So we all make mistakes, right?
Here's mine. Last Saturday, I stayed up until 3.30am, drinking.
Now for some of you, this is normal. For some of you crazy-ass party bitches and crack hoes, 3.30am is an early night. But just to put it in context, the last time I stayed up until the wee hours doing drugs n'shit, was during labour.
In the beginning, I thought I'd gotten away with it. On Sunday morning, despite flushing a sock down the toilet mid-morning (normal, right?), and a mild to moderate hangover, there were no obvious symptoms of brain damage. But then, at around 3pm, something happened. Something bad.
It started with a 'conversation'.
"The bins out, your turn it is. Fucking knackered, I am", I spluttered to my partner, who was shuffling around the kitchen at the time, with no discernible sense of purpose.
"Me Out Go Now!" he said, descending into a kind of protolanguage not heard since Paleolithic times.
In less than an instant, I realised that we had both lost the ability to string a sentence together; that in short, we'd become doodooheads.
Throughout the rest of the afternoon, the effects of the previous night's festivities proliferated. Frazzled, bad-tempered, and still, with only a rudimentary command of English, we started arguing. We argued about money, housework, and parenting styles. At some point in the proceedings, I even brought up the idea of living in a self-sufficient, low-impact, off-grid commune and opting out of the capitalist bullshit altogether, which is the kind of deranged fantasy I always have when I'm pooped to the absolute max.
"Ugh!" said my partner, jabbing his forefinger in my direction. "You Crazy. Like You Mother."
'Separate then, maybe we should. Heh?" I drooled, like some overwrought premenstrual Yoda.
By Monday morning, Saturday's night of debauchery (and a further night of anxiety-related sleep-deprivation caused by a combination of cognitive distress and constant arguing) had also taken its toll on my body. Even at the best of times, dark circles under my eyes make me look like a fucking raccoon, but now, what with the circles, the hollowed-out tear troughs AND the gruesome discoloration of my skin, it was as though I'd used black bile extracted directly from Satan's kidneys as a concealer. A night of sleeping on my daughter's pull-out bed had also given me crushing neck and spine pain, resulting in a gait reminiscent of Boris Karloff.
"You look, erm, pale?", said the school secretary, buzzing me in through the school doors at the spectacularly late hour of 10am.
"I was sick in the night", I said, lurching lopsidedly towards her. "Sorry I'm late."
"Erm, well, I hope you're better now", she said, obviously frightened.
So, folks, I hope you'll understand me when I say that for me, any future late-night revelry is out of the question. To function properly, I need to be in bed by 9.30pm on weeknights, and 11pm on weekends. Furthermore, the only parties I can attend are ones that take place between 2pm and 4pm on Sunday afternoon in places called Ants Inya Pants, whilst late night drinking will be restricted to a cup of hot chocolate sprinkled with chilli flakes, which I can always pretend is heroin. As for a sex life, well, this is a horribly tricky one gals, because the only window of opportunity in our house for playing 'mummies and daddies' is between eleven and midnight on the weekend, after we've watched our Sky Plus recordings, and although it's almost never a long drawn-out tantric experience it does, sadly, clash with my scheduled time for horizontal refreshment of a different kind. So I'm thinking of saying to my partner, "Ur, look love, honey bun, sweetie pie, you know where things are by now, so, you know, help yourself ...", which I'm hoping he'll be cool about.
Zzzzzz ....