Here's Where I'll Be in 19 Days

Lifeguard Station Miami Beach, originally uploaded by mahler711.

Yesterday I came home from another grueling three hour stretch (sans break) with my auto mechanics. They had made me so angry and frustrated that there was no way I trusted myself with the knives and flame that would be required to make myself dinner, so I ordered Chinese food from the best place in town and as soon as I walked through the door to my apartment, I mixed myself a drink.

I wanted wine. I didn't have wine. When I was grocery shopping last weekend, I only put one bottle of wine in the cart because, well, I'll be going back to Buffalo over spring break, and I will be stocking up on my favorite wine from my favorite winery in the town where I did my undergrad work. I thought that I could somehow squeak by on one bottle of wine until then. I wasn't thinking rationally. I didn't have the numbers in my head. I underestimated the number of hours I still have left with this half-semester tech writing class for the auto boys. That one bottle of wine is long, long, long gone.

So I had to make do with what I had in the house. I had a little ginger ale and some rum, some vodka. I had some really awful generic powdered peach iced tea mix. So I used it all. I mixed a drink with those things and sat down with my Chinese food. I ate and drank and watched M*A*S*H because if there's one thing that consistently makes me happy, it's Hawkeye Pierce.

Still, even though I was angry enough to sit in front of several hours of M*A*S*H reruns while drinking a grainy rum-based drink of the sort I might've mixed back in the days when Ex-Keith and his best friends were hosting all-night Asshole tournaments and playing She's Only Seventeen anytime I walked in the room--to taunt Keith, who was twenty-one, that he was dating a high school senior--there was silver lining to everything. I knew I only had one more class with the auto boys, and I also knew I was only a few weeks away from heading down to Miami for spring break.

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.