Desperation

Desperation is a sad thing. So last night, the boy and I joined Christy and Tim for a pleasant evening of Opera in the Park. They were performing Madama Butterfly, which was, at least according to the synopsis since I don't speak Italian, surprising similiar to Miss Saigon. Puccini is a hack. Anyway, between the four of us we split four bottles of wine (a pleasant pinot grigio, two Sicilian reds which could have been aged more and a nice South African pinotage, which at that point in the evening went down like water). We also had some lovely cured meat sandwiches and tasty goat milk brie on wee toasts. Needless to say by the end of the evening I was pleasantly toasted as well, and I found myself home early, buzzed and not ready to go to bed.

Here is where desperation comes in. Since I quit smoking in April, I'd had a couple of packs of cigarettes left over in a drawer in my closet. Whenever I was feeling stressed or buzzed or the boy wanted one, I sneak one out. Needless to say, I was jonesin'. Well, kiddies, much to my chagrin I discovered that I'd successfully sneaked every single cigarette, including my cloves, out of my apartment. Three empty packs of fags, and not a single smoke. So I started digging. Almost immediately I found a three year old pack of unfiltered Camels with about six cigarettes left. I'm not that desperate, I told myself, and I kept digging. It's amazing what you find at the bottom of forgotten drawers. I found a faded admission ticket to the Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans, dated March 1999. While I do remember being in New Orleans for spring break my senior year of college, I have absolutely no recollection of going to an aquarium. I also found $5.50 in penny rolls, which I put with the rest of my change. I actually have enough change to pay off all of our war debt, but I have yet to do anything with it. I've been planning on taking it to Commerce Bank which has free change machines, but you really have to make a planned trip. I can't just put it all in my bag and pop round after work because I'd probably give myself another hernia. I guess I could take it in shifts but that requires much more forethought and energy expenditure than I'm willing to invest. I figure, I'll do something with it when it's finally time to move. Or, I guess I could have taken some of it and walked the block and half to a bodega to buy a pack of smokes.

But since this post is about desperation, I of course ended up smoking a three year old unfiltered Camel and being none too happy about it, especially since you really can't tell how far you're supposed to smoke since there's no handy filter to help you gauge in the dark.