A Friday afternoon email exchange:

Becky: Ugh, I’m so done with this week.

Shelly: Me too.  I just want to crawl into a little hole and not come out for a few days.

Becky: No kidding!  Going to bed at 9 tonight sounds really great right now.

Shelly: With hot apple cider.

Becky: or red wine and beef stew.

Shelly: No red wine!  You’d be up at 2.

Becky: Oh yeah!  God.  STUPID!  Remind me what would I do without you?

**If you don’t have one of these people in your life, get one.  NOW!  Otherwise life can be very scary and potentially disastrous. 

Mine is on vacation this week so there is really no telling what sort of trouble I’m likely to get into.  Luckily she is just a text away.

I have a love/hate relationship with red wine.   I love it for many reasons.  The color, the taste, the nice warm tingly feeling it gives me.  Yes, I do love my red wine. 

But, it does NOT love me back.  In fact, it secretly hates me.  Was it that I drank much more white wine than red lately?  Or perhaps that I even will be known to drink white wine in the winter?  GASP!  Or did I have some other cocktail when the red was longing to be drank?

Whatever the reason, it is not my friend.  Oh sure, it goes down great.  Hence the warm tingly feeling mentioned above.  It even makes me fall asleep quite easily as I’m all relaxed and happy. 

However, like clockwork, three hours into my slumber, Mr. Red Wine rears his ugly head. 

BING!  Eyes fly open.

“Time to wake up!” Mr. Red Wine says with an evil grin.  “WAKE UP WAKE UP!!!!  Don’t you see?  It’s 2:33 am!  There is so much to do now!  SO MUCH to think about!  Yes, that’s right.  THINK THINK THINK!  Ooh and let’s see if we can get that heart of yours racing?  Why, not?!  What else do you have to do?  SLEEP!?  Nah.  Instead, remember that song you had stuck in your head all day?  Yeah, the one that you can only remember three words of?  Yep!  Sing that, over and over and over.  Ooh and wanna try to balance your checkbook now?  In your head?  In the dark?  Aw, come on!  It will be fun!  And when your done with that, let’s think of all the things you have to do tomorrow and how you really should be sleeping but I WOKE YOU UP!!!  YAY ME!”

Ah, red wine.  So predictable.  So attention seeking.  So PAINFULLY ANNOYING.

You’d think I’d learn as this happens every single time I have more than one glass of the stuff.  And really, who doesn’t have more than one glass?  Oh I know, the people that SLEEP THROUGH THE NIGHT!

So Mr. Red Wine, you leave me no choice.  I pick sleep over you.  Yes, it’s true.  We are breaking up.  In fact, we are BROKEN up.  

And this time, it really is all about YOU; not me.