Feeling: recovered
Listening to: St. James Infirmary
Reading/Watching: Everwood

I must start this story by describing the evils of the Olive Garden's peach sangria.

It seems fruity and cute and utterly innocuous, with its little orange-slice-on-a-stick in the big round wine glass. But last night, when mon coeur ordered a pitcher of the stuff, and I was running on very little sleep and a nearly empty stomach, it packed a wallop.

This is not to say that I've never been drunk before. I have. To a degree that makes two three four glasses of sangria seem laughable. I once drank seven Smirnoff Ices in one sitting. I had enough alcohol on my twenty-first birthday to make my face feel rubbery (I don't even remember how many drinks it was). Last time I visited 6th street, I had nine shots. I was still whipping out six-syllable words, albeit with a few more giggles thrown in.

None of the aforementioned occasions made me feel quite so unbalanced and half-ill. I couldn't finish my dinner, I couldn't focus my eyes, and I had a frightening certainty that any second, I was going to revisit my stuffed chicken limone on the waitress's shoes.

The worst part was that I started to get anxious, since the few times mon coeur and I have had drinks together, he's always gotten tipsy before me. He complains that he's never gotten to see me truly hammered, but it's partially because he always beats me to it and I wind up slowing down to look after him. This time, I was convinced that if I felt this drunk this fast, he was surely suffering it even worse, and he was supposed to be driving us home.

I panicked, and told him not to drink any more (he only had two glasses, I think, and had a full rest the night before), and as a preventative measure, I proceeded to down the remainder of the pitcher, to make sure he couldn't get to it. It was fantastically stupid.

I walked reasonably well (the walls did not tend to bend over to say hello, this is how I know), but I was still very unwell, and I'm not sure how I managed to make it through the evening without chucking the bunny. Mon coeur drove carefully once I blurrily explained the direness of the situation (I have a cast-iron stomach, but it has its limits), and we arrived at his apartment in one piece (well, actually three: me, him, the car).

At this point I made a beeline for his bed and marveled at how nice it felt to lie on my back, all my limbs about as useful as boiled linguine. He had to take off my jewelry for me, and answered my anxious, tangled questions about whether he was all right, whether he minded that I was drunk, and (this one thrown in with some asperity) how much he was enjoying this, because he kept grinning at me.

Next time I'm operating on four hours of sleep, I might decide to avoid alcohol.

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