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Day 50 in which I go completely off the rails.



So I have this friend. I know, it’s surprising.

In fact, it might be more apt to describe him as an “accomplice”. I assume we all have one of these: the person you’d go to if you really wanted weed (and didn’t have tenants). The one you text when something hilarious occurs to you that’s waaaaaaay too inappropriate to go into your Facebook status.  The one with whom you either drop all pretense of being offend-able, or else get offended, a lot.


Every time the Smartboy and I hang out with him, there is drinking (not by the Smartboy, who maintains his skinny frame by avoiding all alcohol, and replacing it with, basically, milkshakes. Screw him.) There is, in fact, a LOT of drinking, interspersed with a lot of razzing about how the other one can’t handle all the drinking. Yes, it’s very much like being in a fraternity. Or so I would imagine.

I don’t actually spend a lot of time with this guy; he’s pretty much the poster child for millennialism (which is why I’m not worried about him reading this blog; it’s not on video or in the form a GIF, so it’s unlikely he’ll ever see it); as a result, a lot of our “plans” to hang out consist of a series of vague texts, followed by non-specific invitations and even less specific commitments, followed by one of us bailing and then blaming the other for not being clear enough. Which works well for me; I’m an introvert, so I want to be invited to things but not actually expected to show up.

Anyway, Smartboy and I have unexpectedly found ourselves graced with the presence of this friend for the last 2 days in a row. Which means I’ve more to drink in the past 48 hours than in the prior 48 DAYS. On the morning of day 2, I felt so bad that I missed my bootcamp, so not only did I consume 10 million calories worth of beer, I also did nothing to burn it off.

There’s a backstory to why it was important for SB and I to hang out with this guy at this particular time, and why it’s probably OK that I did the whole bonding-over-booze thing in this instance. But now that that particular conflict/drama is (hopefully) over, I’m left with the question of how to deal with my accomplices in the future.

Because he’s not the only one. I have several friendish people (there really needs to be a word for people who are more than acquaintances, but with whom you don’t spend enough time to really be friends) who seem to be related to me by food. I have several others with whom I mostly drink. I’m not actually sure what happens with these folks when I say, “Sure, I’ll go to the Bacon and Bourbon Festival with you, but I’m not eating any bacon. Or drinking any bourbon”. Or worse yet, “Can we go canoeing instead? I can’t control myself around the bacon and bourbon right now”.

I’m back on the rails; it’s all water and green vegetables for me for the next few days to make up for my little adventure in drinking. But I have to carefully consider what a commitment to health means to my relationships with other people, when I’ve come to relate to those other people through things that aren’t good for me.

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