As I was getting dressed this morning I thought of my ex-husband. I am wearing my customary black, but with the addition of a splash of yellow (a tank top beneath an off the shoulder sweater and platforms) as a nod to summer. I remembered once, getting dolled up to go out with him, wearing black and yellow, and having him say, “You look like a Belisha beacon.”
Leave it to the British. This was an insult so finely tuned and ethnocentric, I had to look it up to see if my feelings were hurt.
They were…
He also used to say (read in a lord of Downton Abbey-esque lilt), “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” He usually said this when I was in the midst of some half-assed project: washing the window blinds and dribbling dirty water onto the carpets, or cleaning my car by tucking every found object and McDonalds wrapper into the center console…
The truth is, he was right. I did look like a lamppost. And when one starts a project, they should not be wishy-washy about getting it done properly. Which brings me to what I call the wild animals in the yard, but are technically known as the ambivalent drunks or the pre-contemplative drinkers.
These are the people who do not get the job done properly. They blithely say, “I should watch/be careful of/curtail/stop my drinking” – they usually say this after an embarrassing evening, or a blackout. It’s like mumbling, “I should clean my car…” But the ambivalent drinker continues to drink once the awkwardness fades…
Don’t let that be you. Try sobriety for 30 days. Or one day. You know who you are…
