The first day Chris and I were in Chicago, we went to Trader Joe’s, because Chris can only eat birdseed and I’d never had Two Buck Chuck (things that I hate about Oklahoma: no H&M, no Trader Joe’s — seriously, Oklahoma, what is wrong with you???). We bought the chardonnay because who doesn’t like chardonnay and a white zinfandel because if you’re buying $2 wine you are almost compelled to buy a white zin. We skipped the sauvignon blanc because I always think of it as cooking wine, but later people told us that it was far better than the chardonnay. I believe that, since the only thing the chardonnay had going for it was that it cost two dollars. And was alcoholic.

And even that was a stretch.

Anyway, we bought four bottles of wine, and in the course of the afternoon we opened three of them. Melissa and Kristen came and had drinks with us before dinner, and then after dinner Mir came by for a while. We had to call housekeeping and get more glasses sent up because look at us! being all social! In a very sedate, well-behaved kind of way. Trust me.

The next morning we woke up to find two mostly-empty bottles of wine on the dresser and seven also mostly empty glasses scattered around the room. Woo looks like a party! we joked. Ha ha!

Housekeeping came and went and the bottles and glasses stayed. Hmm. Also left behind: our Starbucks cups, now empty, because we drank the coffee.

That was Thursday; by Saturday, we had three empty wine bottles, nearly a dozen glasses, and three Starbucks runs worth of cups strewn around the room. Housekeeping would come in, replace the towels, make the beds, and leave. I guess they thought we were planning to drink that last half inch of wine? You know, after it sat out for two days. Or something.

Saturday morning, Chris ordered coffee from room service; it came on a gigantic tray, and when we were done with the tray, we put it in the hall, with all the glasses and bottles from the previous three days (three bottles, three dozen glasses). As we walked away from our room that morning, we laughed about how the tray — with the coffee pot, the two cups, and all those empty glasses — made it look like we’d had one helluva party.

I wish.

When I came home from Chicago, there was no booze in the house; in fact, I had left my parents to take care of my children without leaving them any alcohol (sorry, Mom). That was a week and a half ago and I’ve just never managed to get to the liquor store (in Oklahoma we can only buy alcohol in the liquor store, unless you count 3.2 beer as alcohol, which no one over the age of 15 actually does). So I haven’t had a drink recently.

(Yesterday Chris left me a voicemail: “First you give up drinking, then you start the 30 Day Shred, now you’re shopping at Forever21. I don’t even know you any more.” Heather offered to stage a reverse intervention, which I think is what normal people call happy hour.)

((Also: I did an entire week of 30 Day Shred and did not have a single drink and gained three pounds. Apparently sitting on my ass drinking was what kept me thin.))

So yesterday I took the boys to the dentist, which is one of those parenting responsibilities that drives me to drink (or used to, back in the days when I had alcohol in the house). Turns out Charlie needed to have a cavity filled and two teeth pulled, and Henry needed to have the fancy sealant put on his teeth. So we made an appointment to come back today and I started to wonder if I could just leave the kids in the car while I ran into the liquor store (absolutely no one under 21 allowed in the liquor stores in Oklahoma, and yes that applies to wee tiny babies, because clearly that woman carrying the baby is buying that gin for the kid! or something).

Wade came home from work and said, “Hey, buddy, did you go anywhere today?”

And Charlie thought for a while and finally said, “The dentist?”

“How was it?”

“Great!” he announced cheerfully.

“Tell Daddy the WHOLE STORY!” I insisted.

“Oh, yeah, I have a cavity, I guess,” he said.

“You do?” Wade exclaimed.

Charlie shrugged. “That’s what Mom says.” Right.

We had to go register Charlie for football this morning (it’s flag football, not tackle, but you know it’s a gateway sport and in a couple of years I’ll be watching him get the snot beaten out of him by kids like this) and I probably would have been more freaked out by that except that I was too busy worrying about our return trip to the dentist. I was torn between feeling bad for my baby because he was going to have two! teeth! pulled! and worrying that I might have to kill my firstborn if he cried because they were putting some goop on his teeth.

(I texted Chris this morning and said, “I’m having some quality time with Henry. This way when he freaks out at the dentist and I kill him, I will have a nice memory of our last day together.”)

Kids are surprising: Henry did just fine with the goop. In fact, he also managed to brush his teeth with toothpaste that was not his. “I guess I can suck it up,” he said when I gave him the tube of Tom’s strawberry paste that I had swiped from the receptionist — because we totally forgot to brush before we left for the dentist. When he was done, he said, “That was the most emotional moment of my life, but I got through it.” And it dawned on me that while I might die laughing, I wasn’t going to kill him.

Charlie came through just fine; he wound up having to have a crown on his wee little tooth, because the decay was down to the root (eeww! and also who the hell has been supervising his tooth brushing? oh right, me). He was fine for most of the afternoon, but then he got hungry and fell apart and cried and I had to talk him into taking some Motrin (and by “talk him into” I mean beg and threaten). And then he was fine again but by then I was exhausted and really wishing someone had gone to the liquor store.

And then the last straw was this: I got up off the sofa to get something or other and jammed my foot into the cocktail ottoman and gashed my toe. All without any actual cocktails! Smooth!