Sober as a judge!

There is a bottle of white wine chilling in our fridge.

It’s been there since Sunday when it had the company of another bottle of white wine. But now it’s all by itself. Quietly chilling away. It won’t be opened tonight so that’s four nights and counting…

I’ve just checked our drinks cabinet (it’s a press). It’s fairly well stocked with spirits and most of the bottles are more than half full. At a moment’s notice, we could whip together a cheeky G&T or a hot whiskey. Even a cosmopolitan, should the mood take us. That all sounds frightfully grown up and responsible, doesn’t it?

Time was, not so long ago, you couldn’t keep a bottle of wine in this house, particularly on a Friday night. Wine was bought for drinking and preferably in one sitting. Leftover wine? Whatthehellisthat? If there were spirits in the house, it was because there was a party. Once the sun was up, if there was anything left it was because someone brought their mother’s ouzo from her holiday in Crete or the bottle of Absinthe smuggled in a suitcase from a messy weekend in Prague.

But now there’s booze in our house. Because we don’t want to drink it. No, we do want to drink it but just in small amounts, with no consequences. The luxury of sleeping off a hangover until well past midday and eating last night’s cold pizza for breakfast is a distant, dry-mouthed memory. In fact, for me the thoughts of having a hangover and having to play blocks or run around the kitchen table in a convoy of choo choo trains is so not fucking funny, I can’t even laugh about it. Also, alcohol makes me want to stay up later because I want to drink more of it. Which means my window of opportunity for sweet, sweet shut eye gets increasingly narrower because morning time is not dictated by me and it just seems like masochism at this stage to purposefully rob myself of sleep. Why would I do that when there’s a little person who does a really great job of that already? Why?

Since I’ve started running on Saturday mornings, having a glass of wine the night before is the equivalent of kicking myself in the stomach before I even get started. In the olden (golden? nah, rose-tinted – these days rock) days, Friday night was WINE NIGHT. After a long week in the office, the thoughts of a big, bowl-sized glass of red wine – or two, three… – was enough to put me in a good mood and boy, did I enjoy it!

Don’t get me wrong, I am still a passionate lover of alcohol. In one former life, I worked as a cocktail bartender and had the privilege of mixing and tasting drinks I could never in a million years afford. I still make a mean mojito and there isn’t a cocktail I can’t make (Try me 🙂 ). In another previous life, a big portion of my work revolved around corporate entertainment and once again, I had the opportunity to indulge in tipples and concoctions that would make my bank manager weep if he thought that credit card bill was mine. They were good times! I genuinely appreciate alcohol and I enjoy a social drink but at the moment the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. And I’ve become a lightweight in the meantime. It took me nearly three hours to drink two glasses of wine with dinner on my birthday. I’m 34!

We’ll be friends again, el vino. But not today, not today.

Is it just me or have I sisters in sobriety?