"are you drinking every night?"

last week, i got an email from my angel of a mother, asking if i was drinking every night. uhh, what? you realize i go to the gym 4 or 5 times a week, and i have to work monday through friday, right? not only that, but i talk to you on the phone at least a couple times a week, at night. do i sound anything but lucid? actually, maybe thats not a good question, since i often seem/sound lucid when hammered.

regardless, i was a little surprised by the email, so i decided to ask her next time she called what had caused the sudden interest/suspicion regarding my imbibing habits (note: i want to type imbibation but im pretty sure thats not a word)

she said she ran into my dad while she was working at the hospital. he was up there for the aforementioned stepmother's hip replacement surgery. they talked briefly, which im sure was awkward b/c thats just how my dad is. out of the blue, he apparently expressed concern over how much (he thinks) i drink...only, he couched it in terms of "i know WE are concerned about his consumption"

my mom said she basically was like um, excuse me? we? consumption? what are you talking about? he said he thinks i drink entirely too much, and he's was worried about it. look, man, i dont need alcohol...it's just that my hands won't stop shaking unless i have that morning beer. and lunchtime whiskey. and pre-gym jager shot (jager bombs and PROTEIN!). sometimes if i forget to make it to the liquor store, im forced to drink listerine. but hey, thats my cross to bear, okay? who are you to judge me?!

all jokes aside, shifta and i joke constantly about how our parents must perceive our drinking habits. since i live a state away, i visit the parents (and the shifta) maybe once every 5-6 weeks at most, not including vacations. every time im in town, i hang out with shifta and whatever other friends and lot lizards we can pull together. we drink. often to excess. okay, always to excess. with this snapshot, it's no wonder our parents must think we're bad influences on each other and that we drink entirely too much. my dad doesnt even know we drink in the MORNINGS of vacations we go on. he has some odd view of the world that isnt at all realistic. oh no, i had 2 drinks on a sunday night. better call an intervention.

i think this entire sentiment sprang from the fact that we went to an OU football game together, and it just so happened to be an early game. for an 1130 kickoff, he wanted to leave at 630 or 7. i told him there was no way i was gonna leave that early. i also mentioned something like "hell, i'll be hungover...or still drunk if we have to leave that early" and of course i drank too much the night before, so im sure i smelled awesome when he came to pick me up. and then i immediately grabbed a few beers when we got down to campus corner to walk around. you know what, dad? i wasnt the only one! i know its crazy, but most of those people were drinking. in fact, i saw many people walking around with their own 12-packs. i think i had 3 or 4 beers total that day. boo hoo.

another interesting twist in this whole thing...every time i go to his house, he or my stepmom offer me beer, wine, or a cocktail. that's one of the first things they say to me. if you legitimately think i have an "issue" i dont think you should foster or facilitate it.

the only question i have at this point is ... do i just start getting bombed around them? show up already drunk to events? or just go stone cold sober around them? i could go either way on this one.

surgery follow-up etiquette, faux pas?

so, my stepmom had hip replacement surgery *snickering* last week...maybe on the 8th or 10th, im not sure. she seems a bit young to need a replacement, especially considering she was not involved in WWE or contact sports at any point that i know of. i guess one leg was longer than the other, so the ball joint really struck the socket hard or something like that. something about me not listening enough, i dont know, i wasnt paying attention.

well, since im such a caring and selfless person, i totally forgot about the surgery since i live in another state and just decided to go on living my life. i didnt call or email her or my dad to check on her status or how the surgery went or anything. this wasnt an intentional omission but by the time i realized she had had surgery, i felt it was too late. so here we are december 15, and i finally got an email from my dad that mentioned the hip surgery, so i felt compelled to ask. side note - for those of you who don't recall, or maybe didnt read it, this is the same dad who emailed me to tell me he was getting married to said stepmom like 5 years ago. its not that we're not close so much as that i hate talking on the phone, and he's not the greatest communicator. but i digress...

fast forward to monday. the gym i go to is owned and operated by a very nice couple in their 40s, javier ("harvey") and venus. venus has some knee ligament problems and needed a major knee surgery to have everything overhauled. her surgery was monday morning, though i dont know what time. well, guess what? i sent harvey a text at 4pm monday afternoon to check on how everything went.

id like to provide some amazing reasoning or rationale for not finding out about my stepmom's surgery within a day or two, while at the same time inquiring about venus's surgery within a few hours, but i cant quite reconcile it. if i had to say, it probably had to do with the severity of the surgeries and maybe the fact that i really like venus and harvey. that isnt to say that i dont like my dad and stepmom, but i see venus and harvey daily, and theyre really great people. so, in a way, theyre like my fort worth surrogate family. its okay, go grab a kleenex, i'll wait.

i'd hate to think there was a little passive-aggressive activity surrounding the no-contact over my stepmom's surgery, but if pressed on that, id probably have to say there was a little of that too. so petty of me...