Friday morning: Blerg. Thursday was a late night at my friend’s graduation celebration, and the beer is still playing drums in my head at 5 am. I stumble to the bathroom and take a swig from the Pepto to wash down a few Excedrin, and teeter back to bed.

Two hours later, I hit the snooze button five times and I am officially running late. A quick dash through the shower, and I remind myself that the open top on the Jeep will dry my hair on the way to work, so that saves me fifteen minutes. Now clothes. I’ll wear whatever is in the pile and just change into scrubs when I get to work, so I pull on a little green tee, flip-flops, and my white swirly skirt. I love my swirly skirt – it is quite possibly my favorite thing to wear during the summer.

My stomach is protesting violently as I try and swallow my morning meds with Gatorade and I feel for a minute like everything is going to come back up. Nothing does. I grab my bag and head out, stomach still rumbling. Maybe I need a little grease to settle it – plus, my mouth is dry and the quart of moisturizer I rubbed on after my shower has done no good. Late be damned, I have got to get something to eat because my headache is telling me that if I don’t, I just might die.

I haven’t been to Sonic in ages, despite the fact that it’s on the right side of the road on my way to work. The drive thru lane is empty, and I pull up to peruse the menu.

SLUSHIE!

How is it possible that I have completely forgotten about slushies? It’s summer! And it’s water, right? I need to rehydrate. Ooh, look! A POWERADE slushie! Rehydration AND electrolytes! Despite the fact that my stomach is turning somersaults and demanding greasy tater tots, I see this Sonic menu as proof that there is a God and He wants me to be happy.* I order the biggest one.

I pop the tots in my mouth one by one, washing them down with sips of a giant, electric-blue Powerade slushie, so cold it gives me one of those spinal freezes that hurt, and it reminds me of having slushies at tee-ball and softball games, when blue was blue raspberry and everyone wanted it because it made our mouths turn purple and that made us cool.

I stick my tongue out and look in the rearview mirror. I am pleased to note that I have become a more tidy slushie drinker; the blue is confined to the back of my tongue and will not embarrass me in my first meeting. My headache is abating and my stomach is slowing its gymnastics routine as I pull into the parking garage. Cramming the last of the tots in my mouth, I grab my bag and my bucket-sized slushie and hop out of the Jeep. My swirly skirt swishes around me and it makes me think of sundresses and how I spilled a red slushie down the front of mine at Six Flags when I was four (I was twirling to make it spin out) and I cried all afternoon.

It was a good night on Thursday, and despite the lingering stomachache, headache and sleepiness, despite the dread of yet another day in a job that I increasingly despise, I am happy because I have a big blue slushie and a swirly skirt. I do a little spin on my way to the elevator.

The slushie, needless to say, was the high point of my work day.

——————-

* Adapted from a quote attributed to Benjamin Franklin: “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” I think this fits nicely, because the slushie is proof that God wants to help us recover from hangovers.

I’m going to keep the boy update to one paragraph because I have given it too much attention already. For the time being, disregard Tim’s “friend” status and consider the possibility that Navy may not be entirely able to curb his own cake hole. And imagine, if you will, that these two plus Fireman plus my own incredibly bad judgment have detonated a craptacular inferno of rumor and rage, and my phoenix may not rise from the ashes for some time. That pretty much sums it up.

Moving on.

#10, Michael Owen. Striker. Yummy yummy yummy. Tore his ACL in the first minute of play against Sweden in the 2006 World Cup. Out for the rest of the season and the first part of the next.

It appears that my time-out as a Bitter Newlydumped is now over and I am now expected to play like a normal single girl again.

I’ve been pegged for two blind dates and my best friend has been bothered for my number from a guy she knows who was too shy to ask me. One blind date was turned down because I do not like blind dates, another was accepted because it’s actually fill-in-the-blank sort of date with a friend’s boyfriend’s friend and there is a guaranteed nice dinner involved. I’m glad my friend did not give my number to Shy Boy because I was sloshed when I met him and honestly don’t remember what he looked like (or much beyond the fact that he does not like what he calls Toby Keith’s “blind patriotism”), and because if you’re too shy to ask my drunk self for my number (and in that state it is usually given freely), we might have communication issues.

That was the uncomplicated bit.

Friday night at the JB, drinking beer with the friends. Among others, the group includes Tim, two of his eleventy hundred brothers and some of their friends. They’re good boys and generally acceptable in polite company, but I know them because I dated Tim and that’s how they know me. There’s always a his-and-hers friend thing in breakups, and these were obviously his. Eighteen months have thoroughly blurred the lines though, and all is well with everyone.

It’s still strange, though, when your ex-boyfriend’s brother feels you up, and one of his friends flirts with you all night and then…

“Fireman stole my phone number!” I said to Mel the next day.

“How did he STEAL it?”

“He just picked up my phone, called his own phone, and saved the number.”

Mel and her husband burst out laughing. Take note, gentlemen – that was pretty damn slick. No friend-bothering for him, Fireman’s got MOVES.

The three of us go on to chat about the events of the night and I make some offhand comment along the lines of why-would-Fireman-want-my-phone-number, surely he was just kidding around, etc. I also fill them in about Tim’s brother (Navy) getting rather handsy with me at the bar after they left, wondering what that was all about.

“Yep, I could’ve told you that was coming,” says Mel’s husband.

I raise my eyebrows.

“They were both asking about you at JB.”

“Asking what?”

“You know, status, situation… I told them both ‘Hey, she’s cute, she’s single, go for it… but remember whose seconds you’ll be taking.’”

“Thanks for reminding everyone,” I say wryly.

“OBVIOUSLY they didn’t mind,” he points out.

Navy is Tim’s younger brother. The day I met him, a group of us were out and Tim went to another table to talk to a friend. When Tim came back and asked Navy what we were talking about, he said “We’re talking about how I’m going to keep your girlfriend company when you’re deployed.” Oh, Tim was LIVID. I thought it was funny at the time. So you can imagine how hilarious it was to me when Navy started getting all feely with me at the bar. Everything is pretty humorous when I’ve been drinking, but the idea of hooking up with Tim’s brother was kind of laughable even in a sober state of mind. Really, come on. His BROTHER. Hahahahaha!

Um, except it was sort of nice. Yeah, I was sort of drunk, but it was nice. Navy can be a sweet guy, and he had a pretty good buzz going on as well. But of course at one point…

“Tim’s such an idiot. I can’t believe he’d break up with you.”

“Good thing for you he did.”

“Why?”

“Cause if he hadn’t, you might be trying to feel up your sister-in-law right now.”

See? Laughs all around.

The troublesome part is that I am now sober and they both have my number. Navy and I have been texting a bit and Fireman called me today. It’s so fun to flirt and so fun to have cute boys make a little fuss over me, but this is an exceeeedingly shallow dating pool I’m swimming in, and I am well aware that trouble lurks in these waters.