Where Would I Be Without You - By CJ Hawk Page 0,7

machine playback, I only caught a resemblance of an apology from my mom and a mention that I left my birthday card at the restaurant with my two hundred dollar Macy's gift card in it. I didn't forget; it was intentional. After the speech my mother gave, I wanted to leave the waitress a little something extra for having to deal with my crazy family.

It was bad enough that my best friend's husband offered to leave the tip on a seven hundred dollar tab. I think the thirty minutes everyone spent bickering about what their share in food and alcohol was, not differing by more than ten or twenty bucks either way. I figured he was afraid of how long it might take when my dad mentioned that the gratuity wasn't automatically added in. The grumbling started, and Carl dropped four hundreds on the table in addition to already paying for their own meal and told me it was for the tip and my dinner, and this was their birthday present. That started a bit of back and forth conversation of 'that's too much', and 'you don't have to do that'. However, I let Marion and Carl kiss me good-bye, after they told me that they had a cab with paid fare waiting out front for my escape, and they hustled out of the restaurant before anything more enlightened happened with my family, which usually did. It was too late for me at that point; I was already too far gone with my blissful alcoholic haze as I shouted out to the waitress 'shack me up my snake', which of course, meant pack me up my cake.

I deleted the message from my mom. I had to figure that was the best apology I was ever going to get from her. The sting at the end of the message mentioning a community college package should be arriving in the mail only made the apology feel like a bee sting - which I am allergic to, by the way.

I peeked around the corner of my kitchen towards my front room window, making sure my neighbor wasn't looking this way for a glimpse of the crazy lady across the alley way. Coast is clear.

I made a mad dash for the bathroom and almost made it unscathed. Somehow or another, I brought a drink home from the restaurant, half-filled with alcohol, ice, and something sweet. Don't ask me what, I was too drunk to remember. I just realized, as I laid flat out on my back and my towel now slipping open that - that drink from the restaurant, which was illegal for me to walk out with - somehow spilled on my wood floor causing a nice slick spot for me to lose my footing.

I laid on the floor for a few minutes, glad my ass and right shoulder took the brunt of the fall and not my head. I noticed the peeling paint on the apartment ceiling and added calling the super to my to-do list. I notice a cobweb that appeared since my last dusting on the top of the doorway molding. I turned my head and noticed the restaurant glass had not broken when I must have inadvertently dropped it on the floor, aiming for my entryway table, but instead it landed and rolled partially underneath. I was a bit hung over to notice it this morning. Although this morning, before seeing the gloriously naked body of my new neighbor, I was perfectly content to walk about my place without staying close to the wall and out of sight of my delectably handsome and totally edible neighbor, if you get what I mean.

I finally took a deep breath and figured I could chalk this up to the fact that I was not officially thirty until Wednesday, so I could get the stupid twenties shenanigans out of the way until then. Because once I was officially thirty, I was going to grow up, somewhat. I was going to buy a new car, volunteer for the needy, put more money in savings instead of charging more on my credit card bill, or at least try. I was going to take a class or two in business management; not through the community college like my mom insisted, but through my work's job enrichment program, which, by the way, was free. I was going to knock my lousy common sense of my twenties out of the ballpark and be a more mature thirty-year-old woman.