My Birthday

It was my birthday on Wed.  I turned 53.  It was a very long day.  My company is hosting about 200 of it’s most important customers about an hour away from my house.  Most people were staying in hotels but I just commuted for the event.  Tues had run very late.  We had dinner with a group of customers and I didn’t get home until about 11:00.

Dinner with colleagues and customers is pretty interesting.  Because of my situation at home, living with an alcoholic,  I am very aware of the drinking that goes on.  I see some people filling up their wine glasses over and over and others not so much.  I’m aware of people who don’t drink and I wonder if they are alcoholics that are in recovery or just don’t drink.

I never drink at those dinners but I don’t want to give anyone the impression that I don’t drink.  I know that’s kind of funny.  I always have my wine glass filled early in the meal, take a couple of sips, then don’t touch it the rest of the night.  One time, we ran out of wine and one of the people eating dinner with us asked if he could drink my wine.  There’s a problem drinker.

On Wed I left the house about 6am to get to the meeting in time.  All day with the customers, ninety minutes in heavy commute traffic and I finally got home.  I knew she and the kids were planning something for my birthday, they always do.

I walked in the house around 6:30 and found her passed out in the back bedroom.  It looked to me like she was out for the night.  I changed and went to the other room and found the kids.  They were making a special dinner for me, home-made spaghetti and coleslaw!  It was awsome.

They cooked for about 45 minutes and we got ready for dinner.  I was surprised to see her wonder in the room.  She was drunk, but could still sort of function.  We had my birthday dinner and opened a few presents.  Best was the fuzzy dice for my restored project car that I’ve almost finished.  She didn’t say or eat anything the entire dinner.  She just sat there.

She disappeared after dinner into the back room to pass out again.  I didn’t even see her go, I just noticed that she was gone.  I went into the back and saw she had crawled into bed.  Again, I figured she was out for the night.

The kids and I had some birthday cake.  They sang to me, lit candles and we all had huge pieces.  She missed it because she was passed out.

After cake we went into the living room to watch a movie, Ghosts of Mars.  It was pretty bad but I told the kids they had to watch it with me since it was my birthday.

We were all surprised when we saw her walk into the room.  She had a piece of cake with her and the kids all immediately yelled “no food in the room”.  That’s my rule to try to keep our nice couch and rug clean.  She just make a strange noise and went and sat at the desk.  She mumbled “I won’t spill” but she was so drunk it was hard to understand.

Sure enough, after about 2 bites, the rest of the cake fell off the desk onto the floor.  She was too drunk to pick it up.  One of the twins immediately looked at me and asked me if I wanted her to clean it up.  I said no and called the dog over to eat the cake.

After a few minutes, she decided to go back to sleep.  I watched her struggle to walk across the room but she made it into the back bedroom and passed out for the night.