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It is Friday and finally work, is sort of over.  Tomorrow is Weezy’s birthday party at a place she has been wanting and begging to have a party at.  I often send the kiddos with our sitter to this place because it is such a rad zone for them!  I am not prepared for the party, but it will come together.  I am not channeling pinterest, I am doing what will make Weez happy, which is climbing and SUGAR!  So we have plenty of Minecraft cupcakes and lots of building decor.  We have 24 kids coming, followed by dinner at the club with friends.  My bestie, Jen, is making sure it is extra special at the family night.  Weasel will be the queen bee and it will be special.    Couldn’t be a better kick-off to six years of love with and of my girl.

It is also Oscar Sunday, which we normally celebrate with crab legs and bubbles.  We haven’t seen a lot of the films.  But WHO cares.  It should be a fun Sunday to just sit and watch.

That’s my Friday update.

Today has an aggressive feeling of Monday.  The first holiday of the new year throws me off.  I already feel behind the ball.  To sort the scatter of my mind, some random thoughts…

• The music of Glenn Fry will forever be a key component to the soundtrack of my childhood.  There’s lots of other music that will instantly take me back to being a kid, but The Eagles were just quintessential.
• I am loving the new way Alix (my hairstylist in San Francisco whom I have known for twenty years) is coloring my hair.  It is a balayage/color melt.  Not quite an ombre, but it definitely has a lighter part towards the ends with more of my natural (eek!) color at the roots.
• Speaking of hair, it was raining so hard with wind taking the waterworks sideways, I didn’t bother blowing dry my hair this morning.  Usually I have a steadfast “no wet hair in public” rule, but today I was that girl.
• My office in Sonoma is by far the cutest in the building.  It has a darling accent chair and throw blanket, plus the obligatory orchid and some aroma sticks. I have framed pictures of my family on the windowsill.  Too bad I don’t have more visitors to share my little space with.
• I bought a pair of short moto-styled boots at Target and I love them.  They have rubber soles.  They were cheap.  Perfect for this El Nino weather.
• Thank GOD we didn’t get stuck in the traffic on the Bay Bridge yesterday.  Two hours stopped on the span.  Pass the Xanax please!
• I am gathering large format bottles of wine for our upcoming school auction and I am so grateful for my friends that have donated.  Just makes me warm and fuzzy.
• Time really flies by these days.  I already have the year at a glance calendar out, marking the highlights down (like Lake Tahoe, in the picture above).  Yes, partially because of what I do for a living, the big picture actually makes me calm.  Trusting the flow and preparing for what I can makes me tick.  When I do get anxious, all I have to do is break out the calendar and go day by day.

With all that being said, you’d think that I could just accept Tuesday as Tuesday, and quit beating myself up for not spending yesterday preparing for today.  Oh well.  Tomorrow is a new day.  Wednesday.  Which basically means the weekend is here!

…but so not what I had hoped.  I cheated on Friday.  The second I got home after a long day working hard on a lot of different things, my mind was on overload and not at all on the notion of “Friday night” (which for me is decompression and family time).  My mood was in the dumps, for no reason other than I was depriving myself – in my mind – of something that I was very much entitled to.  A drink on Friday night.  So we made martinis.  I like gin with olives.  Not dirty, just perfectly icy and up.  It was delicious.  Two sips in, I was reaching for my spotify and sound bar.  The kids were laughing and taking turns dancing in the kitchen.  “Now, that’s a Friday night!” I proclaimed, circling around in a little jig.

Half way through it, dinner was in the works and all four personalities in the room were shining.  Earlier in the week we made plans to watch the rest of Making a Murderer.  We sat in front of our dinner plates in the big TV room and started in.  The next hour was a blur.  By the time we were onto the next episode, I was sound asleep.  When I woke up at 2am on the couch, I immediately had a wave of guilt flood my body.  Once I settled in my bed, I felt a faint headache and I couldn’t easily fall back asleep.

I had promised to meet my friend, Leslie, at The Dailey Method for a class at 9:15 a.m., and while I was by no means hungover, I wasn’t firing with all pistons.  Sluggish, you could say.  During class, I was so thirsty and was certainly not as strong as I would have liked.  Afterwards, I was so aware of how I felt and I was brutally honest with myself.  I need to be sober this month.  Maybe longer.  I am sure this won’t be the only time I consider a drink, but that one martini helped me reaffirm my pledge to a dry January.

This hashtag is trending with everyone I know.  The reason is simple and obvious.  If you were like me, you indulged from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day in wine, cider, seasonal cocktails (although my nog consumption was down, year over year) and anything else that seemed festive.  Or not.  Wrapping gifts is not nearly as fun without a glass of bubbles.  I had plans to at least ease up right after Thanksgiving.  But that didn’t happen.  In fact, I over did it.  Every night.  And I liked it.

Every sip was well deserved.  Each clank of glasses accompanied smiles and warm feelings.  I should mention there is a portion of my work life that includes wine!  Lots of it.  So it was for work!  Honest.  When the holidays became stressful, I reached for a glass of Chardonnay to coax me off the ledge.

Outside of pregnancy, I have never willingly not consumed alcohol regularly.  It sounds so pathetic to even voice my inability to give it up for a period of time.  But it is hard.  I will admit it.  I have made it a whole five nights, with intentions of making the entire month of January a dry one.  Thankfully, I am also doing an overall health challenge with The 30 Clean group.  I have done three or four before, and always had way more wine than they preach.  But I still saw results and it was totally worth the reset.  I should mention also that my husband has type 1 diabetes and his physician suggested he ease off the sauce as well for a month to see how it affected him.  So this time, I have a partner in sobriety.

Here’s the real truth behind the detox.  I have gained weight.  Haven’t we all?  If you are one of those people that actually lost weight over the holidays, we cannot be friends, for real.  Kidding!  It sounds better if I say “I am giving my liver a break,” or “I like to reset my system one a year.”  When really the reason is if someone asked me to go on a Mexican vacation tomorrow, I want to be prepared, and my passport is up-to-date.  You catch my drift?  It is purely weight/fat/number/shape driven.  My clothes are snug, and I hate that feeling.  I reach for my yoga pants first.  Shrug.  Insert sad face emoji here.

The first thing I have noticed is the depth of rest that I get at night.  It is intense how good sleep feels, but the downside is waking up.  I want to keep my eyes closed for a long time.  That’s NOT me, nor does it work for my lifestyle.  Alcohol provided just enough anxiety to thrust me from a dead sleep at 5:00 a.m.  It also would jolt me from sleep at 3:00 a.m., usually passed out on the couch, make-up on and teeth fuzzy.  Upside, downside.  Pros and cons.  Not really.  Observations.

Now faced with the weekend, my precious glass of wine usually poised, so eagerly waiting for me on a Friday night.  Then what about Champagne with lunch at my favorite restaurant on Saturdays.  Sunday grilling and sipping with good friends over football.  Sure, I will workout.  Perhaps stay awake through a whole movie shown in our dark living room.  I have even dusted off the dominoes, but even those are better over buckets of booze.

Here goes nothing.  If I cheat, you’ll be the first to know.  At this very moment, my confidence level is high.  If you too are dry this month, bless you, Godspeed.  Anyone that’s reading who doesn’t drink alcohol ever, can you believe how silly this all is?  I know!  And to those that are raising a glass right about now with zero cares, cheers!  Have a sip (or ten) for me.

My first blog was created in 2007 to capture the life of my first child growing up in an unfamiliar place, far from family and most friends.  It was a way to keep everyone in the know and a little snapshot of our day to day life.  Add in another child, plus a new business, plus a move, and my private blog became a hassle to not only me, but the readers who were constantly told they were now blocked from seeing it.

This blog is public.  After a few television appearances, I have grown to realize most everything is public now, so why not make it easy for my readers to do just that, come back into my blog and maybe laugh or identify somehow.

Welcome to SAME NEW SONG.  It will be familiar, but different.  I hope you love coming here.