Old Tub Lock!

It wasn’t exactly the evening that I had expected.

The night was supposed to be just another normal Friday night. I had plans to attend a film program at the branch the following morning, one that one of my staffers was hosting. Armageddon. A nice film for a Saturday morning. A good film to critique. A nice flick to team build on.

I had only been in town a couple months. We had just installed a very cool and interesting interactive NASA exhibit that was spread all around the library. The programs we were putting on were an extra added bonus for patrons, an obligation that we had to fulfill for having won the grant. Overall the exhibit was a pretty splendid thing to have in house, was a big hit with patrons young and old and helped make the branch look like the Exploratorium on the coast. It felt good, too, as the new boss, to know that I could get out of the house, take a brisk walk across town, be seen as a team player and still have time afterwards to go down the way to the market or the mall. All the way around it seemed like a fair use of time and a good way to kill a day.

Friday nights in Greeley were pretty simple affairs for me at that time. Call for a pizza, have a few beers, maybe open a bottle of wine and, if I was still up to it after all that, maybe pop in a movie. A man had to pace himself, spread out the fun over the course of the weekend.

I came to Colorado with a batch of tincture that I had made before I left Cali. The recipe was something I ran across while cruising the web and it seemed like the right thing to make at the time. I had an abundance of older cannabis sitting in cans in my closet that needed to be turned into something edible. Over the course of a weekend I turned part of the stash into a batch of cannabutter, the rest settled down in a large glass jar with Everclear and turned into a lovely, dark green batch of medicinal tincture. It was easy to transport and for the most part, easy to ignore. I found an old Jim Beam bottle that looked a lot like Korean pottery and it pleased me with its natural good looks, but more, looked like any old bottle of liquor on the shelf. A Q boat, a wolf in lambskin. Happiness for me, a bit of a breather for my conscience as it traveled cross country.

So, Friday evening sort of flew away with itself. By eight o’clock I had fairly loud music playing, the trolls in the basement were having at it as usual, the room was filled with tobacco smoke wafting up from the cracks in the venting and the general loneliness that I was experiencing from being away from the family was all encompassing. I started off with one bottle of really wonderful Pinot but then, feeling the thirst, started in on another. Somehow that thirst worked up a sort of madness, one that went along well with the decrepit house I was living in, the black crusty ice outside on the walk, the heavy vibes coming up from the neighbors down below. Somehow I had it in my head that if a dropper of tincture is good, well, a teaspoon would be better. And if a teaspoon was going to be great, well, then, a shot glass of that inky solution would top it all.

It didn’t take long for me to realize that the music was up just a bit too high and needed to be turned down a tad. Then it took only slightly longer than that to know that the music just had to be shut off as I had no idea how loud it really was. Somehow I found myself wandering around the house and then for no apparent reason, I ended up in the bathroom. By the time the night hit the grand old hour of ten I was pushing limits of intoxication that really were a bit too much for one man to handle alone but somehow I realized that I was on my own, completely insensible and completely incapable of doing anything of any importance.. No going anywhere, no getting on the phone, no calling for help. So,with my wits completely off the tether I settled into the bathtub for the next three and a half to four hours. I have vivid memories of the clock melting, of the bathroom fan sucking air out of the room and of the above the sink light going from outrageously glaring to being just normal again.

What a night. Around the time that the bars normally close I was able to actually stand and make my way to bed. That was a long walk, even if the walk was only out one door and through another. I woke the next day wondering if I had done anything that might warrant arrest or, at the least, an evil eye from the neighbors. Needless to say I didn’t make the movie that morning. I couldn’t back down from the fact that I was extremely hung over from my over indulgence with the wine but I also had to own up to the realization that I had a major marijuana hangover going on as well.

And while I didn’t pull off a Maureen Dowd that night I realized that I came pretty darned close to panicking big time at least a couple of times. As the day wore on I had to laugh at myself, but more, had to thank the small gods for giving me the sense to settle into that tub and stay away from the phone. It was a rollicking night but it could have turned out a hell of a lot worse had I called the local fire house for help Ooh, the headline that could have been!.

As for Old Tub Lock, I still have it around. I didn’t go mad and pour it down the sink, saying, ah, never again. It IS a mighty good medicinal solution. In balance with an equal sized dropper of CBD it makes for a nice, balanced tonic to take on the day. It is a great salve for bug bites and has helped to make blemishes and moles disappear. Since that day I have a mighty fine respect for that otherworldly liquid. Some might have called it "demonic" after an experience like that. Me, I like to think that, for a while there, I was sipping from the waters of Paradise.

Salud!