Itinerantdaughter's Blog

From the article about Laurie Simmons, best known now as Lena Dunham’s mother, in The New Yorker:

“When [art school] was over, [Simmons] went to visit two Great Neck friends who were living on a communal farm near Roscoe, New York.  ‘One of them had just figured out that she was gay.  She was leaving the commune, and she told me to take care of Eric, her former boyfriend.  So I did.  He became my boyfriend.’  They went to Europe together.  In Amsterdam, they picked up a used Citroen 2CV and set out for Afghanistan, a hippie mecca.  Simmons began keeping a diary on this trip, and she also documented it with her 35 mm Yashica.  They were driving through Turkey, sleeping and cooking in the back of the car, when the heat became so overwhelming that they turned back, sold the car, and returned to the upstate commune, where they broke up.”

Seriously, someone should write a short story based on this in which the two characters become subtly militant toward one another as the heat rises, and right before they fall off a cliff of a really malevolent folie a deux, they have a moment of clarity and realize they must head back for civilization.  Julia Loktev can direct the film version.  Who’s on board?  I’ll pay you one sandwich.

While I wait in terror for the next round of edits on a piece, here, for you and me both, is a funny guide to holiday drinking from Matt Latkiewicz, who blogs here.

Sloshed: How to Drink Your Way Through the Christmas Season

Christmas is not a drinking holiday, per se (we have Saint Patrick’s Day and the Super Bowl for that), but it is the holiday that presents the strongest reasons todrink: family time, shopping madness, end-of-year ennui, sweater parties, cookie swaps, hearing “The Little Drummer Boy” for the fourteenth goddamn time in one day. The only sensible way to navigate the Yuletide gauntlet is with drink in hand.

But just as you (probably) shouldn’t give your grandma a gift subscription toDear & Deer Hunting magazine, you (definitely) shouldn’t just break out the eggnog and go wild. Instead, you’ve got to match your drinking to the particular holiday situation.

Visiting Your Family

As you grow older, Christmas at home becomes less about waiting until you can finally open that Sega Genesis you just know is under the tree and more about unwrapping something else: family dynamics. Add to that the trifecta of seasonal stress — travel, sleeping in someone else’s house (or your childhood bedroom), sitting around for hours on end with nothing to do but stare at a fire. To top it off, your family’s booze selection probably won’t be as good as yours.

Here’s the move: Get your own small supply of decent stuff (either travel with it, or pick up a few bottles at the nearest liquor shop — doesn’t matter) and anoint yourself bartender. In other words, take over. Delayed flights, forced interaction, and your sister-in-law’s newfound veganism are all out of your control; your cocktails will not be. If you’ve got similarly aged siblings, enlist their help.

Every day at five o’clock, make some classic drinks to go around. I tend to stick with martinis, but anything in the cocktail canon works. Offer to make things for any adult who’s nearby. You’ll be surprised by how happy they are to oblige your offer. “So fancy,” most of them will say, before no doubt telling you, “Gosh, I hope this doesn’t go straight to me head.” Be the classy relative, but don’t overdo it. Being buzzed with your family is fine; being hung-over with them is unbearable.

Hosting Your Relatives

You retain control over your booze in this scenario, but your house will be full of other people fucking up your stuff. “Uncle Matthew, where is the glue?” your brother’s 6-year-old kid will ask, innocently enough; “Well, that’s an interestingway to clean the counter,” your mom will say to you in the kitchen while your dad struggles with your TV’s three remote controls in the living room.

You’re going to have to get loose. Breaking out the barware at five sharp is too aggressive (also, do you want your family drinking up all your booze?). But pouring two fingers of some whiskey for yourself on an as-needed basis is a fine solution. Use a nice solid tumbler that can be easily set down on fireplace mantels, the carpet where puzzles are being put together — wherever. Drink slowly and get just lubed up enough that it won’t bother you too much when your nephew glues your bathroom cabinet shut.

Holiday Parties

Office-party drinking is its own beast (head here to help tame it), but you’ll also probably need to navigate a cookie swap or general holiday party in the next few weeks. The strategy here is simple: only accept invitations to parties you really, really want to attend (you’ve got the perfect excuse to decline anyway: “Ah, I’d love to but you know, the holidays are so busy!”). Treat any party you do go to the way you’d treat any night out with your friends.

The fly in the ointment is eggnog. Surely you will be offered some at some point and you will need to make a decision, fast. Here is the Official Sloshed Eggnog Policy: If it is fresh-made, from high-quality ingredients and a real recipe, there is no more appropriate thing to drink on a holiday evening. But if the ‘nog’s pedigree is in any way questionable — it came from a carton or jug; the friend who made it owns neither a bottle of rum nor a bottle of brandy — stay away or you will later regret a misguided effort to be festive.

Gift Shopping

Flask and backup flask. You don’t know how long you’ll be out there.

Caroling

You do not need a drinking strategy because if someone can convince you that caroling is a good idea, you’ve probably had too much to drink already.

Present-wrapping

This task would be bad enough if it only required tricky surface-area calculations and copious amounts of tape. But you also have to do it alone, hiding from everyone so as not to ruin the surprise of giving them exactly what they requested. Depending on your seasonal role, you might only have to wrap a couple of presents, or you might need to be behind closed doors for hours at a time as my poor mother was when my two siblings and I were growing up.

This is a wine bottle situation. Grab it by the neck, get a glass, and head upstairs to do your dirty work. While the 750-milliliter wine bottle is often said to be the perfect size for two people to share, it also happens to be the exact right amount for a single person cutting patterned paper and writing fuckloads of “To: and From:” cards.

Decorating

Decorating your (or your family’s) house for the holidays falls into two camps: ladder activities, and everything else. Start your day with the ladder things (light-hanging, wreath-adjusting, mistletoe-placing) and do so with nothing more than a Thermos of cocoa.

Move on to ground jobs and booze-drinking after. Go for a real hot toddy here. Tree-decorating — everything, really — is better when you’re feeling jolly.

A Strange Nap

The 26-year-old student, at the beginning of the nap, awoke to a very strange sensation.  She described it as “a very loud, sharp, very short buzzing noise that sounded like it was coming from inside my head, followed by a surge through my body, like of adrenaline or electricity.”  She could recall this happening to her once before, though after the first time, she hadn’t made much notice of it.

A Confused Awakening

When the student got out of bed, she decided that in lieu of asking for a real medical opinion, she would instead Google her symptoms and see if she could find something.  After some clever Internet maneuvering, she found the Wikipedia page for the hilariously-dubbed “Exploding Head Syndrome.”  Exploding Head Syndrome is “a form of hypnagogic auditory hallucination in which the sufferer sometimes experiences a sudden loud noise coming from within their own head. The noise is brief and is usually likened to an explosion, roar, gunshot, door slamming, loud voices or screams, a ringing noise, or the sound of electrical arcing (buzzing).”  The student was intrigued.

A Reaching Out

Now knowing there was no known treatment for Exploding Head Syndrome, nor any real side effects, the student decided to reach out to her morbid roommate because she was a wee bit excited about her rare condition and her roommate “seemed like the most appropriate person [with whom to share.]”

An Interrogation

The roommate did take this as a compliment, and decided to do some follow up, including asking the student the following, based on what she, the roommate, had learned from Wikipedia:

Do you recall dreaming at the time?  (Sometimes, but not always, there is a correlation)

Did you feel “a sense of fear and anxiety” after the attack? (Another possible symptom)

Have you had any attacks since?  (They can occur in clusters)

Up until the point of the attack, had you been experiencing “stress or extreme fatigue”? (A possible cause)

Were you undergoing a rapid withdrawal from any prescription drugs at the time? (Another possible cause)

The Answers

The student, perhaps less than enthusiastic with her morbid roommate’s pointless inquiries, nevertheless answered as follows:

Do you recall dreaming at the time?

no, i was in the state where i was just slipping into sleep. you know when you feel “suspended”?

Did you feel “a sense of fear and anxiety” after the attack?

i felt a surge of adrenaline in my body which made my heart race. I suppose it could be described as fear/anxiety. it certainly made me cease and desist from my nap attempt.

Have you had any attacks since?  

negative

Up until the point of the attack, had you been experiencing “stress or extreme fatigue”?

fatigue. not extreme fatigue. somewhat stressed, i wouldnt say “extremely ” so

Were you undergoing a rapid withdrawal from any prescription drugs at the time?

negative.

And with that, the two young women decided that no further investigation into the matter was required, and that they had cracked the case as well as they could have, without the help of anyone, including the Times Magazine and its commenting trolls.