If you want to subscribe to LOL Sober, hit the purple button below. Heads up to my paid subscribers that I have a fun comedy thing coming your way at the end of the month—thank you so much for your support. Keep an eye out for that!
We just got back from a holiday trip to Pennsylvania and it was quite the undertaking. I ended up spending some time asking myself, “Why is this so freaking hard? It’s a bunch of people I love, celebrating a holiday I love. What the hell?”
Allow me to moan and groan for a bit—I promise I have a worthwhile point if you hang with me. Because this is what we train for, isn’t it?
It’s not so much that getting heartfelt gifts for everybody in your life is so impossible.
Or that driving four hours with your kids is enough to melt your spiritual soul.
Or that hanging out with in-laws for a few hours is the worst thing in the world.
It’s that all of these things all happen at the same exact time.
So, in that way, the holidays are the Olympics. And I feel like an Olympian, building up my stamina and spirituality all year to compete in one signature event that will test everything I worked so hard for. And this year, I gotta say, I deserve a gold medal. Or maybe a silver. Perhaps a bronze.
Okay, fine, just give me a participation ribbon or something. But I made it, and if you made it through, too, congratulations, welcome to the podium. Enjoy a medal, compliments of me.
Here’s how my trip went. My wife and kids and I all jumped in the minivan and headed for Pennsylvania. It’s about a four-hour drive, and it always feels like 100 hours. Always. It has never NOT felt like that. I’m not sure why my expectations always seem to be that this is the time five people will drive for a miniseries-long trip and not have issues.
This time, my youngest was car sick within 10 minutes. And she didn’t pack any pajamas… or shoes. Yep, she waddled out to the car for a three-day trip without any shoes to wear. What an inconsiderate jerk, right?
It DEFINITELY didn’t have anything to do with me, a grown-ass adult who did not check a 7-year-old’s luggage to make sure she properly packed. Nope, couldn’t be that.
We grinded out the trip, though, and arrived at our AirBnb around 4 p.m. Of course, my mother-in-law was calling and giving us a hard time about not getting there earlier, which always warms my heart and makes me want to rush even more to get over there to catch some s**t in person about my family’s timeliness. Yay!
We went over to her house, and had a fine evening. The kids had nothing to do so they performed our family’s national past-time for about three hours: They bickered and crossed their arms and yelled at each other, then they yelled at me. What a delightful evening, huh?
At one point, I camped out in the bathroom and meditated for five minutes, then I said a little prayer. As I have said many times, I don’t understand prayer but I find it very effective. I don’t have a firm higher power that I’m praying to. I just do it because I know I am not a higher power, that there are bigger things than me and that I have faith in the universe when I put out a prayer.
By the time we left to go back to the AirBnb, it was 8 p.m. and we hadn’t had dinner. I felt like a loose grizzly bear, ready to maim and kill and eat something. We ordered pizza to pick up on the way home, and, as I usually do when I go food-shopping on an empty stomach, I ordered twice as much chow as we needed.
We got back to the AirBnb and I started eating my feelings. I had five pieces of taco pizza—yes, a pizza with taco meat, lettuce, tomatoes and taco sauce on top of it—and then a bunch of dessert items, including an enormous whoopee pie and some gummy bears.
When we went to bed, everybody was complaining how hot it was upstairs. I told them all to suck it up and stop the whining… then I got upstairs and oh my god, it was like an unwanted hot yoga class up there. The thermostat was set at 70 degrees and it was 35 degrees outside, but it was one of those old homes with radiators and wood floors where the second floor is like renting an apartment at the top of a volcano. I’m not exaggerating when I say that the upstairs of the house was about 90 degrees, even with windows open.
The kids were a mess getting to bed, especially my 7-year-old. There’s this thing that happens with little kids where they get so tired that they’re not tired at all, and it’s a little like they become possessed once they cross a certain amount of time past their bedtime. So we had to try to do an exorcism while reading Peter Rabbit stories in a sauna.
Finally, though, everybody went to bed. I woke up at about 3 am with that “Uh-oh” stomach churn and I ran into the bathroom and barfed up a lot of taco pizza. Lemme tell you, as gross as that sounds… it was even grosser than you’re imagining. Eventually I felt better and went back to bed. I did pause for a moment and feel some gratitude about how many holidays I spent up all night puking because of drugs and alcohol, and it was A LOT. I am so glad I don’t have to live like that any more.
I’ll fast forward a bit. The trip ended up being long and bumpy, but my mother-in-law called me when we got home to give a special thanks. She said the trip meant so much to her, that she loved every minute of it, and that she wanted to specifically say thanks to me for chauffeuring everybody all over the East Coast to make it happen.
I mean, what else can you ask for? That is why we get sober, isn’t it? To bring love and light to the world, and to be of service, even when it’s a brutal minivan ride away, even when it involves prickly kids, even when I am a bit player in the festivities… and yes, even when you get violently ill from taco pizza.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
A police officer was heard asking a DUI suspect, “Just how big were those two beers?”
(Credit: AA Grapevine, May 2006, from Richard M. of Golden, Colorado_
Please spread the word to a sober friend! Find me on Substack… or Twitter… or Facebook… or Instagram… or YouTube. And introducing my web site, LOLsober.com.
