I Can’t Be the Only One Who Gets Drunk and Watches Disney Movies

As you may have heard I went to the wineries last weekend.  For those who aren’t versed in the midwestern winery tradition, that makes two of us.  I’m late to the Wine is Fucking Awesome party…I’ve really only begun drinking it within the last year.  But I came to appreciate it with a quickness.  The wine drunk is so freaking HAPPY; it’s like drinking a bottle of alcoholic rainbows.  I just want to meet people and talk and dance and talk and dance and talk and talk.

Making the hour and a half drive out to the different wineries is pretty common through autumn.  This was my first trip but I had heard wonderful descriptions of the fall colors, picnic lunches, and quaint shops.

HA!  I rode out there in a rented school bus with 30 other people who kicked off the trip with a round of Jell-O shots at 10:30am.  Quaint shops pale in comparison to the prospect of some good day drinkin.

Sober and unsuspecting of what the day will bring

Please acknowledge my husband’s fucking disgusting sunglasses.  Either he thinks he’s Iron Man or he buys whichever gas station sunglasses fit his gigantic melon.  Maybe a little from column A and a little from column B.

Sister Murph and her boyfriend had planned to come with us.  It almost didn’t happen due to a late night cat-baby emergency that had something to do with too much protein in Puddy’s kitty pee.  But the vet wanted to keep him through the day for observation so they decided to come.  With the intention of staying mostly sober so that they could go pick up the cat in the evening.  Right.  This pic was early when they were still cleaving to that naive plan.

FYI - you're going to be intoxicated when you go pick up your cat in 8 hours

The Saturday we chose to go was Oktoberfest weekend and it was packed.  We hit a long line of cars about 10 miles outside of a town that has one main road that more than accommodates traffic the rest of the year.  They had police officers hop onto each bus as it pulled into the parking lot and explain the rules.  The usual:  no open containers in the streets, no fighting, no banging in the port-a-potties.  Uh, excuse me?  Nasty.  Double nasty to know that people want to bang it out to the smell of shit and vomit so often it’s one of the few rules announced.  This cop was a douche too, he kept cracking lame jokes and trying to be just one of the guys.  It made me think of Amy Poehler in Mean Girls:  “I’m not like other moms, I’m a cool mom.”

The crowds were unreal

Since it was Oktoberfest there were beer gardens and festival food stands.  The sweet smell that accompanies outdoor celebrations like this is amazing.  Fried food and kettle corn and crisp fall air.  Except that it wasn’t crisp fall air…somehow on the bus ride out the temperature went from 50 degrees to one freaking million.  It may have been closer to 80, but between my fall attire and the wine it was at least one freaking million.  It sucked but I was able to power through.  You know why?  Cause I had wine.

Excessive enthusiam? Definitely

Notice how the picture is slanting?  That’s not poor photography on my husband’s part, that’s the hill we were sitting on.  Drunk.  On a steep hill.  Not a good idea for someone with the grace of a blind polar bear.  I couldn’t keep myself together.  I was wearing a skirt and leggings so sitting forced the skirt up to my hips.  I was trying to juggle my wine bottle, a cup, my cigarettes, my wristlet, my scarf, and a bracelet that for some reason became the bane of my drunken existence because I didn’t want to wear it but couldn’t figure out a place to put it (looking back there was any number of places I could have carried it and I’m a moron).

As I was taking this I was thinking "Ooh this pic is going to be ARTSY, I'll put it on my blog!"

Around this time the heat and wine got to me and I needed to go find some available shade.  There wasn’t any.  So my sister and I totally inserted ourselves in the middle of a weirdly eclectic group of people.  I sat there, pallid and trying to keep my head from floating 4 feet above my body as if I was part of the party of women dressed in beer girl costumes and gay men.  Once I got my head together we left the winery and walked to one of the less crowded beer gardens and hung out there until it was time to load back onto the bus.  They corked and bagged our wine before we were able to walk the streets and I thought it was hilarious.

That curb I'm half standing on almost took me out

The bus ride home was a Hot Mess Express.  At some point a friend of mine opened some snus.  I had never seen or heard of it before but it piqued my inebriated interest.  From what I remember it’s like a little packet of dip that you don’t have to spit.  It was menthol so it tasted good?  I don’t know why I wanted to try it.  I want to be clear that normally if I saw myself snusing (?) I’d want to beat my own ass.  Instead I thought it was the coolest and most comical thing ever.

Nothin' but class

My sister and I played songs on Mr. Murph’s iPhone and sang them at the top of our lungs.  Everyone else on the bus was equally wasted so they paid no mind.  But Mr. Murph had developed a raging headache and made it clear that he wanted to be home and if we sang another song he was going to rip our throats out.  Being the understanding and gracious wife that I am, I decided that I wanted to go out.  So I began whining and begging and being a general drunken asshole trying to get him to drive since he had stopped drinking.  At a certain point my whining turned into anger and I started a huge fight about how I never want to stay out and even though he had a headache he should suck it up and go.  It was a dick move on my part, and it continued for about half an hour after we returned home.

Then I remembered that we got our wedding video from a friend on the trip who works at a production company and had put it together for us.  So in the middle of the fight I stopped everything and put in the wedding video because I’ve been dying to see it.  As a result, the fight ended.  It’s kinda hard to be pissed at someone when you start crying your eyes out because you love them so much.

After that came Beauty and the Beast.  Before the movie started some ground rules had to be put in place.  I was only allowed to sing along with the songs…reciting the dialogue would result in the disk being immediately ejected.  I had to keep my singing at a reasonable volume and if I didn’t Mr. Murph would turn the volume up louder and louder until I was fully drowned out.  And after the movie he gets to play xBox to his little nerdy heart’s content.  We had ourselves a deal.

A perfect end to an awesome day.