Resolute

While not typically one for resolutions, I did make one come the morning of the first day of the New Year:

I will not drink at a party to the point that upon waking the next morning I pray for the gods of pain to quit fucking around and just finish me off already.

I'm a realist kids; well, I'm a dreamer-slash-realist, so let's say that I'll TRY not to drink that much. I don't like to set myself up for failure this quickly into a fresh year.

While I was whiling away my time in my own hangover hell, I was reminded of something that a friend with a newborn had said to me years ago. This guy had agreed to let four of us stay in his house, four very accomplished drinkers - and when I say very, I don't mean it as a plain and boring descriptive word, I mean it in the sense that if we could find a way to drink for a profession, we would have taken over the world. In many instances, we actually had come to believe we had taken over the world - and he admirably tried to keep up. Commenting on the care for his infant while hungover, he equated it to the Trainspotting junkies and the dead baby.

That comparison always felt a little melodramatic to me, but now that I have my own infant to contend with, I can say that it was definitely melodramatic.

I will say that the high pitched shrieking of an upset infant does nothing for the sort of headache that feels like there is foreign, pulsing flesh inside your brain; foreign, alcohol soaked flesh. And I did feel a little guilty at my inability to tend to the little man when it was taking a supreme act of will to not take another death march to the bathroom and view the modest leavings of what I considered "dinner" the night before.

Things settled down, as they always do, and I had a moment to reflect.

Man did I really drink that much? I don't remember drinking that much... There was some mixing, and dude, "beer before liquor, never be sicker". Oh yeah, and you didn't really eat, did you?

Then I reflected some more. I felt lucky for the people I have in my life, happy to be with a beautiful woman who loves me, ecstatic to have a gorgeous son I never expected to have. On top of the above resolution, I tacked on being more diligent about writing outside this blog; I'm hoping that writing it here for all to see and commitments to possible writing partners will nail me to this one. And try to be a good dad, that's a pretty important one.

Oh, there were also resolutions about more cold water swimming and promises to not talk all condescending to people who are really, really stupid.