May -- The Dryest Month of the Year. Well, THIS Year

I'm not the smartest guy going. I know this. Sometimes as soon as I say something, I immediately wish my words had a little string on the end of them, so I can pull them back in. (Never mind, the string on the end made me think of tampons and.....ew)

Anyway, my good friend Jeff was going to visit a brand new doctor in late April. Over our weekly breakfast, he tells me he wants to build good healthy habits, drop a few pounds and get reinvigorated. Sounded like a good idea to me.

So I made one of the dumbest suggestions. Ever.

"Well why don't we go on the wagon for the month of May," I said. "We'll give up drinking and try to build some good habits."

My egg-white ommelette tasted like crap that day, by the way. My mouth got dry, and not the way I like it to.

So we did. May came and we stopped drinking. A few days in Jeff asks "You meant getting drunk, right? Like we can have a couple of drinks, but no more getting tanked, for the month."

"Jeff," I began to reason with him with my new, clean mind. "if you're drinking you NEVER think you're tanked. Unless you've lost the feeling in your legs, and you'd probably blame that on your belt anyway."

Sure, drying out for a month sounds like a great idea. But picking THIS particular month didn't make much sense. Consider:

* May had five weekends. FIVE. That's like 10 percent of the weekends for the WHOLE year.
* I was invited to two birthday parties in May, including a 40th birthday barbecue. Ug.
* Mother's Day. Extended family time. I even babysat my two nieces for a whole day and didn't cave.
* Golf season. I'm not good when I'm focused. Lose a couple brain cells, lose a couple strokes.
* Memorial Day. I felt un-American by not honoring our fallen veterans by getting a little lubed up on imported beers.
* My next door neighbor Gloria died late in the month. I wanted to at least hoist a very cheap glass of read wine in her honor, but I settled on a few prayers.
* Baseball. I have about 18 lonely beers in my fridge. Every day another Met got hurt. It wasn't looking so good. I needed liquid company!

My cousin always goes dry in February. He says it's so he knows he CAN give it up for health reasons if someday he needed to. But, let's face it -- February is the softest month of the year. Shortest month, barely any sports (though the Super Bowl is now played in February, but still)

I didn't tell many people about this "experiment." Frankly, I got tired of hearing "YOU gave up DRINKING. For a MONTH!? Are you dying?"

Those who know both Jeff and I wondered who would crack first. We never even bet on it, we both decided to just do it, and believed we both could, so we never considered betting. Me not considering competing!! Can you believe it!

May came. May went. No alcoholic beverage touched my lips.

It wasn't nearly as difficult as I thought. So what did I learn?

* Water is your friend. I feel like a freakin' fish I drank so many gallons of water;
* Hangovers suck. Most mornings I was rested, refreshed. It was weird. I almost liked it.
* Finishing something is way harder than starting it. The last week was hell. I think my Bombay Sapphire was literally calling my name. Oh, BS, I'll be there soon.
* My ADD is not solely attributable to Heineken. I still forgot stuff. Woo hoo! I think....
* Bars actually charge you to drink seltzer water? One place stuck me for $3.50. And no free refills!!! Hell for that kind of money, I should have been drinking a G&T at half the pace!
*Susan Boyle really is ugly. Drunk or sober.

So today is June 1. It's almost 2 p.m. No liquid lunch, no shakes, no hives (other than the one on the deck the bees built)

So cheers to me! Gifts of gin, Heineken mini-kegs and Advil are currently being accepted.