Oldening, debauchery, and yarn!

Sorry for the long radio silence.  I haven’t a good excuse, except that some of my current knitting is secret, but even that isn’t a good excuse, as I have plenty of non-secret knitting going on as well.

I’m 30 now, which sounds awfully much like a true full on adult.  However, I didn’t behave much like an adult on the day itself.  Some background is needed.

I’ve always been a party animal, if by “party animal” you mean, “chick who left the party with drinking going on early and went to a friend’s house to drink hot chocolate”.  I’m the kid who never needed the after school specials because I was too busy wandering about, blithely being a goody two shoes without even trying.  Oh yeah.  I was fun.

These days, I go out for a cocktail once a month with fellow knitters, and in between, I drink wine with dinner a few times a month.  I enjoy the occasional alcoholic beverage, but I’m still not much of a drinker.

So, anyway, on the actual day of my thirtieth birthday, my sister called me up and said she wanted to take me out for a drink when I had some time.  I’d had a quiet day at home with a somewhat sick child, so I said I could go out that evening.  After a dinner of Mexican-Afghani food (it exists!) and a big slice of peach pie (cake is inferior to pie) my sister and a couple of her friends came around to pick me up.

So, we get to the bar and a man greets us with the news that the bartender is currently taking a short break, but should be back soon.  He informs us that he can sing like a wookie, and would we like to hear it?  Erin (my sister) tells him that it’s my thirtieth birthday, and he congratulates me, tells me I don’t look a day over thirty, and then proceeds to sing as a wookie.  I don’t quite know how to describe this, except that it was a song, with lyrics changed to be more wookie-ish, punctuated with wookie yelps.

The bartender comes back in and I order some sort of incredibly girly drink involving Hendrick’s gin, crushed cucumber, muddled mint, tonic water, and lime.  The lime’s a little overdone, but it’s nice and cucumbery.  We move to the couches, and then I make a critical mistake and order as my second drink the only other cocktail I know I like: a dirty vodka martini.  These are good, but don’t go very well with cucumbery refreshing drinks.

Anyway, once the bartender hears that it’s my birthday, the martini is on the house.  Oh, and they use the best vodka they’ve got.  It’s all very nice, and I sip my martini and regale my companions with tales of giving birth, which are no doubt scintillating and well modulated and just what folks drinking in a bar want to hear.

At this point, I’ve reached my limit and am aware of it.  However, Erin and friends say they want to buy me another drink, and in a combination of being grateful and being stupid, I say, “Sure, anything, as long as it’s not too sweet!”

Shortly thereafter I am the proud recipient of a Cosmopolitan.  This is pink and tastes of grapefruit, and really, really does not go well with a dirty vodka martini.  I drink it.  I do not especially like it, but, since my judgment is now impaired, it becomes crucial to me not to criticize what is, in effect, a birthday gift.  I say I like it a lot.

At this point, I can tell that I am yelling some of the time, but I’ve either become really, really witty, or really, really stupid, and I can’t tell the difference.  The more I drink, the more similar these two things seem.  I wander into the bathroom and the world begins a graceful tilt to the left.  I walk into the wall, the toilet, the sink, but somehow manage to wash my hands and get back to the couch.

And this is when I lose all sense of perspective and say, “Sure!” to another Cosmo.  I know I’m being loud and weird and unbalanced and that I didn’t like the last Cosmo I had, but hell yeah, I want another one!

I drink the fourth drink and now my witty conversation turns into pretty much a mantra: “I’ve never drunk this much in my life, never,” repeated over and over again at a slow but steady pace.

Erin and company help me out to the car, and I continue to repeat my mantra all the way home, punctuated with commentary on what I can see out the car window.  I am now rendered completely stupid, like I’ve had a liquid lobotomy, but I feel good, very cheerful.

Erin delivers me to a bemused Mr. Kninja, and they laugh a bit and then Erin takes off.  Mr. Kninja takes me to our room and is attempting to help me get into pajamas when suddenly, I no longer feel cheerful.  At all.  I feel very, very sick.  Before I can move, the drinks, the pie, the Mexican-Afghani food – it all begins a return journey.

Mr. Kninja drags me to the bathroom where I spend a good half hour or so worshipping at the altar of the porcelain god.  He later tells me that during this time he talked to me about Nixon and Haldermann, assuring me, puzzlingly, that this was the only thing that made sense to do.  I do not hear him.  I hear only my new mantra, repeated fervently and with absolute conviction every moment spared from retching.  It is, “People do this?  For fun??  Why do they do this?”

The bathroom is spinning so fast that I feel like I’m on Hell’s Teacup Ride.  I spend what seems an age there, and then, in a development I only partially remember, I drag myself into the hall and collapse.  Mr. Kninja finds me there and tries to get me to bed, but I wave him off, saying, “Please, please, I don’t want to throw up again.”  He gives up and covers me with a blanket.

You can imagine the next morning.  I wake up with my first ever hangover.  Serving a glass of milk to Nora causes me to run to the bathroom and throw up again.  The world remains unsteady all day, despite the fact that I’m drinking a lot of water and trying to eat small amounts of salty foods.  As a matter of fact, the hangover lasts for two days.  Poor Erin calls and feels very guilty, having never suspected that I am both a wuss and totally stupid.

So that’s how, on my thirtieth birthday, when I was definitively old enough to know better, I got absolutely shitfaced for the first (and hopefully only) time in my life.  A number of people have since told me, “Well, you have to experience it at least once in your life.”  I strongly, strongly disagree.  I do not think I ever needed to experience that.  The only upside I can see is that any speeches I later deliver to the kids on the dangers of binge drinking will acquire a realism and fervency that I never understood the need for before.  Oh, and now I know that my limit is two.

I promised (pictorial) yarn in my title for those who sat through this tale of debauchery, so here it is: My prizes from the Malabrigo Junkies contest arrived, much to my delight, and I’m enjoying them muchly.  (Two pictures are taken with a birthday present from my dad: a new camera lens!  I’m wanting to use it all the freaking time, and I apologize to my Flickr/Ravelry friends for all the new stuff I’m inflicting on them in a constant barrage as a result.)

Silky in Viena

Sock in test color, possibly Indiecita

Worsted in "Purple Lime" which is neither purple, nor lime

Nora requested a “circle blanket” out of the last, and so I started knitting it using EZ’s pi shawl pattern.  It’s pooling something awful and looks terrible, so I asked Nora if I could rip it out and make her a blanket of squares (knit on the bias to break up the color better) but she loves it.  At this point, I’m soldiering forward, but I may keep trying to talk her into squares.  I don’t know very well what to do with highly variegated yarn, but I know this is not it.

The upside is that I can call the blanket Peach Pi.

The reverse side looks a little better, though, so maybe it will be OK.

Peach Pi in reverse

One last thing: Yes, I am farther behind on emails than any person has a right to be.  If I don’t catch up to you, I am very sorry, but it’s truly just gotten ahead of me over the holidays.  I hope you all are well, and I’ll be writing more often and with more depth very soon.