Another softball game, another drinking night. She must have had a bottle in the car because she wasn’t herself at the game. The game ended early and we went to a new hamburger bar downtown. By the time we got to dinner, she was getting obnoxious.
She parked a mile away from the restaurant and decided she had to go ‘move her car’ after we ordered dinner. She came in visibly drunker, probably after some quick snorts in the car. I had ordered a beer and she had a couple of gin and tonics with her meal (they were on special).
When her food arrived, she tried to cut her burger in half and just butchered it and spent the rest of the time at the restaurant bitching about how big her burger was, what a mess it was and how salty it was. She was getting madder and meaner by the minute.
I took the kids home and told them not to antagonize their mother. When we got back to the house, she didn’t want to watch the NCIS we recorded and she put on American Idol, a show she knows I hate. But rather then argue, I laid on the bed and read. She kept cranking that sappy soporific elevator music that they favor on that show and every time she went out to the basement to drink and smoke I would get up and turn it down so I could read in peace. When they announced the winner, she shouted “woohoo!” like a sports fan and clapped and cheered. I got up then to change the channel to Boston Legal, a show we both like. Idol runs overtime and the winner was crooning out some crappy smaltz. She got pissed at me when I changed the channel and said something like, “He is one of us. He is old.” Okay, he is maybe thirty and that was twice as old as his competition, but he certainly is not “one of me.” I made the mistake of saying so and she got even more pissed and choose to go to bed, angry at me.
Once in bed, she started accusing me of liking bad TV (as though Idol isn’t the among the worst of the worst) and started saying something about how I shouldn’t yell at her tomorrow. I told her, “If you don’t start no shit, there won’t be not shit.” She started to fight about that and I just repeated what I said a bit louder and she shut up and passed out.
