I must look like the angry, pregnant wife standing over here in this babydoll dress that makes me look second-trimester fat and a pair of ratty Playboy flip-flops, intermittently scowling at him and rolling my eyes.

I’d just walked in five minutes ago and I was already ready to go home and go to bed again. When she saw me across the room, Erica the bartender waved and reached under the bar for a bottle of Bud Select, my usual here. I was too late to stop her before she popped the cap.

“Oops,” she said. “I thought you…”

“Nope. I came to get THAT,” I say, pointing down the bar to where Tim is seated with two girls I don’t recognize.

Erica frowned. “He said Mike was going to take him home.”

“Mike left.”

She looked around. “Oh.” She pushed the open beer across the bar to me. “Take it, on me.”

I don’t drink it but instead head in Tim’s direction. He looks up and sees me before I can speak, and one of the girls glares at me when she sees his eyes light up.

“Hey babe!” he says, a little too loudly. “Thanksh for coming!”

“Are you ready?” I ask. No preliminaries. It’s one o’clock in the morning, I’m wearing a dress I found on the floor and put on in the dark, and I want to go home.

“Lemme finish this beer.” He waves an almost-full bottle at me.

I sigh and pull up a barstool. Tim wraps his arms around me. “I’m so glad you’re here. You’re the best.” He turns to the girl I don’t know. “This girl is great,” he says to her, shaking me by the shoulders and smiling his dopey-drunk smile. “She’s such a great friend.” Then he looks back at me, turns my face toward his with a hand on my chin and looks right in my eyes. “I owe you. Big time.”

“Yes,” I say, pulling away.This is how he looks at me when he wants to kiss me. “Yes you do.”

So I wait it out. He finishes his beer and doesn’t want to leave until I have him by the arm and am tugging him past the pool tables and out the door. He has to get something from his truck. He forgot to say goodbye to someone. He wants to have a cigarette.

“Smoke in the car,” I say, getting in and slamming the door. “Please. Just get in.”

He blows the smoke out the window while I drive. “I’m really sorry,” he says drowsily as he flicks the half-spent cigarette out onto Lansdowne. “I came with Ben. He left to go do something with his girlfriend.” He practically spits out the last word. “He totally ditched me for her.”

“Um.”

“Then Mike said he’d take me home but he left early and I don’t know. You’re like my only real friend.”

I turn onto River Des Peres Road and roll down the window, letting the wind blow on my face to wake me up a bit.

“Twice in a week, though. You can’t keep doing this to me, you have to make sure someone less than twenty minutes away can drive you.”

“I’m sorry. I tried, but Mike–”

“Then leave with Mike next time.” I sigh and stare at the road. “E would not like it if he knew I was out with you in the middle of the night. I don’t want you to drive when you’re drunk but you can’t keep putting me in this position.”

“But we’re friends now. He’s secure, he doesn’t mind me.” He reaches across the console and rubs my arm. I try to shake him off.

“He would mind this. Stop rubbing me like that.”

“You’re just such a great girl, babe,” he says. My lecture has obviously had no effect. “Remember when we…” And he’s off.By the time I pull up to his house, drunken nostalgia has gotten the best of him. “Come in.” He tugs at my hand.

“No.”

“Then gimme a hug.” He leans awkwardly across the console and wraps his arms around me. I sort of pat him on the shoulder. “You really are the best,” he whispers. “I owe you for this.”

He repeats this several times before I can convince him to get out of the car. Yes, he owes me. Again.

I drive to E’s house instead of my own, because I know it’s the only way I’ll feel alright about tonight.

The happy fun of going to the  Cubs-Cards game yesterday (7-3,go Cubs go!) was tempered by a migraine and a very drunk boyfriend that I was about to punch in the head. It drives me nuts sometimes – he is normally such a sweet and considerate guy. He worries about me and takes care of me when I’m sick. But yesterday, good lord. Some sort of E-replacing, beer-based demon ate his brain, and that was NOT what I wanted to deal with when I was stuck at his house, unable to drive myself home or even sleep because I was in so much pain.

I woke up this morning, still woozy from the supa-strength narcotic pain meds, in a snuggly cuddle with a snoring boyfriend whose first slurry words were “I love you so much” when I rolled over and woke him.

Anyway, on to a different thing that might put you off your appetite instead.

I was reviewing some OR instrumentation today. Some of these names make about as much sense as the names on OPI nail polish. Maybe less. You could guess that “In the Navy” is dark blue and “Canta-berry Tales” is probably some shade of dark red, but put your imagination to use on these…

Brain Spoon?

Big Ugly?

BEAVER RETRACTOR???

Oh, it was cold up there. Good thing I had a little Bailey’s in the hot chocolate or I might have crumpled. 36 degrees in misty rain and gusting wind for four hours – people die of hypothermina in situations milder than that.

But the Cubs didn’t! We stayed till the very end and danced to “Go Cubs Go!” and waved the big “W” flag as the Colorado Rockies fled the field with frozen heads hung in shame.

It was so different to go to a game at good old Wrigley Field again – it was my first trip there in about twenty years. I’m so used to Busch Stadium with its millions of lights and colorful ads and Jumbotron. Even before the flashy new stadium was built in 2006, we had the lights and screens and music. There’s a Build-a-Bear (a Fredbird, really) inside Busch Stadium, along with an arcade and a million other things to divert you from the game you ostensibly came to see. In weather like we had on Monday, you probably wouldn’t have seen over 40,000 people sitting outside at a game in St. Louis. They’d be in the stadium bars and restaurants and watching the TVs and Jumbotron to see what was happening on the field. It’s not that we in St. Louis are necessarily big wusses, but it’s what’s available to us and so we take advantage of those things.

At Wrigley we had no choice. Go big or go home. We went big – literally, bundled up in layers of warmth and waterproofing, giving us an excellent cover for the bootlegged booze. We watched the game as it played out on the field, not a screen, and the scoreboard behind us was the old kind where you can see the person inside pull down the numbers and replace them. There were no instant replays. No trivia for the crowd. It was kind of heartwarming.

But you know, foot-warming might have been better. I couldn’t feel my toes for about three hours after we left, but it was such a wonderful day. A wonderful weekend, really. E and I did the roadtrip with some friends, and we all stayed at a Very Nice Hotel off Michigan Avenue for free, since it’s part of the family of hotels for which he works. Dinner the first night was at Morton’s with E’s dad, and I may or may not have had one too many vodka and Diet Cokes. E kept pinching me under the table to keep me from talking, lest I say something completely retarded in front of his AA dad. Oops.

And as usual, I forgot my expensive camera at home.

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Two Updates:

1. The girl who had dinner with George Clooney did NOT get fired. He got permission from the boss to take her to dinner – how’s THAT for slick? At the Very Nice Restaurant, the customer is always right.

2. While we were up there, we talked to Archie about the Vegas deal. Everything is still kind of up in the air.

I swear I took my camera to the St. Patrick’s Day festivities on Tuesday so I could have some fun “look-what-I-did” pictures like all the cool bloggers.

But I didn’t take any pictures because I forgot since I was sloshed by 11:30 am, like all the COOLEST bloggers!

My boyfriend lives in Dogtown, the Irish barrio of St. Louis, home to everything shamrocked and the Ancient Order of the Hibernians. It’s not a fancy neighborhood – lots of older homes, duplexes and four-family flats and smallish single-family houses. 364 days a year, it’s just a nice little neighborhood with a few good places to eat and an ecletic, left-leaning population of hipsters in stovepipe jeans, dazed stoners, young families, and some old people who have lived there since the neighborhood sprung up for the 1904 World’s Fair, or possibly before.

A lot of people partied for St. Pat’s over the weekend. But the AOH parade in Dogtown is always ON St. Patrick’s Day, whatever day of the week it is.  And the turnout, no matter what day it is, always tops the city’s “official” parade from the weekend before. The parade isn’t full of slick and glossy floats like the one downtown. Most of the AOH parade is just Irish people walking under their clan crests. There are bagpipers and Irish dancers and marching bands, but the best parts are the people who are just walking on the street, drinking beer, being Irish, and throwing shiny green beads and candy to screaming hooligans like me. It’s an hour and a half of FANTASTIC.

It snowed in 2007. Last year it was cold and muddy and sloggy. The 2008 turnout was pretty crummy (about 30,000 compared to this year’s 50,000) and we shivered in galoshes and sweatshirts.

But this year…

It was SEVENTY-NINE degrees! My sundress saw some sun for the first time in 2009 and I am proudly sporting a shamrock-shaped suntan sunburn line from the glitter tattoo I wore on my shoulder. All we did the whole day was drink, sit on the steps, and walk back inside for more drinks. E lives about half a block off the parade route, so the party was on our porch.

Someone else took that picture over there and put it on Flickr. I took the time to look it up for you. I wish, wish, WISH I had a picture of the pin my friend Kati got. You know the red and blue graphic of Obama, the one that was everywhere in the campaign? It was done in green and orange, the Prez had sideburns and a beard, and it said “O’Bama” on it. Lurve.

Everyone is happy on St. Patrick’s Day. It’s such a nice, non-divisive holiday that brings people together to eat and drink without the negative connotations of the debauchery of Mardi Gras. There’s no forced family love like Christmas, no lonely-hearts crap like Valentine’s Day, no political or religious agendas spewed. But everyone decorates their houses. You can dress up and wear beads and not get flashed. Parents pull their children out of school* and dye their hair green. DOGS get dyed green.

It was a wonderful day and I wish I could tell you more. I would if I remembered any more of what happened before I zonked out at 2:30 pm. Maybe the best days are like that.

But I CAN assure you that I did not eat any cabbage.

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* Unless said children go to St. James the Greater Catholic School in Dogtown, which cancels classes anyway and Jesus loves them for it.

I’m all about traditions and everything, but why am I and a bunch of people who don’t like cabbage going to make a corned-beef and cabbage dinner tonight? Does ANYONE like cabbage? Here, would you like some? We’re just going to compost it at the end of the night anyway.

It even sounds funny. Cabbage.

Maybe we could just start a leetle early on the Guinness for Sunday Funday and call that the beginning of the holiday.