they came upon a midnight bleary...

ok...so i'm sitting here looking at that stupid picture of some drunk girl (hee) down there and i'm thinking to myself that i really need to make another entry, if only to bump that silly picture.  as i'm looking at it i realize that i never told the story of that night, and it's one of my favorite stories to tell at parties (eyeroll). so here ya go:

i have great neighbors - i am very lucky that way...we have a tight-knit group that not only looks out for each other, but also probably peeps in each others' windows late at night.  i say probably only because i haven't completely convinced myself that i'm the only one that does that. we are very close with one set of neighbors and we often spend evenings of wine and song with them; we also have some fairly new neighbors that i still haven't quite figured out yet...she is very sweet and quiet but kicks it up a notch with a bit of wine.  he...let's just say, is rather chauvinistic at best.  nice enough guy, just haven't really figured him out yet.

i do have other neighbors i like to hang out with, but on this particular night it was the 6 of us with a shitload of kids in tow.  my house, Christmastime of last year, fire blazing, holiday music on, a veritable plethora of delicious nosh items, spiced cider and hot chocolate for the kids...got the picture?  ok...oops, forgot to add approximately 9 chilled bottles of chardonnay.  yea, 9 - hey other people may show up, i may drop a bottle or 5, you just never know and really, can you have too many bottles of white wine on ice?  work with me here...

i had, i thought, very appropriately appointed myself lead wine pourer and maker-surer that no one ever had an empty glass.

*raise your hands if you think you know where this story is going..aaaand now moving on.*

everyone is eating and drinking and having a fabulous time.  at some point the chauvinist (for reasons still completely unknown to me or anyone else that was sober at that point) manages to slip into the conversation that i was "just a woman with issues". what the fuck does that even mean? and excuse me...new neighbor - you, probably (but maybe not) the most unissued person on the block - me.  whatever dude, drink my wine,  eat my food, try really hard not to insult me in the next 3 minutes and we'll be golden. sweetly, to take the heat off of me i'm sure, he told the other neighbor that he's pretty sure she has an eating disorder and she really should eat a cheeseburger sometime.  (ok, i may have embellished that a bit - those may not have been his exact words, but hey...i'm a woman with issues - it's what i think i thought i heard). yea...a real gem. but in his defense, he was on the money - she really does look like she should introduce something disgustingly unhealthy to her diet, say once a month...the way i see it, a burger would be a good a place to start as any.

at this point we'll have to fast forward as i must have been "dropping" bottles left and right because i had to keep opening more. and of course my glass couldn't be empty - what the hell kind of pourer/maker-surer would i be if it was?  now, a non-woman with issues might have just carried around a full glass and not drained it so she could fill her glass everytime she filled someone else's, but hey.  there are bit and pieces of the night's entertainment that i can fill in - one neighbor (remaining nameless but she was notably NOT holding a cheeseburger) showed off her cheerleading skills from days gone...shall we say, WAY by.  she was very intent on explaining exactly what cheer she was going to do when her husband pipes in with "ok, but try not to fart like last time".  this may have been where i "dropped" a few bottles of wine because this was quite possibly the funniest thing i have ever heard in my life.

from here on out i rely upon dale's version of what happened, yea...evidently somebody felt that the wine pourer needed to be poured into bed. i'm told it had something to do with me making the dog almost bite me and falling asleep on the couch - whatever killjoy. so he excuses me - because he is truly sweet like that - and herds me off to bed.  he drops my drawers and tucks a giggling me into bed - not sure what was so funny but i get the impression that even though he tried really hard, he was unable to find the humor in it. a short time later, cheeseburger is missing me and climbs in bed with me, she lays there in the dark for a minute telling me how much she truly loves me and wants to give me a hug.  she pats around the bed trying to find me and quickly becomes convinced that either i had been abducted by gang of suicidal, yet sex-crazed, dread locked, transvestite goth/emo kids (it could happen, none of us can completely rule it out) or dale hadn't secured me to the bed properly and i had wandered off.

upon rallying dale's help, the two of them went on a shawna-hunt only to find that i had left my bedroom, apparently of my own free will (false alarm, you goth kids settle down now), and walked down the hall to the most vile and disgusting place on the face of the planet, my kids' bathroom. apparently i was looking for something in there that required me to lock the door and sit on the floor next to the toilet.  now, i'm fairly certain that in real life i wouldn't sit on the floor next to that toilet for all the free-fresh-off-the-rack krispy kreme glazed doughnuts in the kingdom of Heaven, but evidently it was there that my quest dictated i go, so i really had no choice.

apparently, having refused to cut my "search" short, i was momentarily left alone while dale tended to our guests as they readied themselves for the dangerous drunken walk home.  because the entry way of my house has a straight shot line of vision to the nasty place which is the kids' bathroom, i will forever consider it an immense show of mercy on God's part for putting the coveted cloak of invisibility upon my drunken - clad in absolutely nothing but a black (victoria's-secret-seamless-100%cotton-comes-in-a-variety-of-colors-i-just-happen-to-like-black-and-wow-is-it-ever-so-comfortable) thong - ass allowing me to wobble back to the haven that is my bed undetected, sans scarring any children for life or giving the neighbors yet another "issue" to unjustifiably heap upon me - this one being my penchant for doing a pathetically choreographed striptease in front of Christmas guests simply because i'm such an attention-whore.

far as i can tell, it was a great party and everyone had a great time...we did, in fact, manage to drink 9 bottles of wine between the 6 of us.  one neighbor came home from work the next day at lunchtime to puke and take a nap, another two neighbors personally thanked me for being such a great hostess (pfffttt - what the hell kinda parties did these people usually attend?), my man took me to get the obligatory weinerschnitzel chili-cheese dog - only the best hang over food known to man, while the fourth, and still nameless, guest nursed her hangover with two carrots sticks and a glass of water with a mona-vie back.