Holy shit, have I been drinking a lot lately. The other night, I came home to a sweltering apartment (I’m on the second floor of a flat-roofed building with a gigantic antique stained glass window in the front, which is pretty but I also can’t open it) and no beer in the fridge. Because the thought of drinking red wine while sweating made me sort of ill, I pulled my giant bottle of vodka out of the freezer (don’t judge, I hardly ever drink it so it lasts forever) and made a vodka tonic with lemon. That’s a hell of a drink, by the way, and probably better than beer when it’s hot as balls in your apartment and you’ve had a lousy day at work. I’m a generous pourer and the tumblers Graham got me a few years ago hold a fair amount of beverage, so I was buzzed after two. At that point I realized that I should probably switch to water, but then I had the following thought, which is the very best thing about being a grownup:

I am an adult in my own house. I can do whatever I want.

So I made myself a third vodka tonic. And then I made myself a fourth. And by the time I realized that I was eating pie straight out of the pie dish while watching Head Case on Netflix Instant, I was too drunk to think I was very pathetic. I still don’t think I’m very pathetic, really, because even though this sounds like the lazy way that some women try to be funny (“I have cats and spend time alone, ha ha ha I am a loser!”), I am not disappointed with my choices:

1. Good vodka bought on sale
2. Homemade cherry pie with homemade vanilla whipped cream
3. A good show that I did not previously know existed
4. Total privacy for me to be as gross as I wanted

How are any of these pathetic? Maybe you wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer when you grew up, but all I ever wanted from adulthood was to be able to do things like this whenever I felt like it. I mean, I wanted money and a car and things like that, but I always assumed those things would just happen (and they did, because I got a job).

Sometimes it feels weird to think back to when I couldn’t just have a drink whenever I wanted. Back then, the source of all the alcohol I ever drank was someone else’s dirtbag older brother. Not just one dirtbag older brother, since I was a Catholic kid from a Catholic neighborhood and most of the people I knew had older brothers and a lot of those older brothers were dirtbags. My very first drink (that was not a cotton ball soaked in whiskey to cure a toothache, thanks Grandma) was a screwdriver at my friend JP’s brother’s party. After that, someone was always around to buy you beer and Boone’s Farm from 7-11 as long as you chipped in for their cigarettes. By the time I turned 21 and could buy my own alcohol, I didn’t even get carded. I walked into the store on my birthday to buy wine and I walked out without ever getting to smugly hand over my license and be like “now I can be someone’s dirtbag!”

And now I barely ever get carded, which, while a little disheartening, is a good thing because like I said, holy shit have I been drinking a lot lately. After the Night of the Vodka Tonics, my friend Jenni came into town and had a happy hour. I hadn’t been planning to drink and I didn’t get drunk, but I still went because I haven’t seen her in awhile and she’s busy building a child army so it’s not like she gets out all that often. Tonight is another happy hour where I probably will get drunk, and tomorrow is Angelica’s 30th birthday so I bet I’m getting shithammered.

It’s not always like this. I’m actually sober for the vast majority of my time. Unless it’s a holiday or something involving professional baseball, I don’t start drinking until at least 5pm, which means that I’m always sober for work and any activity that takes place during daylight hours. And outside of maybe one night a week when I allow myself to get wasted, my nightly alcohol consumption is a small glass of wine or two beers at the most.

So count yourselves lucky whenever you’re reading a horrendously typo’d Facebook post, or when you’re assaulted by a series of Twitter alerts that tell you what movie I’m attempting to mock that evening. You’re witnessing a very special moment in time, not only because I don’t really drink all the time normally, but because even when I am drunk, I’m still witty and brilliant even though I’m a really bad typist.