Petite Confessions by Vicki Lesage (chrysanthemum read aloud TXT) 📕

“Forever’s gonna start tonight!”

And the hangover’s gonna start tomorrow.

There’s a direct correlation between how loud I sing (scream, if we’re being honest) “Total Eclipse of the Heart” into whatever microphone-like object I find at the bar and how crappy I’m going to feel the next morning.

If my singing is pitch-perfect, I’ll be feeling pitch-perfect. (Of course, neither of those has ever happened to me.)

Using a twisty straw as an earpiece microphone? I can count on a bitchin’ headache.

Turning around at each “Turn around, bright eyes”? Yeah, my head will be buried in a plate of greasy breakfast food.

If I’m wildly flailing my arms, “giving off sparks,” my head will instead be buried in the toilet.

And if I’m standing on the bar doing all of the above, well, I can count on suffering through all of the above.

 Yet somehow, for some reason (Vodka shots. It’s vodka shots, dummy.) I do this EVERY. TIME. And pay for it so dearly the next day.

Before kids, I could sleep it off, down a pot of coffee, and slide burgers down the hatch until I felt like a human, usually by 10 pm the following day.

With kids, I’m forced out of bed just as the beer buzz wears off and the hangover sets in. This happens at precisely 5:54 am, the exact moment my two-year-old son, Leo, bangs the railings on his crib and my newborn daughter, Stella, decides she’s starving.

Though I normally work full-time, I’d been home with my children the summer after my daughter was born. Some of the longest, sweetest weeks of my life. I enjoyed playing with the kids, hearing my French-American son master more and more words in English, and strolling around the lovely urine-saturated city of Paris.

But it was also a load of work. Days blurred together into hazy, sleep-deprived, pseudo memories.

I do remember one Friday in particular, though. That never ending day was the result of combining my passion for Bonnie Tyler and booze with the fact that, doh, I still had kids to care for in the morning. I partied way too late and got up way too early.

“Good luck,” Mika said as he left for work in the morning. His nuanced tone managed to convey both sincerity and a much-deserved I-told-you-so-ness. He would never say I had partied too hard, but his look said it all.

Ugh, just the thought of partying made my stomach turn.

I mean, c’mon. Five beers? You’re not in college anymore!

Pounding headache. “Mama! Garbage truck! Mama!!” Leo wanted me to play with all 42 of his garbage trucks.

Don’t forget that shot of Stoli, playa. What were you thinking?

Rumbling belly. I’d be revisiting last night’s mistake. “Mama! Caca! Mama!!” Leo provided play-by-play commentary as I inelegantly ejected the contents of my tummy. “Bye-bye, caca!” he said as I flushed.

One year without drinking and the minute you’re out on the town it’s balls-to-the-wall, drink-it-all. Tsk, tsk.

I needed some air. I took the kids on the world’s longest walk (around the block) under the summer’s hottest sun (a balmy 82 turned into 110 with Stella in the baby carrier and, hello, did I mention my hangover?).

I would NEVER party like that again.

I waited in the world’s longest line for a sandwich (one dude in front of me) and ate it painstakingly slowly, so as not to vomit on my baby’s head as she innocently slept against my chest.

No, seriously. I would NEVER drink that much again. Especially not when I had to take care of my two little angels the next day.

Naptime finally arrived. The three of us slept like babies.

When we woke up, it was time to play with garbage trucks and feed Stella all over again. But by now I had returned to about 90% capacity. The light shone from the end of a dizzying tunnel.

I’d survived.

“Every now and then I get a little bit restless and I dream of something wild.”

Let’s be honest. We all know I’ll do it again. Who’s free Friday night a year from now?