Operating Under the Influence

So… the other weekend I had a party. We resurrected Movie Night, made some jello shots, and ate our weight in pizza. What fun!

As some of you know, my husband D is not much of a drinker. Once upon a time, long, long ago, he would put away beer after beer without a second thought. Then one tragic day the gall bladder fairy showed up and put an end to all of that. And because we didn’t think to place the dis-embodied gall bladder under D’s pillow, we didn’t even get a quarter for our efforts. Come to think of it, it seems we actually had to pay quite a bit of money for that whole ordeal. Anyhow, you get the point. My husband no longer has a gall bladder and large quantities of alcohol seem to bother him. Therefore, he doesn’t drink very often and when he does, he usually doesn’t drink very much.

Flash back to movie night. For some reason that completely eludes me, D decided that it would be appropriate to down 7 jello shots. And 5 beers. Yep, 7 jello shots and 5 beers. Don’t ask me why – I have no idea. I do know it’s a good deal more alcohol than I had. With this said, I knew the next day was not going to be good. Normally after D does something strange like consume massive quantities of alcohol while he’s lacking in his possession of a gall bladder, I receive a visit from the poor me fairy. While infinitely better than the gall bladder fairly, the poor me fairy is still a pain in the ass. Here’s a recap of the scene that generally follows:

D: Babe, my tummy hurts!

H: Um, yeah, I bet, did you see what you drank last night?

D: (looking completely confused and hurt) What do you mean? That has nothing to do with it.

H: Riiiight

D: It really doesn’t! Why are you being so mean to me? Can’t you see I’m in pain? Baaaabe, my tummy hurts!!!

H: (not feeling the least bit of sympathy and trying not to scream You drank too much and the space where your gall bladder used to be is pissed as hell at you. I know it and you know it so stop pretending you don’t know what I’m talking about.) Do you want me to get you something for it?

D: No.

H: What do you want to do?

D: I don’t know. Baaaabe, my tummy hurts!


This scene is periodically played out over the first four or five hours that D’s awake the next day. For some reason I endure it.

When I went to bed after my self-proclaimed fabulous movie party was over, I knew that the next day was going to be filled with visits from the poor me fairy – not because I’m pessimistic, but simply because I excel at pattern recognition.

We went to bed as soon as everyone left. Since we had zero energy we both fell asleep pretty quickly. Then suddenly, I was woken up by an enormous THUD. D was nowhere to be found.

Keep in mind, I’d been sleeping and suddenly woken up. I’m only about three steps away from incoherent at my best, so I really didn’t know what was going on. I somehow gathered up the information that D was not in bed and that I had heard a large THUD, and put them together. I even managed to figure out that I probably ought to be alarmed by the combination of the aforementioned details and said, “Babe? You okay?” into the dark.

No response.

Again, “Babe?”

From the bathroom: “aaaarrrgh”

I thought to myself, “This is not good.” As I was about to get out of bed, D came lurching into the bedroom. Lurching. He crashed on top of the comforter, clearly in pain, clutching his knee. I could not, for the life of me, imagine what he could have done to his knee that caused such a large crash so I asked him what happened. His response?

“I got up to pee. I was standing there and it was taking forever and I started thinking to myself, Gosh, this sure is taking awhile, and then…”





You are going to love this.






“… and then, I fell asleep while I was peeing. I fell down and hit my knee on the wall.”


He fell asleep while peeing?!?!?!


I have to sit down to pee, and I still haven’t fallen asleep.

I got up to get D some ice for his wounded knee and some Advil to keep the swelling down. On my way back to bed I checked out the accident scene. Indeed, my observations seemed to confirm D’s story. The bathroom countertop had been moved (probably when D fell against it) and it appeared that, er, well…. it appeared that it is indeed difficult to aim when peeing in one’s sleep.

True to my prediction, I spent most of the next day with the poor me fairy – but this time, the poor me fairy was concerned with a ‘potentially shattered knee’ instead of a tummy ache. Fortunately, after spending two days with the poor me fairy D’s knee healed right up and he appears to be doing fine.

The lesson of this story? Quite simply: don’t pee under the influence. Take it from us, it’s dangerous.