The Saturday of Despair and Redemption

No, my "lame pussy ass", did not go to the LSU game. In fact I did what anyone should do when faced with family commitments: I got good and drunk the night before, so that I looked and felt my best for the grand clean-up.

The Abita Bar Crawl scene was packed. Downtown Baton Rouge has morphed apparently since I left. They now have 3 or 4 bars on 3rd Street that seem to have some excellent potential. We started at the Roux House to sign up for the $1 Abita beers. Walking up, we noticed that there was an obscenely long line at Happy's across the street. It turned out that the sign-up table was only at one bar rather than 2 as advertised. After some split-second critical thinking we decided that immediate gratification was better than waiting around for $1 Abitas. We quickly escaped the Abita crowd and walked a block down 3rd.

After a shot of Jack and a beer at Boudreaux & Thibodeaux's , we were ready to head back into the throng of people and meet up with our friend and her law-school associates who were now pondering the line situation. It was great seeing her and meeting her pals( they turned out to be pretty cool). They decided to ditch the abita thing, too. We then commenced with beers and carbombs after a wild goosechase for the illusive Thristy Tiger, a dive bar that was closed that night for renovation into an up-scale martini bar. Fucking gentrification.

Now it was not my intention to become shitfaced, but these things happen unintentionally when I let my mind go on it's version of autopilot. It's an interesting gear. And I would say it's somewhat mystical in that it focuses you on the present in a way that meditation should. No thought of tomorrow's ills, only the Now. Intense conversations, sincere promises and assertions. Bold proclamations that goddammit, maybe we should just go to New Orleans. Tonight!

We wound up on the balcony at Boudreaux & Thibodeaux's , and drank and talked until our law school contingent called it quits. After all, several of them had to get to their tailgating spots by 9am. So the night ended up taking us to a friend of ours' house in nearby Spanish Town. In retrospect, I realize that if I had stopped drinking then, everything would have been better. But at the time, a little wine and cheese seemed like a grand idea.

Getting back to our place at 3am was not the original plan, but hey, theses things happen. It's not like I lost millions of dollars in bribes.

So, Saturday morning was ugly. In fact while I was driving to Pop's old house, I was really wondering how in the world I was going to pull it together. How was I going to be lifting and moving stuff and cleaning in this state? I imagined just being propped up in the corner, shaking and looking at the ground while my in-laws cast alternating glances of pity and disgust at me.

But it was not to be. The cornbread that I choked down at the house started to work around the time that the Pepto-tablet/Ibuprophen cocktail kicked in. I got out of the car and went right to work. My condition was not 100%, but I was able-bodied. A victory for late night drunkeness!

We packed a lot of shit up. I rummaged through a utility room with rat and mice-eaten papers and found all kinds of nasty shit that I will not catalog here. Suffice to say that we got everything done in time for kickoff and went back to home-base. My brother-in-law had barbequed some brisket and pork, and by that time my appetite had returned.

So I kicked back in the recliner, porked out and watched tv as the LSU fans at the stadium got soaked by the remnants of the tropical depression.

The end.