Dogs, Beer and Running

In that order, describes my weekend. I'm feeling prolific this morning, so grab a cup of coffee and sit down for a nice little read.
Muffin has been extraordinarily high maintenance the past few days. The doctor said she hurt her back and put her on pain pills. (Once again, these dogs have no appreciation for pain pills. I keep telling her how lucky she is, but she doesn't listen). So now her back seems fine, but she's milking it big time. Since she's not supposed to really walk or run, we have to carry her everywhere. She's developed a nasal condition to accompany her other ailments and she licks her nose incessantly to get the snot out. Needless to say, we're not getting a lot of sleep around here. Sam, well, Sam is a freak. He got restless last night while we were trying to watch Sophie Scholl - (Oh my God! I just learned myself how to do a hyperlink!!) - and it was up, down, up, down, up, down all through the film with pauses to let the dogs get off the couch and go out. Sam, it seems, is uncomfortable in his skin. Which I can relate to almost all of the time. Particularly the last couple of days.
So I'm outside lounging on Saturday in the 85 degree weather getting tan, and I'm looking down at my belly which needs to be flattened with the force of a cement tile dropped from the roof onto my midsection, and I've decided I can't live in this body anymore. (This is what happens to me when I put on a bikini, so no more bikinis. I'm too old for a bikini anyway.) The solution I come up with? I'll just get drunk and then it won't bother me so much. So I mix some margaritas with healthy pomegranate/lime juice that the salesperson at Trader Joe's (there it is again!) recommended to me just for that purpose. I give one to SSMG, who is already on his 4th or 5th beer. I take one sip and yuch, I just can't drink tequila. SSMG has consumed his entire margarita in one breath, so I offer him mine.
I peruse the liquor cabinet and find nothing there that I like, so I stick a beer in the freezer hoping that, freezing cold, I can drink and enjoy four or five like SSMG and go into a nice, calm, tranquil state and forget about my swollen belly, the fact that even after two hours in the sun I am pasty and most of all, what the fuck I'm going to do with the rest of my life now that I have no career, no confidence and no chutzpah. THAT plagues my thoughts almost every minute of every day. (And I've just been banned from Sneakerama DON'T SHOP HERE for returning a pair of running shoes, but that's another story for my next post).
Mind you, it is 4:00 in the afternoon on Saturday with no plans for the rest of the day.
Suddenly, I look at SSMG and he has this funny smile on his face, his eyes are half shut and he can't seem to get his words out. Are you okay? I ask. He smiles in return and says, "Babe, I'm drunk." Okay, not only was he drunk, but I think I must have poisoned him with my margaritas, because the boy could not walk or talk. And all so suddenly! In my attempt to get drunk and remove myself from my own body and mind, I have incapacitated poor SSMG!
Mind you, we have a 10-mile trail race in the morning.
He wobbles to the arm rest and holds himself up on the railing on the porch and declares he must go lie down. I help walk him up the stairs, he falls down on the bed, and this is the last I see of SSMG until 11:30 that night.
Now, more than ever, I am determined to drink that goddamn beer. I get through 3/4 of it before it gets too warm for me to enjoy and I start this rotation cycle of placing my 1/4 bottle of warm beer inthe freezer while I drink the full beer that I have placed in the freezer 20 minutes prior. In total, I drink three whole beers (that's five bottles worth if you count all that got dumped out), and I am not the least bit tipsy, nor am I feeling any better about my belly now that it's more bloated than before.
So I cook dinner and try to wake SSMG to eat, all to no avail. He is unconscious, but breathing. After killing the evening, I go to sleep, but not before I poke SSMG a few times to make sure he's alive. I'm worried. He hasn't eaten, he's drunker than I've ever seen him and he's supposed to get up at 6:30 to run the race that I was ambivalent about. Scratch that, I'm only running because he's running.
The alarm goes off at 6:30, I am awake and feeling almost peppy, and SSMG has a headache and informs me that he can't run.
Well goddamn if I'm going to stay home all day again with my high-maintenance dogs and fat belly, I go and run the race by myself! And let me tell you friends, I did it and I did it pretty well! Tough course, hot weather and the thing that kept me motivated the entire time - aside from the fact that as a result of not enjoying alcohol too much I stayed sober and ate a good meal and felt really good - was that I wanted to make SSMG proud. Poor guy. I knew he felt more awful about the whole thing than he was letting on.
So the weekend ended on a positive note. I felt good about the race and decided that I'm going to become a professional trailrunner, and SSMG recovered.
The dogs, well, they never seem to take notice any of this.