Slower Time, Faded Colors, and Sharper Edges

Tonight I went to the grocery store and bought all the fixings for the A.A. cocktails--cranberry juice, club soda, bitters, tonic.  Losing weight is imperative for many reasons, but one is that I am going to be skiing in Park City in less than a month, and my knees are killing me.  What was I thinking?  I haven't been skiing in fifteen years.  I was drinking when this all happened.  Now I need to lose weight if I am to give my knees any chance at all.

So when I went for sushi tonight, I ordered an iced green tea.

"Back on the wagon again, huh?" my waiter said.

"Yup."

I feel like Philip Marlow.  Everybody knows what I am drinking.

In the afternoon, I went to lunch with my mother.  We had gone to pick out a new stereo amp for my Christmas present, one that had HDMI inputs.  My stereo is perfectly good, but it is too old to support my HD television.  It pisses me off, but what can I do?

On the way there, my mother was telling me where to go.  I got into the left lane to get around an idiot, and she said, "You need to be in the right lane," as if I had no idea where I was.

"You mean to turn?"

"Yes."

"I've got plenty of time to get over."

"Oh, you're one of those who likes to weave in and out of lanes?"

"You bet.  That's why they put one of these on the car."  I patted the steering wheel.

"They gave you a turn signal, too."

"Yes, but I don't need it to change lanes," I said.

"Yes you do."

"Nope," I said.  "Watch this."  I moved over into the right hand lane.

"That's illegal," she said because I hadn't hit the blinker.

"Well, that's another matter," I said, cocky prick winning the point.  But it was a pyrrhic victory, for she hadn't gotten the nuance.

Later, at lunch, I noted how distracting the televisions in the restaurant were.

"Why do they put televisions in restaurants?" I asked her.  It was a rhetorical question.  "Do they think people pick a restaurant based upon their t.v.s?  They don't have any sound!  It is just an image.  You don't even know what's going on.  Do people enjoy that?"

My mother just shook her head.

"And what the hell is that buzz?  Is that supposed to be music?  You can't make it out.  What the hell is that for?"

The day before at lunch with my friend, I was denigrating the restaurant we were in.  It looked nice but it wasn't.

"You're kind of a snob," she said.

"No I'm not."  I am not a snob.

But she insisted, "Yes you are."

"No," I said, I just don't understand why people eat in shitty restaurants.  I drive down the road and there are dozens and dozens of mistakes where people eat every day, and I don't know why they put up with it.  Why do they give them their money?  Things should be beautiful and sensual.  You become what you surround yourself with.  Your environment shapes you."

But I should tread lightly here.  She was a bit miffed about yesterday's entry.  She texted me today.

"Why are you giving me grief?" she wrote.  "I was showing your site to my sister--geeeeezzz."

Now I had to text her back.  I hate texting and don't understand why I must do it when I know someone is with their phone, but that is what people do now.  It is bad form to call someone if they text, a form of social suicide.  So I wrote,

"I wasn't giving you grief.  I avoided that.  You should have read my first two drafts."

"Yes you were.  You didn't give the whole story."

"I didn't give any story.

She was getting the better of me because I am slow at texting.  She was writing two for one.

"I think I like you better when you drink. . . sobriety has made you cranky."

And thinking back on that, it might be true.  You know, time goes much slower when you are not drinking.  Colors fade and edges sharpen.  There is just a terrible literalness to things.  Maybe that explains my testiness with my mother.

Oooo.  I do remember saying some other nasty things, too.  But I'll leave that alone for now.  I don't want to lose a reader.

For some reason, I think today's photo looks like a Yearbook photograph.  Spooky High.  Class of 2009.