Don't You Know Me Kansas City, I'm the New Berlin Wall, Try and Tear Me Down

Oh, Thursday night. Why did Friday have to hurt so bad?

So Thursday, my wife had a relatively long day at work, meaning I stayed home with my daughter, alone, for a long stretch. My daughter had decided to punish me for Wednesday, when my sister and I took our kids to the aquarium and I forgot to bring a nipple for my daughter's bottle (a problem I solved by running over to a drugstore and purchasing a bottle). To punish me for this mistake, my daughter decided that she didn't want to eat Thursday.

My side of the family has a condition where if we don't eat, we become insufferable assholes. I think this is a trait passed down another generation. My daughter, in her refusal to eat, decided it would be much more fun to scream in my face for much of the day. I tried all of my bag of tricks to get her to calm down. I tried bouncing her, carrying her, not carrying her, carrying her outside, putting her in AC, letting her watch the fan, putting her in each one of her 17 sleeping apparatuses, playing the kick game (I act out different types of kicks with her feet—soccer kick, ninja kick, kangaroo hop, etc.), playing muppets (we wave our hands in the air like Kermit), giving her a pacifier, and on and on. She would not stay calm. I was getting worried, but luckily, in the late afternoon, she eventually took a bottle and then fell asleep and rested like a perfect little angel.

My wife made it home from work a little while later. She was instantly put on baby duty while I went in the bedroom and sat on the bed by myself for awhile. Then I made dinner for us.

Now this is where the story gets weird.

So my bar, and one of our regulars, decided that we were going to raise money for the Mother Emanuel Hope Fund by throwing a drag show where the bartenders and regulars dressed in drag. All the tips we collected went to the charity. So I, of course, participated.

I bought a dress online, picked out a song ("Party and Bullshit in the USA," the Notorious BIG and Miley Cyrus mashup), and when it was time to go, I grabbed a bottle of bourbon and headed out the door. The fact that my kid screamed in my face all day made me want to have a drink. The fact that I was going to dance in drag for money made me want to have more than one. We managed to polish off the bottle, and we ran quite the bar tab. My "performance" was near the end, and it pretty much was just a shit show. I tackled an older woman trying to shove money into my cleavage at one point.

Needless to say, Friday morning was rough. Thankfully, my daughter decided that she wanted to eat and spared me. Hangovers and kids are a terrible combination. But as one of my fellow bartenders pointed out, we raised a ton of money for a good cause and may have legalized gay marriage in the process. With the amount of bourbon we drank, it's entirely possible.

And party and bullshit.