It’s true. I used to be a $10.50 Wildcat. No, not an oil rig operator in central Texas working for ten dollars and fifty cents an hour to bring in a gusher. $10.50 Wildcat is an affectionate nickname my husband Randy gave me in the early days of our marriage… BK – before kid.  

See, back in those days, we’d go out for long, romantic dinners (we weren’t clock watching because there was a sitter at our house in danger of making more money than I brought in). I’d have two glasses of the house wine (priced at $5.25 each) and proceed, much to my husband’s gratitude, to turn into a wildcat when we got home. Not to go into gory detail, although I know some of you are dying for it because you have kids too and therefore little if any sex life, but it was fabulous! And I guess if I think about it, I was a little like the independent oil hunting wildcatters of the early days, as my success in the bedroom came from low operating costs and the ability to mobilize quickly.
 
Here’s the crazy part. AK, after kid, the wildness ended. I drink those same two glasses of wine and SNOOZE, I’m OUT! No sweet buzz, no slightly tipsy feeling, no numbing of the inhibition centers of the brain that led to the kind of wildcat activity that could strike a gusher – again and again and again. Just plain passed out, snoring. 

In the beginning I thought it was sheer maternal exhaustion, especially before nighttime routines were established. But here it is, six years later and I STILL can’t recapture those halcyon days of my wildkitten with a whip self no matter how much wine I consume.

I’m convinced it’s the result of some diabolical, metabolic force of the universe at work. The same force of the universe that post partum made my shoe size go from a 7 to an 8 and my jeans size go from a 6 to an 8 (despite  being the same weight). That force also messed with the way my body processed alcohol.
 
Poor Randy. Even to this day, when I ask if he’d like to open a bottle of wine with dinner he says NO! And I know it’s cuz he’s hoping to get some. Yeah, keep dreaming. I will be.