MISLED

It's the name of a band and a general statement on my overall behavior this weekend

I mentioned the minor-ish oral surgery on Friday but what I don’t think I said was I already had plans to drive down to Des Moines on Saturday to watch our college house band perform. I was meeting some old friends and I was not changing my plans over a minor mouth wound. So off I went.

My hotel housed a bunch of travel softball and baseball parents who had all shifted into after tournament party mode as I was checking in. Because I was wearing Iowa State gear and a lot of them were representing the evil yellow chicken hawk faction some banter broke out. When I shifted in to my typical riff on catching crap from the private school snobs they asked me to join their group. It was a nice pregame for my evenings festivities…

I later made it over to the bar with a nice buzz and met my friends. Some of the greatest people I know had their kids with them and that added yet another level of fun. There is something highly entertaining about drinking with the adult children of old friends… The concert was great and I had an amazing time. About three hours in my inner alarm began to go off. I hadn’t eaten all day due mostly to the aforementioned mouth troubles and in a grave tactical error I neglected to pack any pain relief. I attempted to drink my jaw ache away to no avail and found myself hammered with a hammering jawbone.

So I disappeared like a ghost and got my drunk ass back to the hotel for an overpriced fistful of ibuprofen. Just as I was manically tearing through the tiny packs of pills my new friends from earlier invited me to join them. They had kept the party going the entire time I was gone and things had even progressed into an amazing potluck complete with crockpots of various warm dips.

The smells hit my drunk starving ass just right and I turned into a human consumption machine. At one point one of my many hostesses was using me to take “the rest” of the things as she cleaned out various devices. I probably grazed and kept drinking for an unwise hour at least. I can’t be sure of the timing here because I remember little about the end of my evening. Okay, nothing.

I awoke fully clothed still wearing my glasses. When I staggered into the bathroom (side note: waking up in a hotel in that state is never a good time) I looked in the mirror and gasped. It looked like I had wandered up on a pack of wolves feeding on a carcass and joined right in. I frantically washed my face looking for lacerations when it dawned on me that the blood must have come from my still healing mouth…

Maybe plowing through an endless procession of chips wasn’t the wisest post procedure behavior? I jumped straight into the shower to get completely blood free before the drive home. When I came out I noticed the pillow.

Luckily the crime scene was limited to one head rest as I slept and bled in place all night. There was no saving the pillow or the case so I grabbed the dry cleaning bag from the closet and crammed them into that then into my bag along with the hand towel I fouled earlier. There is a gas station dumpster on I35 with a murder pillow in a hotel plastic bag just screaming THIS SHOULD BE INVESTIGATED. So I’ve got that going for me…

I have earned every thump of todays headache and am currently sitting in my house holding warm saltwater mouthfuls whilst I type. I can’t bring myself to look but what tongue scouting I’ve done tells me that going back and letting my doctor see what I’ve done could be problematic. Luckily they sell sterile gauze at Walgreens so I will be doing a Godfather impersonation for the remainder of the day. A good time for some self reflection.