Parent Hangover – enough said

I have been absent from the blog-sphere for the past while as I have been recovering from one of the more hideous afflictions of parenthood – the parent hangover. I haven’t been struck down by one of these in about a year so it took a few days to actually feel somewhat human again. Recovery wasn’t helped by a bouncing toddler who refused to sleep past 6am and the need to constantly make sure she was (somewhat) safe. Yesterday was spent shamelessly giving into her demands and bribing her when I wanted her to do something without making a fuss. I figured the only way to live through it was to take the path of least resistance…and this meant agreeing with everything my toddler had to say.

The morning after the night before, it came screaming back to me why I now, very rarely, drink. It just does not pay when you have to deal with a small child on very little sleep and a headache that would make you wish for death. They don’t understand why you don’t want to play cars or colour pictures or why you keep running to the toilet every five minutes. They don’t get why you need nap time more than they do. And they especially don’t get why having a temper tantrum in a public place could result in tears (yours not theirs)…though if they did it probably wouldn’t stop them.

The reason for the intensity of this hangover was that my husband and I were out on a date night. These are like precious jewels to us now. Even more thrilling was the fact that we were staying over-night in a hotel. We hadn’t done this in about a year and, as we wouldn’t be going away this summer, this would double nicely as a mini holiday as well. We were like two small children let loose in a sweet shop albeit one with bottles of wine and glasses of beer. We started early and finished late. We even chanced going to a local nightclub. We sobered up a little at the sight of those black stamps on our hands and I admit we left after about five minutes. Sometimes you have to realise you just aren’t into that scene anymore…and we were big players on the old nightclub scene back in the day. We even met in one.

I don’t remember much after the club…though I have a hazy recollection of wanting more drink. Thankfully the hotel bar was closed by the time we reached it and so to bed. Waking up the next day was not pretty and indeed I wasn’t much better the next couple of days either. Today I was overjoyed to wake up feeling back to normal again. I have vowed to go easy on the next date night maybe just dinner and a movie…a glass of wine with dinner rather than for dinner!

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