Monday, September 04, 2006

bleah

Yes, I feel totally bleah today. It's a combination of playing soccer and drinking.

Yesterday, Sunday, I attended soccer practice. I played with a bunch of people, most of whom will not be on my team, and most of whom were very much younger than me. We played against a team made up mostly of people who will be on my team and are of various ages.

The league I play on is an adult league which of course means that everyone should be an adult. I refuse to believe that adulthood is something one merely progresses to by virtue of reaching a particular age. That isn't the point of course, not here, and the point is that the teams are made of people of various ages, from the possibility of 18 to, well, I don't know. I do know that I play with people over fifty.

Rather than let age discussion sidetrack me further, I must now turn back to my bleahness. I ache over a vast percentage of my body. My knee was threatening trouble from a slight twist, but it either was lying to me or the rest of my body hurts too much for me to hear the whine from the knee. My toe problem seems to have disappeared, the problem being that I had a couple of toenails that were overly long. I fortunately still have all the nails, though whatever I did to my poor toes yesterday took me off the field.

After practice and some frantic running around and taking the boys to Grandma's house, Momma and I were, late, on our way to the west side of town for her employer's company party. It was actually the Christmas party from last year, but that didn't make any difference. Following a lovely dinner at a French restaurant, we headed to the south side to a manager's house, a keg of beer and the swimming pool. I didn't swim, but I'd like to think I looked cool in my flip flops, swimming shorts and shirt, unbuttoned to show off the scrawny, tanless body.

What followed was a good bit more beer than this body needed. I drank myself stupider as I like to say. Momma also had a fair share of the drink. We fortunately ended up ready for sleep at the same time and retreated to a tent. The manager had apparently told the staff they should bring tents. He has a huge backyard, and having worked in the restaurant biz, he knows full well how we tend to party. Sadly, the rest of the staff either didn't hear about bringing tents or just didn't bother. They were all gone when we awoke, so I don't know what they did.

There's a whole other topic that I could probably get several posts out of, the drinking habits of restaurant people. On average, I would estimate that any one typical restaurant employee, on an average night, could drink enough for two or three normal people. Give us a party, or any excuse reasonable or otherwise, and we tend to try to set records for drinking stupidly.

So, having combined more exercise than I am in shape for and more drinking than I should do, regardless of shape, I have tormented my poor body unmercifully to the point where life is torment today. If I could sleep the day away and wake up tomorrow from this, I'd be ever so slightly less unhappy. But that isn't the case. Those boys are not going to watch themselves while I nurse myself.

Part of me would like to think I learned a lesson, but the drunks of the world never learn this lesson, no matter how often we puke it up. I'm not even taking a day off as I might once have pretended to do. I'm a firm believer in the hair of the dog treatment, and there's a beer in the refrigerator now calling my name.