure).

                When we last left off I was a drunken idiot passed out on the floor of my room.  Thankfully (haha, it’s Thanksgiving, get it?), the drunkenness had worn off by the following morning and when I woke up I was just a sober idiot.  I had 4 stops to make on Thanksgiving and for the most part, everything that day went rather smoothly; until I got to my 3^rd stop, my dad’s house.

                As you already know, I put considerable amounts of alcohol in my body the previous night.  I also didn’t make the healthiest choices with my meals that day.   Couple all the garbage I had put into my system on Wednesday with the enormous amounts of food that I was ingesting on Thursday, and by the time I reached my dad’s house, my gastrointestinal system was under a good deal of stress.   Since everyone else was in the basement, I went to the upstairs bathroom seeking some sweet relief.  I don’t need to go into detail here (because I don’t want to drive away any more readers), but suffice to say that I was a gentleman about everything and courtesy flushes were had.

                Now is where we arrive at the problem.  I’ve finished up and I’m feeling like a new man.  I flush the toilet and watch and the last remnants of toilet paper swirl around before being sucked down the hole…and then they stop.  Halfway down the hole.   I’ve managed to clog the toilet in the middle of Thanksgiving.  At this point, I’m disappointed (and disgusted) in myself but I’m not overly worried.   The water is running but I figure I’ll just wait for the water to stop and give it another flush, hopefully clearing up the problem.  I waited and watched as the water rose, waiting for tank to stop filling so I could remedy the issue.

I never got that opportunity.   I have never in my life before seen a toilet that fills up with enough water to overflow with one flush, but the water in this toilet had absolutely no intention of shutting off.  And this is where the panic started setting in.  As I watched the water level rise closer and closer to the top of the bowl, I realized that I was in trouble.  Frantically, I scanned around the bathroom for a plunger.  Behind the toilet? Nope.  In the towel closet? Nope.  Under the sink? Nope.  I couldn’t find a plunger anywhere and by this time the water had filled the bowl and was now creeping up the lip around the toilet.    A breech was imminent, I had no time!  I scrambled back to the toilet and reached behind it in a desperate attempt to shut off the water, but the knob was jammed.

With mere seconds to spare, I was almost completely out of options.  Almost.  I grabbed the toilet-cleaning wand from its holder and thrust the handle into the wad of toilet paper.  I stabbed at it with the desperate intensity of a knight thrusting his sword deep into the heart of a dragon.  And I prevailed.   The toilet paper was vanquished and the water level in the toilet quickly receded.  I had a real need to wipe the sweat from my brow, but I thought it was more important to wash my hands first.

There was some minor spillage due to the high water level, but I wiped that up with the bath mat.

-Ryan

Wasted Wednesday

                A few months ago I wrote a post about how I’m not a raging alcoholic, despite thefact that I have a lot of fun stories about drunken shenanigans.  One of the points I made in that post was that I only binge drink on weekends and holidays like a responsible adult.    Well, recently we had a holiday that ended up giving me one hell of a story to tell.

                Some of you may be aware of Wasted Wednesday.  It’s the day before Thanksgiving and it’s a hugely popular night to go out to the bar because everyone is back in town and there’s nothing to do the next day except be lazy and eat (which is pretty basic stuff, even for someone with a hangover).  It also happened to be the end of 24 straight days of work for me, so I was bound and determined to go out with my friends and unwind.  So, after a few pre-game beers at our apartment, my roommates (Kyle & Knuckles) and I walked over to the bar.

                We got to the bar and ran into a couple more of our friends, Düdders and AJ, and prepared ourselves for a night of revelry.  As expected, the bar was absolutely packed and it was taking forever to get drinks.  My solution to this was to order 2 drinks right away, then just keep cycling back to the bar once my first drink was empty (by the time I was able to order another drink the 2^nd one was inevitably empty).  In one respect, this worked out fantastically as I was never without a drink.  The problem with this is that whenever I have a drink in my hand or food in front of me I forget that moderation is a think and just continue to fill my face.

                My strategy for keeping my thirst continually quenched proved to be my downfall and at around 1:30 I decided that I was way too drunk to still be in public.  Without saying a word to anyone, I paid my tab and left the bar still carrying a drink in my hand.  I walked back to my apartment set my still-full drink on the kitchen table, heading towards my room.  Unfortunately, the walk from the kitchen to my bedroom was too much for me to handle.  I made it as far as the door to my room before I realized I’d have to make base camp and try for the summit in the morning. 

                I have absolutely no idea in what order everyone else arrived at the apartment because I was not conscious when they arrived.  But I do know that my friends found me lying face down on the floor in front of the door to my room.  AJ and Düdders, with the best intentions, took my shoes off and carried me to my bed.   This movement was apparently more than my body could handle as the entire world began rapidly spinning and I demanded a trash can.  As I expelled everything in my stomach into that trash-can, I kept shouting about how disappointed I was in myself.  Cries of “This is my own fault,” “I did this to myself,” and “I deserve this” rang out through the apartment in between heaves. 

                Kyle was sent to retrieve another trash bag, but found himself too drunk and disoriented to remember where we keep them.  After standing in the kitchen confused for a few moments, he decided that he needed to make a pizza instead.  This never happened either, as he fell down in the kitchen and wisely decided that he should probably just stay there on the floor. 

                Still in an absolute delirium, I now demanded a roll of paper towels.  Düdders and AJ obliged, handing me the whole roll, which I curled up with like a pillow, intent on going to sleep.   But the bed was clearly not where that was going to happen.  I started on the floor and that was where I intended to end up; I crawled out of my bed to the floor, still carrying my roll of paper towels, and drifted peacefully off to sleep.

Düdders, exhausted from the pure dipshittery of the night, decided just to pass out on the couch in the living room as it was equidistant between me passed out on the floor of my room and Kyle passed out on the kitchen floor. Before he left, AJ walked into Knuckles’ room to check on him, announcing “I found Ryan in a pile on the floor and figured if he was that bad, you had to be dead.”

                I think it’s worth noting that the last time I was that inebriated was when I was 21 years old and was going through my first break-up with alcohol as a therapeutic aid (I’ve since learned that the gym is a much better therapist).    Not sure what the hell I was doing on Wasted Wednesday, but at least I had the sense of mind to blame myself for being such a drunk-ass.

                Also, Knuckles is still alive too.

-Ryan

Winter Sucks, Too

                I think everyone is perfectly clear on how I feel about fall by now.  Strangely, after I took the time to go on a tirade about how terrible fall is, we actually had several weeks of very nice weather.  It made me look like an asshole.  Well, now the fall I’ve come to expect from the Midwest has hit and it’s just as terrible as usual.  Cold, miserable and we’ve even managed to get some snow already.  In fact, this morning I had to dig my car out of a hunk of ice.   Once I was finally able to get my car-sicle moving, my usual 45 minute drive took 2.5 hours thanks to the numerous ice-related accidents.  So, even though it’s not actually winter yet it sure as hell feels like it.  That’s why I felt it was time to make another post about my inability to handle seasonal changes.  So here’s 5 Reasons Why Winter Sucks and You Should Hate it:

1)      It’s Cold

If you haven’t noticed, winter is cold.  Much colder than the times of the year that don’t suck, like spring and summer.  I go outside and it’s cold.  I come inside and I’m still cold.  I have to make the conscious effort to start my car before I go anywhere because it’s cold.  When I take out the trash it’s cold.  When I get the mail it’s cold.  Everything is cold and it’s miserable.  I’ve heard people say “I prefer the cold because you can always put on more layers, but you can only take off so much if you’re hot.”  You know what?  I don’t even care about the logic behind that because it’s still stupid.  Here’s a great example of what that sort of thinking turns into:

If you like this, you’re insane. 

2)      There’s Snow

A lot of people get really excited about snow.  It seems like most of them are excited about how pretty it looks.  If that’s the entire reason that you like snow, I suggest you just Google pictures of snow or buy a snow globe because snow sucks.  It’s cold, it’s wet, it’s miserable to drive in and I hate it.  It turns a normal morning commute into Mad Max because everyone suddenly forgets every skill they learned in acquiring their driver’s license.  Maybe someday we’ll have roads that automatically melt the snow on them, but until that day comes snow is awful.  And while you’re digging your car out of all the snow it’s fucking cold outside.

3)      There’s Ice

Ice is snow’s asshole brother.   As terrible as it is driving in snow, ice is infinitely worse.   Snow makes your car unable to go.  Ice makes it unable to stop.  If you find ice with your tires, there’s a good chance you’re gonna be camping out in a ditch.  If you find ice with your shoes, there’s a good chance you’re gonna bust your ass.  If you find ice in your drink, it’s probably okay but that’s really the only situation where I’m cool with ice (see that awesome pun?).  That and hockey; I love hockey.  But ice can go straight to hell (where it will presumably melt and be water, which is far more agreeable).  And again, remember that while you’re busy scraping all the ice off your car and struggling to unfreeze the doors that it’s fucking cold outside.

4)      Obligations

In the midst of all of this cold, snow and ice we find ourselves with a ton of obligations and reasons to go out in this crappy weather:  picking up food for holiday dinners, going shopping for gifts, putting up holiday decorations, going to several different houses to visit for the holidays.  All of this in addition to the everyday obligations like going to work, getting groceries, taking out the trash and standing outside your crush’s house while holding a boom box that’s blaring In Your Eyes (I assume this is a normal occurrence for other people, too).  If I could work from home, skype in to my family gatherings and afford to have somebody else do all my grocery shopping for me so that I could stay inside in my pajamas I totally would (I would still brave the elements for the boom box situation though, because that’s what love is all about).  I think everyone has had at least one 2-week span of their life where they had like 3 weddings, 5 birthdays and a bar mitzvah going on; but it’s pretty much like that level of busy for everyone from mid-November to the beginning of January, which brings me to my next point.

5)      It Hasn’t Even Started

Yes, I’m aware that winter doesn’t actually begin until the 21-22 of December.  I’m angry about winter already and it’s not even winter yet.  We’ve already had the cold, ice and snow.  We’re right in the heart of the aforementioned obligations.  So, this means that after a miserable lead-up to the first day of winter, you get to start off the season with some of the most hectic days of the year when you’re already tired of all the torment that’s associated with winter.  And once everyone is just getting a chance to settle down from running themselves ragged with holiday obligations, it’s just in time for the bulk of winter to hit.  Guess what you’re getting for Christmas.  More winter.  Guess what you have to look forward to in the new year.  More winter.  When you’re a month and a half deep into the crippling depression that is winter, guess what you’re getting for Valentine’s day.  More winter.  And loneliness (unless the boom box thing actually works. Fingers crossed).

-Ryan