Cut to a bar where it’s clear at least a baker’s dozen of the patrons are teetering on the verge of falling into a Venn diagram that’s labeled “Angry Drunk” on the left and “Sad Drunk” on the right with a few “Batshit Crazy Hybrids” smashed into the middle. Someone’s about to start weeping while slurring “I love you, man,” and someone’s about to get punched in the face; probably the creepy dude who has his friend in a headlock and is slurring sweet nothings into his ear. You know the vibe, the escalating tension and your semi-sober observation that more than a couple human booze recepticles in the perimeter could use an IV drip before they slip into either an alcohol poisoning or fist-induced coma.

Things are nearing Red Alert Wiggity Wack Status – at least that’s how they feel to me in my constant state of human presence-induced anxiety. I think, I can either back away slowly and head up to my hotel room or I can stand there a minute longer and risk ending up in the middle of a bar brawl whilst blowing my rape whistle and pushing two people apart human wall style.

Knowing the latter could lead to me taking a few knocks to the eye region, I select Option A and begin backing up toward the doorway. I silently exit the way you do when a hungry mountain lion has just prowled onto the set of your Jimmy Dean photo shoot only to find you posing in a sausage suit. Because we’ve all been there, haven’t we?

As I ride the elevator up to my room, I become aware that my stomach does not approve of my pouring a keg’s worth of Sam Adams into it. This suspicion becomes clearer to me when I fall through my hotel room door and discover I have about negative three seconds to make it to the toilet before puking all over the kind of carpet that makes you both dizzy and inspired to go back downstairs in search of craps tables.

Feeling all Linda Blaire in The Exorcist, I stumble into the bathroom, and that’s when the toilet seat from hell attacks. I slam it up to puke and it slams right back down and clocks me in the face. It smashes my cranium into the bowl and nearly gouges out my eyeball.

Why in the hell would any company produce sharp, pointy-ended, horseshoe-shaped toilet seats? That’s just fantastic! Hi, everyone. I’m now a Cyclopes and let me explain to every person staring at my eye patch why exactly that is. This is a story I want to repeat to small children for the rest of my life.

So I’m sobbing and bleeding from the face — convinced it’s not cheek, but actual eye blood spurting from my head in a manner would make Tarantino proud — and all the while still puking, when my husband follows my Tru Blood ESP distress calls up to our hotel room. He swoops in the door, takes one look at me, then disappears.

This angers me, as I’ve just gone to the trouble of popping a Tic-Tac into my piehole. He comes back a minute later with a bag of ice, as I’m ridding myself of the one calorie breath mint. He starts acting all tender, smashing the homemade glacier against my swollen head and saying romantic things like, “I’m sure you’ll get to keep both of your eyes.”

The next day, after finding myself still vomiting, while standing in line at curbside check-in, I discover that going blind would’ve been a blessing, because then I wouldn’t’ve had to see the CEO of my former employer sitting directly across the aisle from me on my flight home. Makeupless, exhausted, and looking like I just ran into Kimbo Slice and told him he was a pussy who couldn’t throw a punch to save his life, I am in no state to be anywhere near the person whose very presence outside my old cubicle used to send me into asthmatic panic attacks.

Despite my insane fear of heights, I spend most of that flight home staring out the window — not only biding my time envisioning my escape route, but breaking my neck to hide both my identity and my toilet seat injury. By the time we land, every body part above my shoulders throbs with pain, but my story has a happy ending. Brian was right; I did get to keep both my eyes and neither of them have had any painful contact with a toilet seat or my intimidating former employer since.

*She hates when I call her my death mother. I don’t know why. I also don’t know why strangers ask me what orphanage I’m from when I refer to her as Birth Mother in public.

“Egg Donor,” I said, one wintry eve, whilst attempting to quash my eating claw’s proclivity for robotically jerking its way over to the rooster-shaped dish in front of me and picking up the stick of butter like some prize stuffed animal in an arcade machine and jamming it into my open gob. “What are you making me for supper?”

“Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and pie,” she said. She then screamed at the obese family dog to back away from the oven before he “burned his beautiful fur coat off.”

With a great heave she hoisted a giant roasting pan out of the Plath-killer and over to the granite-topped island where I supervised, taking copious mental notes. She slammed it with such violent fervor that I wondered if her Ove Gloves did not have the maximum flesh protection their infomercial boasts. She shook the residual heat from her hands while screaming “Yowza!” and I ignored her cry for help and instead looked upon the vessel in which she’d baked my “vegetarian” stuffing.

I eyed the sick beast sprawled out before me, shaking my head in dismay.

“When did Ralph’s start selling pterodactyl carcasses and where is my Tofurkey, damnit?”

“Nikki! Don’t say bad words and it’s not a pterodactyl.”

“Pshaa, woman. I’ve not seen a sky beast so large since my days of watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse. You killed Pterry! Now how will neglected children celebrate the word of the day?”

“Oh, stop. Have some more eggnog,” she said, by way of silencing me.

I obeyed, but only because it was Lite.

After dinner, I scanned the room for a rogue Rascal I might ride to the bathroom, but could not find one. Angry at having to walk the thirty paces to the room of rest, I grunted and glared and pulled myself up, nearly turning the dinner table into a seesaw with my great heft. When I finally completed far more exercise than I’d have liked, I locked the door behind me and turned to greet my twin self in the freshly-Windexed mirror.

Turning sideways, I lifted what should have been a muumuu and stared agog at the eggnog that was now bloating my belly to Octomom proportions. Only this was before that pop culture reference would have made sense (as I am not an employee of Miss Cleo) and so I instead thought my belly bore an uncanny resemblance to a snowman. Yes, the three thick rolls of white flesh could easily stand in for Frosty in a North Pole police line up. I considered busting out the camera tripod, stripping nude, save for a top hat, scarf, and corncob pipe, and getting a jump start on my holiday cards for the next year. But that all seemed like a lot of effort, so instead I stooped back into a pie digesting torpor and did what I’m best at: digesting pie.

As fate would have it, I friend introduced me to her yoga instructor at a birthday party not long after I’d begun training to compete in the Glutton Bowl. When the instructor invited me to attend a class at the studio where she taught, I took one look at her figure and decided that if I could look like her while still failing to contract anorexia nervosa on a daily basis, I should at least consider giving it a try. But I had worked so hard to customize my sedentary lifestyle to fit my lethargic needs and I wasn’t sure I wanted to interfere with the steadfast habits I’d cultivated.

Just then, she lifted her drink and I saw the muscles in her arm contract in such a way that I thought, “Why she is the perfect combination of body types: three fourths Portia de Rossi thin and one fourth Madonna muscular.” I had a quick mental image of where I might land on the celebrity fitness chart and saw myself in the passenger seat riding home from the all-you-can-eat sushi buffet, weeping that it hurt too bad to buckle my seatbelt over my swollen marsupial pouch, and then dropping my eating claw down upon my unzipped pants. In neon letters the words AL BUNDY flashed above my mental image of myself. “Why I must give this yoga a try.”

The first thing I noticed about yoga class was the man in front of me. It appeared he had unfettered access to Will Farrell’s wardrobe from the movie Semi-Pro. Decked out in ’70s-inspired regalia, from his terry cloth head band, to his ass-cradling daisy duke short shorts, he stretched before me, shirtless. On the celebrity size chart, he’s was coming in somewhere between Rosie O’Donnell and Snuffleupagus and I, for one, approved. But what really drew me in and made me decide I loved yoga class before it’d even begun, was the mural of a ravenous-looking tiger tattooed across his back. In vibrant ink, bright blue waves splashed out around the tiger so it seemed to be leaping out of the sea to attack what would be a very confused beach-goer. The man’s impressive smattering of back hair poked through the tiger’s body and thus created a fine 3D display akin to a live zoo exhibit. I gazed at it with much admiration every time I got bored during pashnaramadan-glockenshpiel* pose. *May not be actual name.

The second thing I observed about the class was that I seemed to be smelting to death. There was no convincing me I wouldn’t be reduced to a human puddle by the time the teacher said Namaste.

Thirdly, a pungent scent wafted through the air. If Air-Wick were to capture this heady fragrance, I’m quite sure they’d name it Decaying Feral Dog Wrapped in Old Sweaty Carpet. It made it hard to comply with the constant refrain to “inhale deeply through my nose.” To be fair though, I think a disproportionate amount of the scent could be attributed to the eggnog sweating forth from my pores.

But it didn’t take long to become inured to the smell and every time I felt like complaining, I needed only to look around me at the toned, sweaty yogis whose hard, nubile bodies gave me much inspiration to press on.

I’d say the most difficult part of my first class, besides the constant urge to projectile vomit and pass out from the heat exhaustion, was my longing to rehydrate with eggnog. I had a thirst only the nog could cure and I kept having visions of myself wearing a gray hoodie and dumping a glass of the yellow egg juice down my throat while “Eye of the Tiger” blared in the background.

But alas, I could only quench my need for liquids with boring old water and even then I was only allowed to sip hydrogen and oxygen after suffering through multiple postures, many of which made my face turn purple. For once I am not employing hyperbole. My face actually turned bright strangulation-grade purple. I’d be hanging upside down, twisted like some Cirque de Soleil freak, listening to the instructor say this particular pose improved the complexion, only to look up and nearly scream in terror at my reflection. It looked like Satan had possessed me. I’m talking a purple so deep it was almost red. Almost burnt sienna.

Somehow I survived Intro to Masochism 101 and boy, was I happy I did. Because once the hour and a half ended, I realized I hadn’t been that happy to have survived a traumatic experience since I’d watched The Wiggles during a rough bout of babysitting duty.

For a long time I viewed hot yoga as a recently released prison inmate might view his time in the clink: It sure sucks when you’re on the inside, what with the incessant commands to bend over, but once you’ve done your time, you have a whole new appreciation for life on the outside.

After many sessions, the bile rose up less and less in my throat, and the black fog of unconsciousness only threatened to knock me out an average of two times a session as opposed to the previous ten times a session I’d experienced.

The other day I had a great class and felt rather pleased with my practice. As I lay in the final dead body pose, I realized I had gone a whole ninety minutes without worrying about anything, including when I’d get my next pie fix, quite possibly for the first time in my life. It was only when I left class and got back into traffic that my view of hot yoga changed.

I still think of hot yoga as prison, only I’ve become the old dude in Shawshank Redemption who wants to kill himself after he’s released, not while he’s doing time. This, to me, signals improvement and I’m proud of this shift. I’m proud to say I now truly enjoy hot yoga and only the occasional glass of eggnog.

(Read: I may have accidentally ingested a tall boy of Monster, a mug of coffee, and upwards of one niblit off an Adderall pill.)

My day went well enough.

(Meaning I did not nap from the hours of noon to 11:59 in the p.m. only to rise for a one woman showing of The Big Lebowski pre-night nap.)

Unfortunately, it turned out SOMEbody did not share in my laudable energy output goals and was under the mistaken impression that midnight would be an acceptable hour for him to go to bed.

“Pshaa!” I said. “You can sleep when you’re anesthetized against your will in the mental ward of a Turkish prison.”

I was shocked to discover my logically sound argument did not sway him.

“I’m so tired. I feel like my brain is going to explode,” a certain whiner complained.

How he had enough energy, then, to incoherently mumble that he was too tired to play Boom Boom Rocket until I kicked his ass till it bled is beyond me.

Even more confounding, given his alleged state of exhaustion, was how he mustered up the oomph to add, “What, did you get into some crack today? You’re like an insane ball of energy – stop humping my leg! What? No. Seriously, I said I don’t want to play Connect Four like fifteen times already.”

“Well, fine,” I said. “Marriage is about compromise. You only have to connect three.”

“Oh my God.”

“Two?”

“What’s wrong with you tonight?”

“What’s wrong with your face!” I high-fived myself.

Unintelligible moaning from my not side of the bed.

As you can imagine, I found his response irksome. So I did what any productive, goal-oriented person would do and dedicated myself to my objectives of getting both some delicious nachos and a nocturnal not-nemesis.*

*There is no useable synonym for “friend” that starts with an N and alliterations are the spice of literature, so just shut your pieholes and welcome not-nemisis into your vernacular.

“You will play with me. You want to enjoy a steamy box of chips smothered in cheese-flavored liquid. You are getting very, very not sleepy.”

When my laudable attempt at hypnosis proved too complex for his unenlightened unconscious to grasp, I reasoned that a guilt trip was in order. But it had to be compelling. It had to rouse this dead beat from his semi-slumber. It had to inspire the kind of get-up-and-go that would help me avoid a sleepless night with nothing but my Netflix on demand to entertain me. I didn’t want to watch Whale verses Shark, not this night anyway. I wanted a man on demand, goddamnit!

Having no other viable option, I decided to showcase my dire need for an anti-sleep ally through the art of song and dance.

“Puma,” I said. “I just transposed my inner screamings into a soothing lyrical rendition which shall commence now. Please pay attention.”

More indecipherable whimpering.

“Okay then.” I pointed my ballerina toes and swooped into the performance of my life. This routine involved no less than five (attempts at) triple axels, all of which were completed in close proximity to his head for optimum viewing pleasure. Twirl-crashing into the mini blinds, I sang my heart out, skillfully capturing the pain his refusal to rise was causing me.

“Lonely couch, lonely couch, the prospect of it makes my heart say ouch.”

My operatic crooning crescendoed into such a moving falsetto that my lower neighbor applauded on his ceiling/my dance floor with what sounded like a broom or perhaps an inordinately long dildo, I cannot be sure which due to my obvious point of view constraints.

And while said neighbor’s thunderous approval was encouraging – so encouraging, in fact, that I gave him an encore performance of both River Dance and Stomp – it was clear that my intended audience was not to be persuaded. Indeed esoteric art is so oft lost on such philistines.

Losing steam, dejected and denied (and also nursing a newly gimped out footatarel joint) I gathered up my blankets and trudged to the sofa where I laid down with my Costco stockpile of Fiber One bars. As I bit into the rich chocolaty roughage, I noticed I was holding a makeshift mic. There was only one thing to do:

“Fiber couch, fiber couch, the daily recommended dose bloats my marsupial pouch. Fiber couch, fiber couch, tomorrow morning you’ll make my colon say ouch. Fiber couch, fiber couch, man I’m getting really tired now. Damnbien time, Damnbien time, because I’m too exhausted to end this rhyme.”

No more Adderall, no more Adderall, it makes me stay up until four a.m. writing blog posts that are really baderall.