Things at Which I Suck: Common Sense

There are some things in life that just do not mix.

Things like electricity and water or fire and gasoline or—as I learned last night—cold medicines and adult beverages.

My Faithful Readers, it pains me to admit this to you, but I am slightly under the weather.

I spent most of my Christmas break surrounded by sick children and in a house full of smoke. Needless to say, my sinuses are not real happy with me right now.

One minute I’m completely stuffed up and can’t breathe and two minutes later my nose is running like a freakin’ sieve. I’ve been using my top-notch doctoring skills and combining pretty much every medicine we have in the house to try and bring an immediate resolution to this situation.

Thus far it has been less than successful.

Anyway, we’ll rewind to yesterday afternoon to set the tone for you; I’d already filled my head up with some nasal spray—an adventure that could have gone better—and prior to that I’d had some Mucinex and then I popped a couple of DayQuil gelcaps later on.

I had zero intention of driving a school bus, operating any heavy machinery or taking care of babies around a wood-chipper or anything, so I figured there wasn’t much chance it’d be a problem for me to throw the medicinal equivalent of a kamikaze at my sinuses.

Then my co-worker invited me and a couple of other peeps out for a beer.

I wasn’t really up for the idea initially, because I’d planned to come home and crash on the couch, finish reading my book and basically be a quasi-sick sloth.

But I am nothing if not a social butterfly and it had been about two weeks or so since I’d really seen any of my co-workers and even longer since I’d enjoyed an adult beverage with ‘em.

I convinced myself that I could go out for a beer or two, stick around for maybe an hour and be home in time for supper and plenty of lazy sicky-time.

The problem with this equation was that I didn’t really factor in the cold medicine. I briefly thought to myself, “Hmmm, I wonder if this will have a reaction?!” and that was really it.

I ordered a water to balance things out when we got there, but the water never came, so I had my first beer and that’s pretty much where my memory of the night ends.

One beer.

I vaguely remember pouring a second beer—hoping it didn’t foam over like the first one did—and I remember some chicken showing up at the table, the wrong chicken to be exact…but after that the rest of the evening goes from super hazy, with random bits and pieces of nonsensical conversation showing up in my mind, to being completely gone.

So, much like the Blackout Friday adventure from a few years back, I’m doing my best to piece the evening together.

Unfortunately, my new(ish) smartphone doesn’t track the time when texts are sent or received, so that didn’t help me figure out the parameters of the evening, luckily the receipt did.

Apparently, we got there a little after 6:30pm and were leaving just after 10pm. That’s not too bad, I was worried I got home at like 2am or something.

It also seems as though we spent a ton of money, which I apparently put on my card, awesome.

I have a tendency to cover the tab for folks, this tendency is exacerbated after a couple of drinks and seemingly goes through the roof after a couple of drinks and ingesting a small pharmacy’s worth of cold medicine.

On the bright side, I also found this random wad of cash stuffed in my pocket.

...was I dancing on tables, again?!

So it looks as though some peeps threw a little cash my way.

That’s awesome.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it was probably pretty obvious I was a little out of it and likely not making the best fiscal decisions. Thanks to everyone who tossed me cash my way.

Unfortunately, that’s the bulk of the evidence I have to piece the evening together.

Luckily, I don’t have any bruises, cuts or scrapes. As such, it’s pretty safe to assume I didn’t get into a fight of any kind, be it “knife,” “street,” or “bar.” So that’s a plus.

I don’t have a thousand random drunken text messages and/or phone calls that I need to regret, so that’s also a plus.

Given that I have a legitimate receipt from the establishment, I clearly didn’t get kicked out for dancing on tables or anything, so that’s a plus.

All-in-all, it seems like a successful and fun—albeit largely non-existent in my mind—evening with some co-workers.

I do, however, still have one question that has bothered me for most of the morning and it revolves around this drawing on a napkin.

…what the heck is that?!

Is it a microwave giving off radiation?

Is it snakes escaping an old school television?

Is it an oven with lots of bacon floating beside it?

It doesn’t look like one of my famed artistic renderings, so I’m fairly certain I acquired it as a gift? Maybe I was going to put it on my refrigerator or in a photo album or something like that?

Anyway, today’s lesson is this: If you’re all jacked up on cold medicine, maybe you should politely decline the offer for a few beers and save it for another time.

If you don’t, you’ll end up with a big black hole in your memory, a $140 bar tab and a pocketful of mysterious napkin art.