Tea Totalling

I was totally disoriented when I woke up at midnight. Was it morning? Had I slept all night? What had I missed?

I swam thru the haze to begin to piece together the evening and remembered that I had started to watch Dancing with the Stars but didn't remember anything about the show, so was finally able to figure out that I fell asleep sometime shortly after 9 p.m.

I hadn't uploaded my journal entry yet. I hadn't checked Twitter for hours, I hadn't checked e-mail, I hadn't done a lot of things I normally do at night.

Why, I wondered, had I gone to sleep so early and slept for so long? (And would I be able to get back to sleep when I finally went to the couch to sleep for the night, having had three hours of sleep already?)

Then I remembered that, for the second night in a row, I had had a glass of wine before dinner.

I used to have wine before dinner every night. Walt always has a glass or two, and a lot of people have wine or a drink in the evening. Some doctors even tell you that it's healthy, especially if it's red wine. It's not like I have a drinking problem. One glass of wine before eating hardly makes me a problem drinker.

Except that I feel it is a problem. The problem is not based on any sort of potential addiction to spirits. The problem is that if I have a glass of wine before dinner, I fall asleep after dinner. It's as simple as that.

I hate that. People ask if I'm a morning person or an evening person and my favorite response is "yes." I enjoy getting up early (though not quite as early as Lizzie sometimes wants me to get up) and I don't wake up groggy or cranky. I hit the ground running and have all sorts of things I want to do in the morning.

But I'm also an evening person. I like working at my computer late into the night and I have a heavy duty TV-watching schedule most nights. If I fall asleep at 9 p.m., I have an awful lot of catching up to do.

So a long time ago, I just gave up drinking at night completely. I think that decision even pre-dated my dieting years (remember those? sigh.)

I watch Walt pour himself a glass of wine each night, I smell it as he sits down to work his Sodoku puzzle and watch Jeopardy, I read about how good for your health a nice glass of red wine can be and I occasionally think that there would be no problem with joining him and having a nice, civilized glass of wine before dinner.

Except for rare occasions, my drink of choice with meals is water. Sometimes I'll have wine with my meal, but I really prefer water, so I'm not tempted to add wine to the nightly meal except for special occasions.

The reason for having wine the last two nights was, of course, Michele's death. Michele was a big wine drinker, so Monday night I poured myself a glass of wine as kind of a toast to her. It didn't interfere with my evening's activities because I was obsessed with getting a journal entry written about her death and getting the video done that I posted that night. There was a lot involved in doing that and it kept me active so I didn't fall asleep.

But Tuesday was a TV night. It was one of those nights when I recorded two shows during most of the hour-long slots, which meant that I had shows to watch all evening, and then DVR'd shows to watch when those ended.

But I didn't do any of that. Instead I succumbed to the sleep inducing properties of the glass of wine and I fell asleep for three hours.

I really don't like sleeping the night away and waking up feeling all loggy -- sluggish.

I don't like waking up and feeling that I'd missed the whole evening.

So I'm not going to have a glass of wine before dinner again, except on special occasions. Michele's death has reminded me that we never know how much time we have left. I could very easily just not wake up from my next nap. I don't want to sleep my life away.

I like wine. I enjoy the camaraderie over a nice glass of wine with friends. But I don't like the fact that it makes me sleepy and robs me of the awake time that I cherish.