Wonderful Wagon: On the Dry

Yay! It’s the weekend. Oh, wait. I’ve got kids.

You’ve seen that, yes?

Well, I’ve managed to get over it. Finally. At last, Friday night drinks became mine. With one small concession; they were at home. In front of the computer. By myself.

But who cares? I had wine! It had made a wonderful, glorious return to my life after years of being teetotal thanks to babies and breastfeeding. A curious thing happened back then – I didn’t actually want to drink. I had zero interest in it.

Possibly borne from being knackered tired all the time.

But it snuck back in and those Friday nights were deadly so they were.

But something terrible has happened. This is the second Friday night in a row I have made a conscious decision not to drink wine.

I don’t quite know what to do with myself.

See, I used to go to bed Friday night thinking, “Thank God tomorrow is Saturday.” And I would ~~wake up~~ be woken at the usual time of before 7am. The only difference was my head would not be in the greatest of places having downed the best part of a bottle of wine the night before.

However, I always got up and I was always able to function but the day had lost its shine somehow. Granted I was a cranky cow for the first hour. Okay maybe the first several hours. Call it a hangover if you want to. I call it resentment at having been hauled from my bed to do crap things like feed and dress small children on a Saturday morning.

Another thing. Saturday in our house isn’t the relaxing day you’d think. Stuff gets in the way. First of all, I like to fit in a run and if I wait till later, it won’t happen because the aforementioned stuff has to be done. Take my word for it; a 7k run after a bottle of wine can be a different kind of challenge altogether.

If we want to eat over the weekend, shopping needs to be bought. Sometimes someone, or four boys, need a haircut. There is also gym club. The lads like to step back on these days and don’t take kindly to being dragged around.

Then there was the couple of occasions on the school run in the morning at 8.15am when I found myself fantasising about the bottle of wine in the fridge.

I realised this was not good. Not good at all.

Especially when a smile broke out on my puss in sheer looking forwardness.

When one of your kids present you with a Valentine’s Day card depicting an opened bottle of wine and the other one stops buying you imaginary cappuccinos on his imaginary coffee runs and instead asks you would you like a glass of house white, it’s time to smell the coffee. Literally.

So tonight I will be drinking tea instead of my beloved Pinot Grigio.