Six months sober. If you are counting lunar months. But today is 180 days since my last drink. And I feel great.

I was supposed to be on a flight right now. I had to go take care of stuff in another city. I had an AA meeting planned out so I could get my 6 month chip. But the flight was cancelled due to aircraft malfunction. I did not want to bother rushing to a local meeting at home since I know they do not give out chips except for 90 days and 1 year, and they set aside one day of the month for giving out chips. I am over that now. I travel enough to find my chips elsewhere.

Instead I leave tomorrow morning. I will search for a meeting tomorrow evening. This gives me more options since there are more evening meetings than late night ones. I might call to specifically ask for a meeting that gives out chips. Should I search for a beginner’s meeting?

In a way, this delay is good. I was getting worried. I have to see an ex-boyfriend on this trip and his new girlfriend has been asking about me. She wants to know if she needs to “be worried.” Why is it she needs to be worried about me and not him? I would rather just avoid him and really avoid meeting her. She told my friend she wants to make sure I do not still have feelings for him. The truth is, I will always have feelings for him. And I hate him for that. But I don’t want him, her, or our mutual friend (his best friend and one of my oldest friends) knowing. Now that I have less time to get done what needs to get done, maybe I can avoid them.

Instead I spent my 180th day sleeping. Then I went to dinner, read some of Pete Hamill’s A Drinking Life, and treated myself to Minty Mint Chocolate chip ice cream! I think of all my treats, cake, flowers, and ice cream really are the best. Pedicures, facials and hair treatments feel more like necessities.

There is a bar next to the ice cream parlor with a name that reminds me of a bar I used to frequent in another city.

Mistake 180- My first time at this bar, I was invited by a group of people. We all met at a dinner party at a restaurant. I was new in town. I joined them in moving the party to this bar in another section of the city. I drove there. I also texted a friend of mine that was visiting and asked her to join.

When I arrived at the bar, most of the party from dinner was inside dancing. My friend was a smoker so she and I sat outside on the patio talking. One guy from the dinner came out to buy us drinks. He was cute. I felt like I knew him. As soon as I arrived at the restaurant early that evening, I recognized his smile but I did not know from where. I was too new for him to have been a forgotten one night stand. All during dinner, he kept looking at me.

After he brought us drinks, I turned to my friend and said “oh my god I know where I know him! I think that guy has been messaging me on a dating website!” She laughed and asked to see the profile. We sat there looking at his photo and trying to figure out if it was him. It looked very similar. Same name. It had to be. He even emailed me his phone number. We came up with a plan: she would dial the number and I would go inside the bar to see if he answered. I walked in and headed towards the bathroom. And yes, I saw him leave the dance floor to go down a quiet hall and answer his phone. She told him it was a wrong number when he answered. I returned to the patio giggling.

She and I kept drinking, talking and giggling. She soon had to leave because she is a responsible person and had work the next morning. I went inside to join those that were left dancing. Only the Dating Website guy (DW guy), his friend, and a girl from the dinner party were at our table. I could tell DW guy was flirting with her. Then I had two male friends show up because they lived around the corner. They are big drinkers. Since DW guy was flirting with someone else, I turned to flirting with one of my male friends.

I ended up making out with that male friend. We ended up in a hallway in the back of the bar kissing heavily. I do not remember much of it except the other male friend walking by leaving and said “get a room!” Thankfully, that got us to stop.

The next day, I texted my friend to see how his hangover was. He said he had to call out of work. He mentioned he had his hands down my pants. I didn’t remember. He said we were lucky we were not thrown out. If our other friend did not walk by and say something, we might have tried to have sex in that hallway. We joked about it for months afterwards. We never kissed or hooked up again. It was just another mistake to sweep under the carpet of drunkeness.

And the rest of the story of Dating Website guy will have to be saved for another mistake.