I am 10 months pop-free today

Granted, I’m not over the ambrosial fizziness of bubbly beverages so I’m now living with a three-can-a-day addiction to sparkling water—which is the quién-es-más-macho equivalent of saying I’m living with a three-rainbow-a-day addiction to majestic unicorns—but I’ve successfully broken free from the bonds of pop’s unpronounceable-chemicals elixir soup. And for that I toast myself with my first icy cold can of cherry bubly for the day. ¡Salud! I mean ¡Princess Sparklepony Unicorn!

Last week we cleared a mountain of crap off this garage shelf:

Today I cleared a mountain of wine off the garage floor:

And I cleaned out the garage refrigerator. And poured out an entire forgotten 12-pack of carbonationless Sprite that expired in 2016. And scrubbed the weird yellowish liquid that perpetually weeps down the garage walls and no the drywall isn’t peeing and we aren’t aliens or witches so don’t even think any of that or I’ll put a hex on you.

Also: It’s a delicate balance to scrub the grime off the garage-door opener without repeatedly opening and closing the garage door. It’s like Jenga. Or Jengarage. Or Garenga.

I’m seven months pop-free today!

I credit my success with gallons of wistfully flavored sparkling water and the occasional (OK, almost daily) intravenous 5-Hour Energy.

For the record, I do not claim the beer bottles lying in repose in my empty Klarbrunn box.

Racing ahead

Among the many, many helpful suggestions people have offered me about conquering this STU! PID! FUC! KING! headache—I’m actually quite humbled by your mass outpouring of concern and the sheer volume of suggestions and I’m sorry that I haven’t personally thanked you all—is trying a mega-dose of caffeine. I’m currently five and a half months pop-free and I’m not about to break my sobriety streak now and I’ve never been able to choke down coffee so I just chugged a 5 Hour Energy even though I don’t feel tired so I’m totally about to live that episode of Desperate Housewives where Felicity Huffman mainlines her kids’ Adderall and stays up all night organizing the toothpicks and doing her kids’ science projects for them—WHICH IN RETROSPECT WAS A SIGN WE ALL MISSED WAKE UP, PEOPLE!—and I still have to work a half day from home to make up for the negative-PTO deficit my NYC canceled flights caused and I really want to pull the weeds and fix the flappy visqueen and displaced pea gravel in our side hosta bed and find more things to clean with my awesome new happy-Mother’s-Day-to-me vacuum and paint my room and finish the build-out behind the house and fix the deficit before the sun goes down and hoo boy I’m off and running where did I put my running shoes oh there they are I’ll see you when we all get to Narnia look out toothpicks here I come!

I’ve written this many things since November 29

And yes, our systems track our numbers for us in real time and display them on a convenient screen we can leave open in a browser tab. But I learned to count on an abacus, and if that was good enough for my brah Demosthenes, it’s good enough for couture shoes. Change my mind.

And while we’re talking about dates ’n’ stuff, TODAY IS MY NO-POP ONE-MONTH-IVERSARY!

When you’re staying late at the office

and there’s a tornado warning so you have to go to the tornado shelter which happens to double as a chic little magazine lounge when it’s not protecting people from catastrophic death and you have the presence mind to bring Blueberry Bevita crackers and Diet Mountain Dew to help keep your spirits and your energy up while you (hopefully, but you never know) barely survive Certain Tornado Death!

Diet Pepsi is so gross

They’re back: the days of bringing my script to the office so I can magically absorb my lines as I work.

Also: Wild Cherry Pepsi. It’s not not for breakfast.

Your jealousy is the ugly stepsister

We have a refrigerator at work filled with icy cold pop and an honor-system piggy bank (that’s shaped like an actual pig!) on top for us to pay a quarter every time we take a pop. Naturally, I brought every quarter I could scrounge out of random couch cushions and pay phones to work and stacked them so precariously on my desk that they became a safety hazard and five OSHA violations. So I searched through our storage room at home for a handsome, tasteful demitasse or votive that I could possibly repurpose as a quarter caddy (coffer? cradle? cauldron? kettle? so many alliterative options!) ... and instead I FOUND A WHOLE BAG OF ASSORTED DISNEY PRINCESS PARTY CUPS, the Cinderellaiest of which I—as people do—arranged on my desk with a Diet Coke can and an artful jumble of quarters for this celebratory photo:

The very best part of volunteering at the Ronald McDonald House:

You! Get! To! Fill! The! Coke! Machine!