Thoughts On Food

Today is April Twenty Ninth in the year Two Thousand Ten. It is also a Thursday, which I am pretty happy about. I always like Thursdays starting in college when it was always a good nite to go out and get plastered. I also liked Thursdays in college because it was the day before my ski races and I always did better early rather than late when I was competitively skiing. I don't want to play favorites but my favorite day of the week is Sunday because people can't yell at you to do something if you are just laying around doing nothing. Sunday is a day of rest and relaxation, God says so. When I was growing up I used to love Sunday nite dinners because there was always something special to eat rather than the usual fare we had during the week. I am blessed with folks who can cook but once in a while they would fail. I remember eating this porky ham like product called a "Daisy Roll". It was a bunch of porky bits rolled up and then sliced. Not good but what was even worse were the lima beans that always seemed to be served with the Daisy Roll. Yuckie.

I just looked up what a daisy roll was and actually it is a pork shoulder thats been deboned and "hammed". So it isn't just a bunch of porky bits ground up and served to kids like I thought it was. I should have known, my mother was good about feeding us good stuff before it was the hip thing to do. We used to have sugared cereal before she read somewhere it wasn't really good for kids so she took it away. We also were made to drink powered milk because it was cheaper and supposedly had more nutrients than regular milk. It was fucking horrid I tell ya, nothing good at all came from that shit. It was a light blue color and the powder smelled nasty. Once in awhile we wouldn't mix it enough so it was lumpy. Just bad all around and I'm not sure what caused my mother to change her mind and feed us the regular stuff but she did. Being able to drink regular milk opened up a whole new world of food possibilities for me. I would eat roughly six bowls of cereal a day and more if I could sneak them.

I will never understand kids who are picky eaters. If they won't eat something, fine, just don't feed them anything else. Probably a good thing that I am not a parent or else I would starve my kids till the got hungry enough to eat. I also wouldn't feed my kids anything that I would not eat myself. The baby won't eat her mashed peas ? Ever tasted that shit ? No wonder your little angel is throwing up peas back at you, they taste like ass. My nephews are a case in point, if my younger nephew doesn't like something he just refuses to eat it till his mother finds him something else to eat. I wouldn't let the little bugger eat anything till he finished what we had put in front of him or at least made a valiant effort in eating whats been provided. I see it as a power struggle between the kid and his parents. Obviously eating is a big deal because mom and dad do it often and seem to be really happy when I eat. How can I have power over these two people ? I know, stop eating ! Unless the child has something medically wrong with them that prohibits them from eating normal food, my child is going to eat whatever the fuck I feed them. If they don't like it then they can't just not eat. Eventually they will be hungry enough to eat even lima beans. I know I was.

Eating has always been an activity that I enjoy. My first word was "Donut" not "Mom" or "Dad" but donut. We used to get a dozen donuts from DD's every Sunday and evidently I had a passion for them as a young boy. Growing up both my mom and dad cooked meals and I was often in the kitchen helping them. When it came time to get a restaurant job I didn't want to be a waiter but I went directly into the kitchen to wash dishes and prep. After a few weeks they started me on salads and some apps when a cook walked off the job, something that happens frequently in the bar biz. The owner asked me if I could pitch in and soon I was on the line at the saute station, I was sixteen at the time. From a social perspective working at a bar was awesome; drugs were plentiful, the booze was flowing, and I made good money. I also learned how to work with people I despise personally but respect professionally. I spent three summers as a fill in cook and I had thoughts about going to culinary school rather than college. I liked cooking because I like food and eating is an elemental part of life.

I don't cook much anymore for a few reasons. The most obvious one is that I don't have anyone else to cook for and I am happy eating really simple shit. Another is that I rarely eat dinner anymore so I just lost the habit of cooking all the time. I've also learned to appreciate what other people cook even if its not the way I would have done it. When I was in college I cooked Thanksgiving dinner for twelve of my friends and freaked out when someone who was helping me wasn't slicing the tomatoes the way I thought they should be sliced. I have learned to calm the fuck down and realize that my way may not always be the correct way to do something in the kitchen. My folks always get a kick out of my cooking when I have the chance to shine but it has been a while since I've cooked for them. I think the main problem is that I am used to cooking with lots of butter, oil, & salt and I need to learn that it is possible to cook without them and its much better for you. Butter was my go to for taste for many years and it is difficult to change the behavior. Butter is pretty awesome however, it makes things taste better and makes sauces nice and shiny. Don't ask me why I think sauces should be shiny, the just should be.

Achieving Goals & Realistic Dreams

Today is Wednesday of the April Twenty Eighth Two Thousand Ten. This is my one hundredth entry in the gr8fulnotdead blog and I'm pretty fucking happy about it. When I was active there were so many times that I would start something and after a week or even a couple of days I would quit. I would quit because it didn't interest me anymore, I thought the task was too difficult, or I wasn't seeing any results. Not that everything has changed by its self, I've had to work and work hard for it but I now like to see things thru or at least know in my heart that I have given the task my best effort. Its important to set tangible goals that you can achieve rather than chasing dreams. That doesn't mean you shouldn't have dreams, it just means for me anyway that life is much more rewarding if I achieve something I've set out to accomplish.

The first goal that I set for myself is pretty damn obvious but I'll say it anyway; Sobriety. Sobriety with a capital "S" because without out that realized goal all others go out the window. Thru hard work, dedication to self, and the help of many others I have been able to maintain my sobriety for over a year. That is such a long way from having to drink every morning so that I wouldn't fall ill. Sometime last summer Sobriety became a part of my lifestyle that I could begin to build around. Exercise out became another facet of my new lifestyle along with eating right and quitting smoking cigarettes. Its important to note that I was sober for ten months before I started seriously exercising and I had eleven months when I quit smoking. A sure way not to reach your goals is to place too many of them in your path. I set attainable goals one after the other and while they are not the hardest tasks in the world, there is a fair amount of effort involved. I can look back over the last year and be proud that I am living a healthy lifestyle and I am starting to be someone with integrity. I am proud of who I am and am comfortable in my own skin which is a direct result of self honesty. If you can't be honest with yourself then you are just wasting your time.

Do I have dreams ? Fucking A right I do. One dream is to be married, another is to have children. Some others are house ownership & having a cool car. Can I realize these dreams ? I am sure that with enough hard work, honesty, and dedication that I can indeed achieve these dreams. Will they be everything I thought they would ? Probably not but they are what I make of them. I've been thinking about this a bunch lately when I am walking to the MBTA in the morning. For some reason, I always seem to get the majority of inner self thinking when I am walking to and from the MBTA station. Sure I may find someone I can con into marrying me. Will she be perfect ? Certainly not, will she love, trust, & support me ? She better or we ain't getting married in the first place. Will the house I own be enough ? Probably not, there will always be bigger or cooler houses out there but my house will suit the purpose of allowing me somewhere to rest my head. I guess I have realistic dreams, saving trips to the Moon and flying like a bird to other people. I just want to be happy and I think I know what I need to do in order to fulfill that need.

One of the gifts of my recovery has been the ability to be honest with myself and to take a personal inventory. Granted I'm not on the tenth step but I can really do whatever the hell I want to. Taking a daily personal inventory is an important part of my life because it allows me to take action on things that I would normally ignore and let fester somewhere in my head. Rather than letting things be and hope they work themselves out I try to come up with a plan to take action in my life. My life was out of control for many years so I really enjoy being responsible for what is happening to me on a daily basis. I guess this would be pretty obvious to most people but I am a slow learner in this case. Better late than never, progress rather than perfection, blah blah blah. I now control my future and it is a much better way to live than just letting things go willy nilly.

Yet another thing I've been working on is admitting when I don't know something and asking for help. I guess that began when I wasn't able to help myself with my alcoholism and drug addiction and asked for help getting sober and working within my recovery. For instance, I like to believe that I am pretty good at repairing bicycles but my knowledge doesn't go much beyond whats on a BMX bike. So I am pretty good at basic stuff, could tru a rim or replace a headset & crankset if I had to but when it comes to gearing I'm stuck. I also think that the more that I learn the better informed I will be when it comes time to make improvements to my current ride. I dearly love my old marin and I really don't want to trade it in for a newer model when this one will work fine. That doesn't mean I won't spend almost as much as it would cost for a new bike on it. A couple of years ago I made the street change over and added some thumb shifters but of course there are plenty of other things I can fiddle with on her. I am hoping to take a class that will help me with the tuning of the cycle as well as to be able to make a educated decision about improving my forks with the locking suspension type.

Looking Inward And Liking It

Today is Tuesday the Twenty Seventh of the April Two Thousand Ten. I am pretty sure you have to capitalize numbers when you use them as a date but I'm not sure. I have a interest in grammar and spelling although you may not know it from reading this blog. I had an excellent english teacher in middle school who was heavy on the grammar diagrams, proper spelling, & essay writing. I already loved to read so I had that covered but she instilled in me an interest in crafting words into sentences into paragraphs into something readable. We used to have to keep these journals which I really hated maintaining for nothing more that thats what she told is to do. I was fifteen for christ sake, what did I want to write about and even if I did have something epic to scribe on the page there is no fucking way I would run the risk of someone else reading my innermost thoughts. She used to make us read an entry or two once a week in class and I remember her yelling at my friend Hillary because she was talking about drinking. You can't have it both ways, either you write about whats going on or you just write nonsense. For a month or so after the teacher yelled at my friend we would write entries in the following format: "I have a brown dog. The brown dog is named brown. I call him that because he is my dog and he is brown." I didn't take long for the teacher to threaten us with poor grades before we changed our writing. Damn she was a bitch but I was proud of my english skillz and always worked my ass off in that class. Once I forgot to add a period to the last word of an essay so she failed me. I was able to write the essay again but under a different subject and I wouldn't get more than a "B" grade on it.

So it was my home groups' business meeting and as group secretary I have to run it. I have no idea what I am doing and have no business running something like that but it goes with the job. There is this one woman who is new to the group and new in recovery who at some point was either in law school, worked at a law firm, or read a bunch of John Grishman novels. She is always griping about "the process" and seems to think that I should be doing a better job at running the meeting. Since I have no basis or guidelines in which to run the meeting I am winging it as I see fit. She mentioned last nite that we should be a bit more formal and after she was done yapping I explained that there isn't any "how to" document from central services and we are doing what this group has always done. I was in the middle of explaining this to her when she interrupted and I asked her to please let me finish. It was awesome to see the expression on her face because during these business meetings I don't say whats on my mind. Its my job to facilitate discussion and not be a center piece of the meeting. AA is hands down, the most "people managed" group I've ever been a part of and thats why it works so well.

Normally I would have let myself get all pissy about someone questioning how a meeting is run but I didn't. This is the groups' meeting and I am but a humble trusted servant. I try and I think succeed for the most part in placing my personality aside from these things and I see each meeting as a learning experience. It doesn't matter that this woman probably thinks I'm a jackass who doesn't know what he is doing. Thats absolutely fine with me as she is probably right on the money but the point is not to take things so god damned seriously. What was also interesting is that two group members spoke to me after the meeting and mentioned that they were happy with the job I was doing. That was nice but I take the whole "Progress not perfection" statement to heart. The way I look at it is that if I have learned something first and helped someone second then I have completed my job. Last nite I learned that when the groups' coffee maker breaks, look the fuck out & last nite I met a newcomer who I asked to attend the business meeting and he volunteered for a job.

Another interesting thing happened last nite and perhaps I am reading too much into it but I'd like to place my thoughts down here. Last summer I sponsored a kid for a couple of weeks who wasn't willing to stay sober. When he asked me to be his sponsor I mentioned to him that the ball was in his corner and while I could help him with the AA stuff, he alone would be responsible for that first step of not using. He stopped calling me and I didn't see him till the meeting before last nites. We mumbled hello a bit and I didn't get a chance to speak with him again. He was at the meeting last nite but he didn't interact with me at all. Its interesting, I hope he isn't pissed for some reason or thinks I am angry with him for any reason because I am not. Everyone has their own schedule for recovery and he needs to find his own and hopefully he will. He had been getting phone #'s from other guys in the program and has been hanging out with another group member who is a really good guy. I hope everything works out for him and I will make sure to speak with him in the next meeting.

I was talking to my buddy from work the other day and I mentioned that I wasn't all that interested in this particular girl because I didn't think she was the sharpest knife in the drawer. I am pretty ashamed that I said something like that, I had hoped I've gone beyond petty shit like that but its one of my character defects. My friend didn't call me out on it but he mentioned that his wife may not be able to draw a proper isosceles triangle but she is damn bright in other things. I need to remember that everyone has talents and sometimes you need to go beneath the surface a bit to find them. On my end, I need to stop being so snobby all the time, a trait I know I get from my mother. I am not going to beat myself up over it but its something that I need to keep in mind when I get to know other people. I am far from perfect and while I may be able to do something that someone else can't, there are plenty of things that I cannot do. I don't know what I just wrote but I think I can sum it up as "Chill the fuck out, dude." Yeah, thats it.

I used to hate looking inward and thinking about myself because I was afraid of what I might find. While it is not my favorite activity I am no longer afraid of what I might discover and readily admit to. Looking back isn't as tough as it used to be either because I have less and less things to be ashamed about. Granted I am not perfect my any stretch but I am learning which is progress not perfection. I am beginning to scare myself, not only do I know the words but I am beginning to understand and believe in them. Unless you understand them, words are just pretty characters on a page with no meaning. Its not till you start to understand and believe in them do they start to work their magic. At least I have plenty of growth ahead and I'm not finished with my recovery or anything like that.

Being Clumsy But Confident

Today is Monday April Twenty Sixth Two Thousand Ten. If I had a perfect day last week then I had an awesome weekend. I went to Rockland to get the mighty "Carlotta" shipshape for the upcoming season and I always enjoy both going to Maine and working on the boat. I consider myself lucky to enjoy the presence of my folks and that thru all the lies and deceptions of my use they have always stood by and trusted me. Its nice to be worthy of that trust now when for so long I wasn't. It felt awesome when they told me they had something serious to discuss with me and I didn't have anything to be ashamed about or anything to hide from them. Its such a liberating feeling and that has as much to do with my recovery as does staying sober.

So I was walking around the boat on Saturday when I tripped and fell off. Normally this wouldn't be a super big problem because I can swim and if I was on the boat by myself it would either be at the mooring or I would be tied into a harness if I was underway. A early season dip in the ocean is always refreshing and something to look forward to but the problem is that the boat was on land this time. I fell about twelve feet and cracked my head pretty well on the pavement. I was starting to wake up from the fuzzies and trying to figure out if I had broken anything when a tender hand shook me on the shoulder. I started to focus on a pretty woman in some sort of uniform and thought at first I was in the hospital. Turns out that a petty officer from the Coast Guard station next door to the boat yard happened to be the officer on the deck that day and saw the whole thing happen. When I didn't get up right away she went over to make sure I was still kicking. I swear, it was like I was in a movie or something and god damn was she cute and I always like women in uniform whether its a nurse or a member of our armed forces.

Anyway PO Weston went to fetch some ice and a first aid kit and when she returned I blurted out before I knew what I was saying, "Um, would you like to have some coffee when you are off duty ?" She looked at me for a moment, asked if I was dizzy, and if I just had asked her out. I told her that I wasn't that dizzy anymore and I didn't know what the protocol was for thanking officers of the armed forces for their services. She didn't correct me then anyway, and told me that she would be available for coffee the next afternoon when she was relieved from duty. We did indeed have coffee and I wish I could say that sparks flew and we ended up at a hotel soon after but we just talked. She is certainly an interesting person and is certified or whatever they call it on a .50 cal machine gun but a romance between myself and a Coast Guard Petty Officer will probably not happen any time soon.

I've always been clumsy and it took me forever to learn how to ride a bicycle but this is the first time it has been put to good use. I am pretty sure that I knocked myself out for a few moments but I didn't puke so it couldn't have been all that bad. I called my doc for any appointment tomorrow to make sure everything is still operating as its supposed to. I don't have a headache or blurry vision or anything like that so I think I am good to go. I am however, really freaking sore from all the running that I did this weekend. I didn't want to pay ten bucks for the gym near my folks place so I ran up and down twelve flights of stairs sixty or so times. I suddenly have pain in places that I've never had pain in before it for a really fucking long time. It just shows how out of shape I was four months ago and how much more work I have to do. I thought I was pretty slick till I did all that running and I was struggling for breath and my legs were throbbing. Its swell to know that no matter how good and in shape I feel I can always find something to put me in my place.

Speaking of feeling completely out of shape, I just returned from physical therapy. It never ceases to amaze me how humbled I am by just a few exercises that I've never done before. Give me a month and I can learn to do them fairly well or at least be able to complete them comfortably. To make matters worse I forgot my shorts and tshirt and I am not dripping with sweat for the moment. Good thing I have some good smelling shit to lather on my body before the meeting tonight. I could care less how I smell at work but being smelly at a meeting is a completely different animal. Anyway, the pt gal had me balancing with one leg on some sort of half ball while swinging the other leg back and forth. Seems simple, right ? It was hard enough for me to just balance never mind swinging my leg back and forth. I think I am going to have to allow another twenty minutes in the gym to do all this physical therapy shit. One good thing is that one of the exercises they had me do used my abdomen muscles that I've been working on so they allowed me to do the exercise with relative ease.

I was thinking to myself this morning that one of the main reasons I like exercising so much is that I am able to see legitimate progress after a few months. If I work hard and practice the exercises I've been assigned then after a while it begins to show. It may not happen after a few days but after a few months I can def see and feel the difference. Getting fit is so much more than losing weight and gaining energy levels. It gives me a sense of accomplishment and the confidence that goes along with meeting goals you have set for yourself. You could say that the reason why I asked Petty Officer Weston out for coffee was that I was still dazed from cracking my head but I would argue that I had the confidence that she would agree to meet me rather than assuming that she would say no. Confidence is a tricky thing and there is nothing worse than false confidence, telling yourself that you can do something you have no business doing. I think that I am doing really well keeping myself grounded and believing in what I am doing and how I am living my life. I can't wait to see how I am doing in September and how much I enjoy living my life. Looking forward to the future is something I've been doing since last Spring and is such a turnaround from my active days.

A Perfect Day

Today is Friday April Twenty Third Two Thousand Ten. Last nite was a nite of many realizations and much fun. Yesterday was probably a perfect day and to go against what I promised myself that I wouldn't do here, I am going to go thru the day step by step and reflect on what happened. It seems that I am getting more and more perfect days now more than ever and I am pretty psyched about that. I can almost always count on a perfect day when I am in Arlington on the weekends because I have everything scheduled and locked in and that pleases me. What makes a perfect day for me ? Any day that I can accomplish something and learn a thing or two in the process. And yesterday was just such a day, in my life anyway.

Yesterday started innocently enough with me waking up before the alarm at five. I always like that, there is nothing worse than being summoned from the depths of sleep by the alarm clock. I am pretty good at training my body to wake up and now that I've been up at five I'm pretty much set up that way now. I had a cup of my new coffee which was quite tasty. Rich and bold the way I like it and for nine bucks a pound a really good deal. I went to the gym and I was able to burn a thousand calories in sixty five minutes which is just five minutes off my goal. That was quite an accomplishment for me as I started with ten minutes if torture on that fucking thing. Getting fit is awesome in so many ways but one of them is you are able to see progress if you work hard enough.

Work was good to me yesterday. I finished what I set out to do and even was able to complete a few tasks that I didn't think I'd be able to finish. I helped out a colleague who was struggling with a project and hopefully I made his day easier. I was able to meet my friend Rich for coffee which is really important to me, its like fifteen minutes of sanity during the day. Rich isn't in the program but he is very aware of what addiction is and has been a great supporter during my recovery. He was one of the people who really knew what was going on when my life was spiraling out of control and I am lucky to call him my friend. We met one day because I was wearing an obscure Dead shirt and he stopped me in the hallway to ask me about it. We have been friends ever since and this summer he and his wife asked me to preside over their wedding which was an awesome honor in my life.

After going back and forth whether or not to blow it off I went to the meeting that I chair every Thursday. Admittedly I should not be thinking of blowing off a meeting that I chair but I have been doing it for nine months and I am getting a little tired of it. It was a great meeting with some new folks and visitors from out of town and everyone who wanted to was able to share. I was able to share as well and I have not had a chance to for a few months in that meeting. I always let everyone else yap before I go but this time when there was a pause between speakers I went for it. It was great to check in and let everyone know how I am doing and whats going on in my life. The regulars in that meeting care about me and have invested their time in my recovery and I want to make sure that they are aware of my appreciation. After the meeting ended I hightailed it back to the mbta for my next mission of the day.

I went to a club in the theater district to see a funk band I like and needed to meet up with a couple of friends before the show for my ticket. I wasn't there for more than ten minutes before they arrived which is a first. I am usually very early for shows and spend a long time waiting for others. There were probably twenty people in there that I consider close friends and none of them are in the program. I still maintain my previous friendships from when I was using and they drink around me but I don't care. I only care if they get totally out of control and that didn't happen last nite. I am sincerely glad that I didn't kill the friendships that I had when I was drinking, that I was somehow able to shut the effects of my alcoholism away from those folks. Many of the people were old PH!SH tour friends and friends from my time in Salem. People who if I ever get married, will be at my wedding or in time, funeral. Real solid people that I know that I can count on if needed.

I left the show at eleven thirty so that I could get home and be in bed by twelve thirty. The mbta was golden last nite and I arrived home almost to the minute that I wanted to. There was a package for me from my interwebs shopping which is always awesome and that was the end to my perfect day. On my way home I reflected on a couple of things that struck me over the day. The first is that I am blessed with quality people who like to hang out with me. The second is that I now have a few women who are very close friends of mine. Not fuck buddies or anything like that, but good friends who I can depend on. Women who when I finally start dating and the lucky girl is driving me nuts, I can go to and get consul before I do something really stupid and she never talks to me again. Another thing I thought about is that crushes are just that, short term infatuations that may drive you nuts but they will go away at some point. The object of a couple month crush was there last nite and I discovered that while she is still super hot and smells awesome, I am over her. She is just not what I am really looking for and that I am ready to move on. When I was using I would pine away for months before moving on and while certain women can make me feel like a freshman in highchool I am much better able to handle the feelings and make appropriate decisions about them.

So yeah, for me it was the perfect day and one of many over the past fifteen months. I was up and about for nineteen hours and def had a few more hours in me if I didn't have to work today and that felt good as well. It was a great day in sobriety and I learned things that will help me in my recovery as an alcoholic and drug addict but also help me work towards my goal of being a man of integrity. Integrity is not something you learn I think but something you feel. A lack of guilt on your conscience is a good step in that direction and I don't feel guilty about anything. Well perhaps I feel guilty about the donut and hotdog I had last week but nothing of merit.

Memories

Today is Thursday of the April Twenty Second. Wow. A friend of mine just posted some pics of our high school prom, what a trip that was. Both the prom and then looking at pics from twenty three years ago that I'd never seen. I had forgotten how hot my girl friend was but seeing her in the flapper dress she wore was a nice reminder. She was a day student while I was a boarder which had certain advantages for me. I don't rightly remember how that one ended, except that as soon as summer was around I was dismissed. I remember calling her house and having her mother lie to me over the phone. I don't think I could get my folks to lie for me if some girl was giving me problems. Anyway, it was an awesome eight months of dating her and I am glad that I did. She was from a different clique and financial circle than I was and I learned a lot from that. She was also the first girl I slept with more than once or twice and I will forever be grateful for that. Perhaps thats why her old man didn't like me sniffing around the nest so much. Oh, well.

I can't regret the past as it says in the BB and god knows there is a shit load to regret back there. I can't say that I am glad that I am an alcoholic like some folks claim, but I am glad that I am able to appreciate the life I've lived and the life that I am living now. I may not have the dog, wife, house, car, or boat that I wish I had but I know now those things are possible if I apply myself. Those items are in no particular order, just how I thought about them as I was typing. I don't know which is more important; a dog or a wife but I do know that if I work hard enough I can certainly look forward to having both. I never even thought about realistically having any of those things. Sure, I would dream about having a cool house and someone to share it with but they were just dreams, nothing I could put into reality. Funny how things work out, here I am forty years old and thinking realistically about things I should have thought about in my twenties. Better late than never I say.

Those high school pics brought back such a flood of memories, most of them good ones. Things I have not thought about since I was eighteen I am thinking about as I was walking to work this morning. I have really lived a blessed life and was very lucky to attend a boarding school. I loved going to Tabor, not only for the friendships I made with the other boarders, the sailing on the schooner, but for the education in fending on my own. Granted I didn't learn much scholastically but I did learn a bunch of things that would help me later in life. I think it was awesome that when I saw a good friend from that time we were able to pick right up where we left off and the twenty year span didn't make any difference. I am really looking forward to my twenty fifth reunion and you better believe that I am going to borrow my dad's porsche for the weekend. Unless of course I manage to purchase something thats as nice as that car is by then, I do have two years or so.

I will be the first to admit that I am materialistic. I like to have stuff. I like giving stuff to other people and I like getting stuff from other people. I think internet shopping kicks serious ass and I am liable to spend much more money on clothes if I know they will fit. As I lose weight I am psyched to purchase some funky clothes from this place in LA that I am going to visit once I get down to one eighty or so. Its a shop that Slash owns and they have some of the coolest rock star clothes but a size thirty four waist is considered big and tall. I am sure a shirt and a pair of pants will run you a couple of hundred bucks but they will be the coolest shirt & pair of pants you own and nobody back in Boston will have anything even approaching the coolness of the threads.

I sorta dressed for the funk show I'm going to tonight and I feel good. I am wearing this cool black western shit with awesome snap buttons I got in Dallas, my new cowboy belt, and pair of jeans that didn't fit four months ago, and my gold adidas. Well, one of my two pairs of gold adidas that I of course just had to have. I could not even button the jeans when I first started going to the gym and I tried them on six weeks ago and while I could wear them they were really tight. Now they fit well and I guess I just not used to wearing shit that fits because while they seem a little snug a female friend of mine told me that they looked great and it was nice to see my ass for once. Looking back I can't believe how much of a fatty I let myself be, XXL shirts were getting too small for christ sake. Now I find that larges are fitting well and thats some fucking progress !

Well thats about it for the fashion update, I don't want to get ahead of myself. I have a sincere respect for people who look well put together and the clothes def make the man. I think that dressing well makes you more confident and that you feel better about yourself when you look in the mirror and are happy with the reflection. Self image is obviously important to me, I may trumpet the advantages of a healthy lifestyle but I am getting into shape so that I will look better to other people. So people will say to themselves, "wow look at what sobriety can do for someone, he has totally turned his life around. Maybe I can too." I've said this many times but if I can influence just one person to give sobriety and recovery a chance then I will be a very happy man. If just one person sees the turnaround that I've done and thinks that perhaps that would be a good idea for them, then I will be psyched. It doesn't mean that I need to be the poster boy for AA that people sometimes call me, I don't care about that. If that helps them stay sober, if they believe (and rightly so) that they had a hand in me being what I am today then awesome. The program is working for me and should work for others as long as they are willing to work as hard as they can and to place sobriety before everything else.

Pride Can Be Good

Today is Wednesday of the April Twenty First. Ooo, I have been in recovery for fifteen months. I don't really count the months at this point and I don't think I even thought about it in March but this morning Mr. Watch informed me of the date and I noticed it. I was also thinking of celebrating my birthday on my sobriety date for a couple of reasons. First of all I would be younger and thats always good. Second is that my birthday is the eleventh of September and thats a tremendously shitastic day to celebrate your birthday. I dunno, I mean I do like being a Virgo and I wouldn't want to give that up but I wonder. Then again, having a sobriety date is like having another birthday so perhaps I should just keep shit where it belongs.

It appears that it is going to be a bit more challenging for me to lose any more weight. Since I've lost the thirty pounds and I have not lost any more than that. Of course it could be due to the pizza and donuts that have been in my diet over the last two weeks so I am gonna stop eating that shit for another three months and see what happens. At least I have not gained any weight due to the amount of exercise I've been doing. I rode my bike fourteen miles the other day and while I was a bit saddle sore my legs felt pretty good considering that was the first time I've ridden in quite some time. I am going to start riding to the mbta station once my new locky-lock arrives. I think it will shave off at least fifteen minutes to my morning commute and perhaps by the end of the summer I will be able to ride to work every day. I am pretty sure that I could do that now but I'm not sure how the ride home would be. I'd love to be able to cut the mbta out of my commute all together and use the bike ride as my daily cardio.

The big surprise of the day was when I tried on a new shirt that I ordered from LL Bean. I had ordered larges and figured if they didn't fit then I would just wait till I dropped another twenty. Well as it turns out the larges are plenty big enough and it looks like I could wear a medium once I lost the extra weight. Are you kidding me ? A medium ? I can't even remember the last time I even tried on a medium size of anything. Its really going to be interesting to see what cool old clothes I will be able to wear when I finally get down to one eighty or so. I hope to finally shop at those vintage clothes shops for some cool threads that seem to have been made for super skinny people. I read somewhere that anorexia was hip in the early seventies and it certainly appears that way. I've never given much thought to how I dress and that is def not the case these days. I still wear button downs and khakis but there are not any holes or stains in them. I look at how I dressed in my twenties and I shudder, its not wonder I had a hard time getting laid. What woman wants to be with a fat kid who doesn't know how to dress himself ? Well, this formerly fatter kid is really going to change things up in a few months.

It amazes me how many things that I didn't like ten years ago I like now. The previously mentioned shirts are a good example. I would always shudder when I saw short sleeve button down shirts and now I just bought four of them. I figure why wear long sleeve button downs and have to roll the sleeves up every time I wear them. As long as I don't wear a tie with them I think I will be ok, if I ever find myself wearing a time with a short sleeve shirt I will jump in front of a bus. It is very pleasant to look at my face in the mirror and be pleased with what I see rather than bummed out. I remember always looking at my reflection after puking in the sink most mornings and being really ashamed. I would be beet red with bloodshot eyes and think to myself that this has to end. Then I would shrug and wipe the puke from my chin and go find something alcoholic in order to start my day. What a terrible way to live and I sincerely hope that it is something that I never have to repeat.

Speaking of relapse, I was thinking the other day that if I was to relapse all would not be lost. I am not saying that because I am planning on drinking or anything like that but rather if I was to drink again I would be a man about it and tell everyone in AA that I had slipped up. Previously I told myself that if I ever relapsed that would be the end of my recovery and I would never go to another AA meeting again. Today I think different, I may not attend the regular meetings I attend now but I would def get my ass to a meeting and talk about what happened. Such a big difference from two months ago when I believed that to drink again would mean my death, I would just shut everything off and never give myself another chance to live again. Now I know that is a stupid thing to think and that I would def give myself another chance at recovery. I have been thinking a bunch about meetings lately and I think that I am going to attend three meetings during the week and one on the weekends so that I am hitting four rather than six meetings a week. I am just not getting much out of the extra two meetings I attend and I decided that I was attending them for the wrong reasons. Those reasons were fine when I had a few months of sobriety under my belt but I need to move beyond that.

I ran into a guy I knew from my post detox program on the mbta yesterday. He was in the clink for a probation violation and he successfully fought for his release and after eight months he won it. He looked great and told me that he was going to marry a women who we both knew in the program. It was great to see him and it did not appear to me that he was still using. More importantly he had a part time job and was going to another interview. Every time I hear those guys from the suboxone clinic whine about not being able to find work due to their records I wonder how much to believe. Here is this guy, Nick, who is a felon and he is able to make his way thru the world without government assistance. I think that welfare is important and useful but I think way too many people abuse it and think thats the only way they will be able to live. Granted I come from a privileged background but that does not mean I have not had a job since I was ten or eleven. I used to work every summer and maintained a paper route during the school year so that I would have spending money for shit that I wanted.

I have not spoken about the xx chromo situation in a while so I figured I would remedy that situation. I am sure you are just dying to hear about it. There is this woman I hung around with last summer who I know is interested in me but at this point I am just not all that attracted to her. She is beautiful and I enjoy hanging out with her but I'm not sure if I want to date her. If I was a scumbag and just wanted to get laid I would pursue her and would probably be rewarded for my efforts. But I am a nice guy with a healthy respect of the fairer sex and thats just something I would do. Something I've never done. There is a woman in the program that I am attracted to and I really want to take her to a concert in August but I am not sure how I should approach her. She is a bit younger than I am and I have said time and time again that I won't date program chicks but of course there is an exception to every rule. She is super laid back and appears to enjoy music so I think we could have a good time together. I have a few months to develop my strategy and I also have a few other xx chromos I could ask to the show if I wimp out asking her. I don't think that my request would come out from left field, I do consider her a friend but this would be the first time it would be just the two of us interacting with one another. God, I feel like I'm back in highschool and its awesome.

Distracted Drivers

Today is Tuesday of the April Twentieth. Four Twenty. I forget why 420 is a stoner thing, I used to have a hat and a couple shirts emblazoned with the logo for some reason that escapes me now. I am proud to say that I am now a bicycle rider again, I got my old chrome alloy bike up and running again with a new saddle and grips. Thats all it really needed but of course I am going to add more. The rear rim is toast although I am going to wait till I find a really nice rim and hubset onsale before I replace them. I've also always wanted suspension forks, not because I really need them but because I think they look cool. My forks and neck are for some reason, hot pink, and that color has been annoying me since I bought the bike. Of course since I will have the forks off I might as well replace the headset and neck while I'm there so this whole like will probably end up costing me close to five hundred bucks. If I waited till next year I could probably buy a better bike for double that but I like my Marin. I like steel bikes and I like older bikes.

Speaking of older, I just purchased two more items for my bike that shows how far I've come in terms of being responsible. The first is that I bought my first bike helmet since I was a BMX lad. Now I didn't buy one of those dorky aerodynamic jobbys but rather a skate type helmet. If I have to wear a helmet it might as well look cool. Against my better judgment I didn't buy a cool matte black one like I wanted but rather a khaki color because a motorcycle rider I hold in great esteem mentioned that its much easier for a drive to see a light colored head than a black one. Point taken there, you need everything you can get to have drivers notice you. I also picked up some reflective tape for my bike and helmet. When I bought my bike in ninety two I of course removed every safety reflective thingy that came with it. Oh, the joys of youth. Hopefully with my helmet and bike adorned with this tape I will be easier to see before someone mows me down with their Caddy.

Thats a nice segue into my next topic: distracted drivers. When I was driving before, I might have been legally drunk all of the time but I rarely if ever spoke on my cell phone for more than a minute or two while driving. I know that I can't drive as well when I am talking on the phone and it didn't take a Mythbusters episode to explain that. My mom and pops sat me down the other day and told me they had something serious to talk to me about. My first instinct was of course, to wonder what I had done and what drugs they had found and for the first time I could honestly think that there wasn't shit for me to be guilty of. What an awesome feeling but that was quickly squished by thoughts of cancer, divorce, bankruptcy, death, etc, etc. As it turns out my cousin's wife (cw) was "doing her nails" while driving and this distraction was deadly for a motorcycle rider who was at a stop sign. My cw was driving roughly forty miles an hour when she failed to see this woman which resulted in her flying over two hundred feet to her death. The rider was wearing a bright yellow jacket with reflective tape on the back and sleeves.

My cw is a very nice lady, I like her and not only because she married into my family. She married my cousin because she was pregnant and sixteen and four more children and many years of marriage followed. She is not an addict or alcoholic and is a member of good standing in the local church. Her kids are all awesome, educated, and responsible and she worked her ass off for many years to be a good provider. She then threw all of that history away when she decided that her nails needed a touch up and that she needed to do this when she was driving. When the responding officers questioned her she admitted that she was distracted and never saw that woman and her bike. She was written a ticket and allowed to keep her lisc but that wasn't the end of it. The DA presented my CW with a six count felony indictment and she could serve up to five years in jail. The problem is that vehicular manslaughter due to distracted driving is a gray legal area so the indictment is mostly driving to endanger, reckless driving, failure to stop, failure to yield, stuff like that. I never thought that I would see anyone in my family on a state indictment, well except perhaps myself and it was a sobering experience.

There has been a large amount of backlash about all of this spearheaded by the son of the dead mother. He has painted his nails black to bring attention to distracted driving and to the fact that many people view riding motorcycles as an invitation to death. They have attended and disrupted every hearing that my cw has been required to attend along with harassing phone calls, letters, and even protesting on the street they live. This terrible accident has made an impact on many lives and the only positive thing that can come out of this is that perhaps people will pay attention when they are driving. It was hard for me to read all of the hateful things that people had written about my cw but that is what happens with people are upset. She did something that she wasn't supposed to and a terrible price was paid due to her stupidity. I can't even begin to imagine the guilt and depression she is going thru and I wonder if her life will ever be the same. I am sure her husband and children are feeling the stress of this and wish it will all just go away. But it can't and their wife/mother may very well be spending a few years in the pokey.

From a defense perspective there are a couple of things very wrong with the way my cw has handled her affairs thus far. I am not a lawyer but I have seen the court system first hand and since this is my blog I can say whatever the fuck I want to. Anyway, her first lawyer was an influential but young attorney who had passed the bar roughly six months before she took over the defense. She said some incredibly stupid things to reporters rather than the regular "no comment". She tried and failed miserably to explain that what my cw has been thru is enough and that no further action should be taken. Her guilt and remorse is enough thank you very much and that she is sorry for what she has done. Yeah, shut the hell up. I don't think the DA cares very much what you have to say, save it for the courtroom.

They engaged the services of an attorney who actually has some courtroom experience but he has been less than successful thus far. He argued that since the law is a gray area when it comes to distracted driving that the indictment doesn't have merit and should be thrown out. The judge didn't agree with his summation and promptly threw the motion out and made plans to proceed with the arraignment. When the judge asked my cw if she was guilty or not she said "not guilty". I think this was a dumb move, she should have accepted responsibility for her actions and then asked for leniency from the court. She is guilty, she was distracted, failed to decrease her speed, failed to stop, and caused a death because of it. From reading the indictment it looks to me that she is guilty of all six of the charges and rather than fighting the wording like her lawyer is attempting now, she should have saved everybody much time and money and fessed up. This is, of course easy for me to say as admitting guilt would place six felonies on her record but then again who the fuck cares ? She is forty-seven, happily married, and a registered nurse. Its not like she is applying to be a law enforcement officer or some other field where a felony would prohibit you from pursing a career in that field. Folks with knowledge of the case and the presiding judge said that she would have probably get probation if she had admitted her guilt. Then again, if she can get a jury trial, she may have the charges dismissed at the end of the trial.

This whole situation totally sucks for my cousin and his family. I love them all and my cousin has worked his ass off his entire life and then to go thru something like this is terrible. Anything his wife is going thru he is as well and what totally boggles the mind are the actions of my cousins mother, my aunt. She is put simply, a fucking cunt. I don't say that often about someone and mean it but she has not bothered to visit her son or his family to offer support during this terrible time. She is pretending that nothing is wrong and if she isn't there in person then it won't exist in her twisted world. She asked my pop not to tell my brother and I and only told him because it was national news last May. She figures that since my cw is going to trial next month that my brother and I may hear about it and its better to hear it from my folks rather than on the internet or fox25 news. I just fail to see how ignoring a problem of this magnitude is better than dealing with it head on. I plan to write my cousin a letter of support once I find out what address I should send it to. People need to know that they are loved in times like this and its obvious that my aunt has some serious problems doing anything approaching support of her family.

My heart goes out to the family of the murdered woman. She was doing nothing wrong, was an experienced rider and was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I am sure there will be a civil suit brought my them against my cousin's wife and her insurance company but I think they are taking their time to see what the outcome of the trial will be. I think that a civil suit would make more sense than sending a forty seven year old lady to the clink for a couple of years but then again I am not a district attorney. Whatever happens, this is a tragedy for the woman who was killed and the distracted driver who killed her. My heart goes out to both families and it is my hope that they are able to move beyond all of the hate and resentment and learn to live their lives again.

Right Click Spelling Fixed !

Today is Thursday of the April Fifteen Two Thousand Ten. Good news, I figured out why the fucking right clicky spell checker wouldn't work with mo-zilla v3.6.3. Yahoo toolbar was doing something that prohibited my right clicky spell check. After weighing the pros and cons of having a spell check versus knowing the very minute when a new yahoo mail message arrived I came to the realization that spelling was much more important. I used to be a shitty speller till I was in sixth grade or so and then all of a sudden it just clicked. One week I couldn't spell anything and the next week I was a rockstar speller. My mom was very suspicious, checked my hands and other cheating devices but found nothing. I remember what happened but I don't think I eve told her. I started visualizing the letters in my head and then arranged them into the word I was supposed to spell. It worked for me on most words, obviously there are some words you just can't spell in sixth grade. Heck, there are some words I can't spell now. It had been a long time since my mother was impressed with something scholastic of mine and I didn't want to ruin it.

A friend of mine using some pop psyche bullshit was trying to tell me that I used to such an extent because I felt inferior to my brother. Granted my brother is one of the smartest people I know and that would be easy but I can honestly say that I never really compared myself to him. Other than height I guess, but we were so different growing up it was hard to compare us. He was the bookish organized one who didn't make friends easily. I was the social butterfly who at an early age was involved in art and team sports. My folks were really good at recognizing what we were good at and pushing us into that direction. Well with the exception of music. Both my parents were/are musicians and they just couldn't understand why both their sons couldn't play anything. It was really painful and I did take piano a bit longer than my brother but I really had to work at the most simple shit. I do have an appreciation of music and get goosebumps often when I see or even think about certain bands or live show experiences.

What is funny is that I have much better memories of growing up than my brother does. He won't talk about our childhood much and I wonder if he was pushed by my parents more than I was. Something like "You are the smarter one, you need to go to Harvard because Todd ain't going." Whats funny is that I am totally all right with that if that happened and I am sad for my brother. He is a smart bastard and deserved to go the Harvard and I am glad somebody in the family did. I wouldn't have wanted to be the first born looking back, but of course when I was younger I didn't have this perspective. I look back at my childhood with find memories, even when I was in puberty. I was able to feel up my first girl when I was in seventh grade and I was totally ok with that. I guess thats why I am a definite boob man, they don't have to be gigantic, its all how the woman wears them.

I have been thinking about the nicotine candy I've been eating, I am down to eight of them a day in addition to a couple of small cigars. I don't inhale the cigars and ya I know that I can still get cancer from them I but enjoy it. I am going to cut down to the 2mg nicotine ones and see how that goes. This has been a really mellow quitting period and considering I have not had a ciggy in three and a half months I am pretty fricking happy about my progress. I write a bunch about how I don't want to set myself up to fail and setting reachable goals and I think thats super important in how to best live my life. Why be disappointed in yourself when you can be psyched with how you are living ? Why not make sure that you feel good at the end of the day rather than sad. Doesn't make sense.

Ok, I will admit it I now have another crush on a woman in the program. The only problem is that she is a bit young for me but her laid back personality is one of the things that really is attractive to me. She doesn't seem hyper and go go go all the time and I would be psyched to hang out with her sometime. I just don't know how to play it due to the age difference and the fact she is in Cambridge AA. I told myself of course, that I wouldn't hit on any of the women in my program so I guess for now I will just have to flirt once in awhile. She claims she is crazy but I think most people are some of us just hide it better. Perhaps I have not seen her when she is nuts but she seems pretty chill and laid back. Sure she suffers from the things that all of us do who are in recovery, that comes with the territory. I spoke to my friend Katie about her last nite and told her I was trying to convince myself that something like this would work. She said to be careful not to convince myself out of it either. I think she could be a really good friend of mine and perhaps thats where I should leave it. Here I have all this talk about not setting myself up to fail and be disappointed and relations with the opposite sex can do just that. I don't know if its worth the risk as of yet, I only have fifteen months of sobriety.

Wow, fifteen months. That seems so long but really isn't. When I was drinking fifteen minutes seemed like a long time and now I've gone this long. I hope my body is starting to recover from all the crap that I put into it for those twenty years. I have the rest of my life to live and I hope that I have added a few years onto that. For me recovery is more than just living longer, it is living better and being psyched for living. I know that if I am patient I will find some woman who will love me beyond all else and I can return that feeling in spades. I have so much to experience and getting sober is really like having another chance at life. A rebirth if you will and I am getting the chills just thinking about it.

Hope & Love

Today is Wednesday of the April Fourteenth Two Thousand Ten. My fucking browser no longer allows me to right click on the spelling since its upgrade and I can't for the life of me find where I can dicker with it. Mo-zilla, I love you but you are making life hard for me. I suppose I can look on the support forums but they way I am working it now I will think of words that I know how to spell rather than using words I don't know how to spell. I don't know which is better but I do know that writing everyday helps me in a variety of ways. I can type much faster than I could four months ago and I think a bit more when I write from the brain. I guess thats obvious, thinking when writing but perhaps I didn't describe it correctly. Or maybe I just feel like bitching about something that I could repair if I really gave a shit about it.

Mrs. Palin is once again the news of the day around here and I know of a few passionate liberals who will be attending her little talk on the common today. I hope it doesn't turn into a shitstorm with tons of people getting arrested as I like to think that folks from around here can behave themselves in the face of opposition. My facebook page is lit up with people's opines about whether the tea party is racist and homophobic and people are getting all atwitter about other people's opinions. Its good to see people get fired up about issues that are important rather than Big Papi's hitting decline. Sure, the Red Sox are important but there are many other issues facing the Commonwealth than our sports teams. Some days its hard to look beyond what effects you and your family and to look at what faces this nation as a whole.

Speaking of sports, I am going to the last regular season Celtics game tonight with my friend Katie. I am really glad that I met her and very glad that she already has a long term man so there isn't any question of sleeping with her. I hate that you can't be good friends with a woman and keep that friendship platonic. I enjoy her company and the fact she understands what recovery is all about. Her sister is addicted to a variety of substances and has been in and out of rehabs, shelters, and halfway houses for the majority of her adult life. Katie shares custody of her niece with the girl's father and I really appreciate that. She took action and cares for this little girl and is a stable influence for her. As much of a weirdo is my mom can be, she has always been there for me and I have never had to go looking for her on the street or in a crack house. She may not have gone thru recovery herself but she knows all about it from her sister and when she says that she understands what I am going thru I believe her.

I was walking back from a call at a remote location that houses children and their families that are undergoing extended treatment at the hospital and there were a number of chalk drawings on the pavement. For some reason, I really like sidewalk art. I think its because its temporary and uses a surface that isn't normally associated with art. Among the doodles and drawings there were two rectangles that were side by side. The left one had a flower with "HOPE" underneath it and the right one had a heart with "LOVE" beneath. I think that pretty much sums up what I need in order to be happy with my life. I need hope so that I am excited and looking forward to the future, without it there isn't a reason to continue living. And of course I need love in my life, or to love life its self. When I was active in my addictions I had neither hope nor love in my life and I was living to exist that day. I didn't want to look to the future because it scared me. I felt that I wasn't living up to the expectations if those who knew me and that there wasn't any reason to change the way I was living because I wouldn't change my thinking.

One of the AA terms I loathe is "Stinkin' Thinkin'". Not only because both words are shortened (I have a real problem with that although I do shorten words in email) but because I was guilty of a offensive thoughts. Changing the way that I looked at myself and the world around me was the first step in my recovery because unless I was able to do that, why the heck would I stop what I was doing in the first place ? As soon as I was able to honestly understand how much better life was sober, beyond the physical feelings, I was able to dedicate my life to my recovery. Recovery is a personal journey that is shared with others and without that sharing I never would have been able to maintain my sobriety. Many newcomers or serial relapsers don't really believe you when you suggest to them how much better life is without depending on something to make you feel better. That is something they need to find out for themselves and experience the love of life first hand. I can get up in front of everyone and blab about how great my life is and unless the people in the room have experienced it for themselves my message is moot.

That does not mean the life is all of a sudden kittens and ice cream. Life can be difficult but if you are living your life sober you have a better chance of dealing with the problems and challenges in your life. I am still impulsive but I have found that at least when I decide to do something I think about it for a little while before I act. I think this is very helpful when I have a craving for booze, to just think about it and convince yourself that hitting the bottle is not the answer goes a long way to staying sober. I have written many times that the easy part of recovery is to stop using for a day, it is much harder to maintain that sobriety when life throws a wrench into the works. I remember I was at a commitment at a homeless shelter one afternoon and a woman said that she had been sober for over a year and that her life still sucked. I asked her if she had dreams and goals now and when she responded that indeed she did, I asked her if she had dreams and goals when she was using. She said that she did have them but her dreams and goals in sobriety are much more rational than before. I mentioned to her that perhaps that was an improvement and she agreed. I am always afraid what those folks at the shelter think of me when I arrive with new sneakers, clothes, cell phone etc, that if they will have faith in what I am saying. You can't reach everybody every time but you sure as hell can try.

I spoke to the mother of my god daughter the other day and asked about my former best friend (fbf). She said that she has not spoken to him in months and that he won't speak to anyone who is rational. To make matters worse I heard thru the grapevine that a friend of mine had called an old employee and my fbf answered his phone. Normally that wouldn't be an issue but it is known that this former employee also moves a tremendous about of cocaine and if my fbf was answering his phone then logic would tell you he was either using or collecting some cocaine for himself. One thing my fbf does not need to do is to be around people who are using or dealing cocaine because he can't keep away from it. In addition to alcohol, my fbf has admitted to me that he has a problem with using cocaine and that he should not be around it. I hate to think the worst but I am afraid that he is back to smoking cocaine on a regular basis. That is one thing that I never got into thank god, I have certainly used cocaine on a regular basis before, but I never got into smoking it and while I have smoked it before it just didn't do it for me. Anyway, I hope his family is able to get thru to him in a way that his ex and I cannot.

Salin' Palin Comes To Boston

Today is Tuesday April the Thirteen Two Thousand Ten. Big news around here is that Sarah Palin will be here tomorrow with the Tea party. Yay. I dunno, its hard for me to respect someone who thought that changes to the US currency was the work of anti government forces. I am sure she is a perfectly nice lady but that doesn't mean I want her in national government. Even my mother who has been a card carrying member of the LWV since it started thinks she is a dolt and thats saying something. I also have no doubt that its the advisors who really run the show, look how far Bush II went but something just seems off about her. I am interested to see what the reaction will be to her visit and what sort of idiot protest is going to transpire. Just running into the crowd waving a dumb sign isn't the best use of your energy, the Palin people will be ready for that. I am hopeful that something creative happens considering this is where the real tea party happened.

I am all for people speaking their mind but don't speak for me as an american. You don't know my politics which I admit are fucked up. I could be classified as a liberal republican or a conservative democrat. I agree with welfare but think it needs to be reformed. I think that gun control to a point is a good idea. Abortion yes, but not after a certain amount of weeks. Death Penalty ? I dunno, what happens if the person didn't do it ? I think its been proven time and again that our court systems are not all that just. You could call me wish washy about the issues but I am nothing if a realist. There will always be people that are on the government dole, just like there will always be people who celebrate the second amendment. Better to deal with those issues than pretend they don't exist or will go away on their own. And I will never understand pro life people who murder others in the name of their beliefs, they should be labeled pro death or something. If every life is so fucking sacred then why are you killing abortion doctors ? If one doc is unable to perform the procedure then another one will step in.

I will never forget when I heard about Clinton and his various dalliances. What really pissed me off was not that he cheated on Hillary or received fellatio in the Oval office but he did it when he was on the phone with a foreign power. I wouldn't like it if a friend of mine did that, I can't imagine how some diplomat feels that while he was on the phone with Bill, some intern was "relaxing" him. Do your fucking job dude, thats why we elected you. If you want to get some nookie do it on your won time and not on ours. I would guess that being the president of any country is pretty fucking complicated and time consuming and that once in awhile you have a few days off. If you no longer have sexual relations with your wife, then fine, go with someone else just keep it out of the office. There are plenty of men and women out there that are unhappy in their relationships and don't bop one another at work. I am sure there are plenty that do but no everyone gets to fly around in Marine One.

As proud as I was when Obama was elected I was very worried that some idiot would try and off him during his first year. I share a special kinship with Barak because I got sober the day he became president. I hope that he is considered an effective president and that what he has been working on comes to fruition. I never thought that someone other than a white guy would be elected president in my lifetime and it is thrilling that it happened but people, myself included, need to look beyond the color of his skin and hot wife. He appears to be an honest, engaging person who wants to give back to the country that has given him so much. I don't know his history but it appears that he has done pretty damn well for himself and that he is a man of his word. He even admitted to not only smoking pot but selling it once in awhile I think. I could be wrong, but whatever the story is I am glad for his honesty and integrity. It is safe to say that I would be pretty pissed off if something Clintonesque was to happen with Obama.

I decided last nite that I am going to mix up my AA meetings for the spring and summer. I've been going to my regular meetings weekly for over a year and they are beginning to get a little stale. There is a great Wednesday nite meeting at the end of my street thats a "As Bill Sees It" discussion group. That is where I went to my first AA meeting and it was mindblowing. I didn't know what I expected but I didn't expect the other people to look like my friends and neighbors. It made me feel comfortable and relaxed and while I didn't get sober that year it was a great introduction to the program. I went every week for a few months and then my interest petered out. I didn't know that I should have gone to more meetings and program involvement is a great way to maintain your sobriety. I'd really like to write an AA companion book that points out some simple things that would make it easier on folks new to the program. I think that some people stop coming because they don't know how to make the program work for themselves and are too afraid to ask others because they think they will sound stupid. When I first started going to meetings my defenses were up and I was unwilling to take a chance and share what I was really feeling. Thats why I try and talk to newcomers after I've seen them at a couple of meetings before trying to give them advice.

I guess my AA companion would go as follows: 1. Go to a meeting, 2. Listen, 3. Talk, 4. Introduce yourself to others, 5. Enjoy. Maybe thats a little simple but it has worked for me. One thing to keep in mind is that just because someone is in AA doesn't mean you have to like them. I spent my first few months in the program thinking that everyone was wonderful and awesome and fun to be around and while for the most part people are wonderful, awesome, & fun to be around but some are not. Some can be really annoying and its a good use of the serenity prayer when they are annoying. I think that most annoying people don't know they are annoying, it just comes naturally to them and its not like they are making a specific effort. Perhaps I am giving people too much of a benefit of the doubt but I would hope that if a person knew they were annoying then they would change their behavior. There is one particular person who drives me up a fucking wall but I smile and say nice things because thats what you do. This person is an asset to the program and just because this person drives me nuts is no reason for me to be mean to them.

They way I look at it, everyone deserves to be in a meeting if they want to be there. As long as they are not disruptive or smell terrible then its cool. A while back there was a gentleman who was both disruptive and smelly and he made most everyone feel uncomfortable. It was obvious that he needed to help himself but he made it difficult for anyone to help him because he spoke when he wanted to and didn't allow for others to say what they wanted to when they wanted to. As far as I am concerned the worst thing you can do in AA is not speak out of turn, not allowing the person who is speaking to finish what the fuck they were talking about. Its pretty simple really, something you should have learned when you were a tyke. People say not to take people's inventory when talking to them, in other words don't make a mental list of the qualities in a particular person that annoy you but its human nature to do such a thing. I think thats probably my biggest character defect is taking people's inventory for better or worse and its something I am working on. I can accept just about anyone for who they are but acceptance doesn't mean that I am not going to pay attention to what to me, is wrong with them.

Lifestyle Changes Are Good

Today is Monday April The Twelve Two Thousand Ten. Mondays are not what they once were in my life and I look forward to the week ahead. One more week of sobriety, one more week of working out, one more week of losing weight, and most importantly, one more week of living. I don't actually treat each day as if it was my last or anything like that but I have learned to appreciate each day as it comes. There are so many things that could happen or could have happened that would prohibit me from enjoying each and every day. I don't formally pray each day as some in the program do, I don't get on my knees and thank jebus or anything but I do thank my higher power in my own way as I bumble my way thru life.

My lifestyle is so different than it was. I treated my body like shit day after day without any regard about the long term effects of my use. It wasn't that I thought I was invincable, I just didn't give a shit beyond that day. My life consisted of living for that day and dwelling in the past. Dwelling about lost dreams, goals not met, and a general lack of interest in life. I think that the best thing that has happened is I able able to reflect on my past mistakes so that I am better prepared to make the right decisions moving forward. That doesn't mean that I won't make mistakes but I hope that I am able to recover from them and learn from them. In the past I would just try to put whatever stupid thing I had done out of my mind and ignore any conseguences that were a result. Or something like that. Some times just writing what you are thinking doesn't make too much sense once you right it down and take a look at it.

So my right knee has been pissed at me for a couple of weeks now and I actually took some action to see what I could do about it. If I work on the elip machine for an hour or so my knee will give out when I am just standing around. After I had surgery to repair a ruptured patellar tendon in that knee it used to happen all the time and now it was happening again and that was worrisome to me. Rather than ignoring it I made an appointment to see my physical therapist and I am really glad that I did. Not only was it cool to see him again and check out the new class of interns working there my pt knew exactly what was going on with my knee. Using a chart of the bod he explained what muscles and tendons were there to support my leg and that was happening to limit that. He also showed me a few exercises to help strengthen my quad and while they suck to do I am sure they will help it. He also showed me a way to do leg presses so that my knee won't be as stressed and I will feel comfortable.

Yeah, just call me muscles. Its funny how psyched I am about working out by myself. Previously I was all about team sports and wouldn't even think of going to the gym on my own accord. Even when I was skiing for my college it was a team effort. Sure, when you are being timed its just you and the snow but everything else you did with other people. It would be cool to have someone to work out with, preferably with boobs, but its not absolutely needed. Like my sobriety I am doing this for nobody else but myself so anyone else who is involved is window dressing. Besides, working out with wimmin can be quite distracting. I remember going to the gym with my girlfriend in college and all I would do when working out was to watch her sweat and have dirty thoughts about that. Ah Heather, what a odd duck she was. All she ever wanted to do was to be a nurse and when she achieved that she decided that it was no longer her calling so she got married and had three kids and now home schools them. Its a pity really, she looked so fucking hot in her nurses outfit and I am sure some old dude would appreciate that.

I guess that is one bonus to working in a hospital if you are attracted to the fairer sex in uniform. The only problem is most of the nurses my age are already hard and jaded by their profession. And, most of them have diamonds not only on the soles of their shoes but also on their left ring fingers. I don't know when I started looking for that before checking an xx chromo out, probably in my late twenties but its important. I don't lust after women I know are otherwise unavailable because to me its like watching a stripper. Seeing or fantasizing about someone that you have no way of following up on is in my opinion a waste of time. I can certainly appreciate a fine specimen but thats where it ends. I have been in strip bars but as a serious alcoholic I never had enough money to both drink to excess and pay for the dancers to shake their booty in my face. I would much rather interact with a xx chromo who I stand a chance, no matter how small, of seeing their knockers up close and personal. To throw money at a naked woman on a stage does pass the time but I can think of a million different things I'd rather spend my cash on.

Being Honest With Yourself

Today is Thursday April Eighth Two Thousand Ten. For the last two days I have received phone messages that are just plain nasty. They must be from some bill collector and man those guys can be insulting. They funny thing is that yesterday the guy had a spanish accent and then today he had an indian accent but they both told me to call someone with an american name. They also left a message on my work voicemail which is a no-no but its not like they ever get busted for doing it. I currently have two outstanding bills that I need to pay and I plan on paying them off sometime this summer. I have paid off about seventy percent of my outstanding debt so far and I fee pretty good about that. I was talking to someone in the program who was self employed for a long time and neglected to pay taxes for the last four or five years before he got sober. He has been ignoring letters from the IRS and one day he went to his bank and all the money was removed. I guess the IRS had enough and went after whatever they could. I think he owes around a hundred grand in back taxes and I don't know how they are ever going to recover that cash.

Dealing with things in a timely manner has never been my strong suit but I am getting better at it. With my next paycheck I plan to get one account current and then in a few months finally tackle that outstanding credit card debt. There is always the chance they will track me down and corner me and I will have to deal with it sooner but I am ok with that. Its not like I don't owe them money or anything like that, I've just been a dickhead about it. How would I like it if someone owed me cash for a couple years ? It would drive me crazy and I would try and call them all the time as well. I just know that its going to feel great once I pay everything off and don't have to always check the phone number before I pick up a call.

Changing habits is a big part of my sober living. I guess the first habit I changed is not to use drugs and alcohol. One for me. The second is getting into the habit of being honest about everything. Being honest with other people and to myself so that I can grow into something I am proud of. I used to lie to others all the time whether it was a wild story or just something simple. Worst of all I would lie to myself, telling myself that I would change tomorrow or at the end of the week. When it came time to act on that change I would find some excuse to why I couldn't do what I had promised myself I would. I love the term "Action in the key" because without action nothing ever gets done. Very rarely does something happen without you having to work at it and it feels great to achieve something you didn't think was possible. I have a couple of those achievements in my pocket and many more are out there.

I never thought that I could stay sober for more than a few weeks. Drinking was such a part of my daily life I couldn't imagine life without it. What would I do with myself if I wasn't drinking all the time ? I never thought that I would like the feeling that sobriety gives me, the energy, the optimism. For me, that was the real secret of staying sober, the feeling of extended sobriety and the awareness that comes with it. I thought to myself that I would indeed get off the heroin because that was clearly the problem and if I was able to not drink for a few months then great. I would give AA a chance and see if I could maintain my sobriety, after all I could always drink by myself because I was really good at that. I feel like what I have learned in AA has ruined drinking for me and thats a good thing. I couldn't start drinking again and maintain my attendance in meetings. I would not be able to look everyone in the eye and lie to them. I care about and respect the program too much to do that now. If I every start drinking again there is no fucking way I would attend meetings.

Every time I see my mother she asks me three things: are you smoking, are you drinking, are you doing drugs ? I guess she is allowed to as I did cause her great pain but it sucks to be questioned like that all the time. Only once did I tell her that I had quit everything and went back to using but evidently she has a good memory of that. I tried to explain to her that if I stop talking about AA then she should worry but that didn't seem to do any good. She just has no understanding of what my drinking and drug use was like and I don't really want to explain it to her in messy detail. I've told my father just about everything and that was enough for me I guess. Maybe I will at some point but I don't think she needs to hear all about the abuse that her son did for twenty years. I am afraid it will break her heart. Thats another reason why I have not spoken to her about my thoughts of offing myself either. I am afraid of what her reaction may be so for now I will just continue to answer her three questions in the negative.

I just noticed that I have another "follower" of my blog. Hi there, thanks for reading this shit, I appreciate it. In case it isnt obvious this blog is a stream of conciousness, I just write what comes to me without any outline or plans. I spend the first thirty minutes at work writing and this is what my brain belches out. Believe it or not, I have had little formal training as a writer ! Can't you tell ? In seriousness I enjoy writing down my thoughts and concerns on a daily basis and I always feel better afterwards. I may write a book after I have been sober for five years and this blog may be the foundation for that. I know there are plenty of books out there about drinking and drug use but I think I have some good things to say about it and if I am able to be sober for five years then I am pretty fucking good at it and perhaps people can learn from what I have experienced. Thanks to the interwebs its much easier to get a book published and I have already found some people who want to help me with it which is awesome. Anyway, thanks for reading and I will try to stay sober for one more day.

Ticket Brokers & More Recovery Thoughts

Today is Wednesday April Seventh Two Thousand Oh Ten. I have that god damn "This Is New Hampshire" parody song running thru my head and I have only heard it once. I guess I should be pleased that Lady Gaga is no longer in my head, I had that one running around there for a couple of days. I always seem to hear crappy tunes at the gym that stick its terrible. Why can't a song I like do that I wonder, its always the crappy ones that stick. Am I really a Lady Gaga fan ? God I hope not, all those years of listening to good music right down the drain.

I was reading an article about scalping in Rolling Stone the other day. This company used "bots" created by Bulgarians to circumvent the "fairness settings" on the ticketfucker website. They would then of course, resell the tickets to brokers and then the brokers would pass it along to fans. The article caught my eye because one of the bands they mentioned was PH!SH and how they had purchased twenty five hundred tickets to the Hampton shows a couple years back. I was wondering why tickets were so fucking hard to get for those shows. I mean yah, the band was playing again after a five year break but usually I am able to find someone I know who has a couple of tickets. That time I didn't know anyone who got tickets the normal way, everyone I know who went got fucked by a ticket broker. Ticket Scalping is supposed to be illegal but yet all these ticket brokers exist. And they pay taxes on their gains so it ought to be pretty easy to figure out what their profit margins are and if it isn't then just audit the heck out of them.

For the first time in twenty years of going to see PH!SH I had to go thru a broker for my Fenway Park ticket. I paid forty dollars over cost and while that pissed me off I did it anyway. It was my first show sober and it meant a bunch to me to be able to see the band I love so much in Fenway. Plus I got to smoke butts in the stands at Fenway and thats got to be worth at least twenty bucks right there. I'm glad I went to that show solo as I could escape if I didn't feel comfortable. That didn't happen but it made me feel better that I had stuff planned out. People always ask me how I am able to handle seeing so many bands all the time and I tell them the key is to know when to take action. Hmm, I think I've heard that somewhere before... If I don't have an way out of a show and an actionable plan to get home when I want to then I won't go. It was a little different when I went to PH!SH at Mansfield last summer but we did park in vip parking and the lady I went with would have high tailed it if I had wanted her to. You just have to speak up and tell the people you are going with what the deal is and that you have different needs than the average concert goer. It has worked for me so far and I've only left one show early and that was because my feet hurt due to my new cowboy boots!

I met with my sponsor last nite and while it was enjoyable its as if he knows there is something wrong but doesn't want to ask me about it. Its weird, after going thru step five with him that guy knows more about me than anyone else but we can't seem to talk about what is wrong with our relationship. I guess I have not said anything because I am deciding what to do. A few weeks ago I was all ready to tell him that I wanted to find another sponsor but I decided to wait. I will write this over and over again but "one thing I've learned in recovery is ..." its cool that at age forty that I'm still learning shit. Anyway, one thing I've learned in recovery is not to be so impulsive and to think before I act. This is a case of that, I really respect him and have gotten to know him and I shouldn't be so quick not accept his personal quirks. He is very supportive and was very crucial to my early sobriety as well as my continuing recovery. I shouldn't be so quick to judge and decide that I want to work with someone else. I think I owe it to him to work on whatever problems I have talked myself into having with him and to learn from the experiences. For example I will never invite him to another Celtics game because the odds are he won't show up until well into the second quarter. I should invite him to stuff that is ok for people to be late to and that way I won't get so pissy about it. I think other than avoiding confrontation, I didn't bring up my extreme displeasure at his tardiness the other week since there is nothing I can personally do about it.

I need to remember that the world doesn't revolve around me and my thoughts and that I can't hold everyone to whatever standard I have set for myself. I am a freak when it comes to being on time and not everyone is going to be like me. I could interpret his being late to things as a lack of respect but then again I can interpret anything my way. I just need to settle the fuck down and not take everything so seriously. I've said it before that if I ever meet a woman who is early to stuff I would marry her, well consider it anyway. I always used to laugh at my pop when he would wait in a running car while my momma diddled around the house. Pop is also chronically early to everything and I think I can count on one hand the number of times he has been late in meeting me. I need to remember that there are more important things in life than being prompt and that while that may be the case for me it isn't the case for everyone else. Its difficult admitting stuff like that but thats just another blessing of recovery.

I didn't get sober to be miserable, if I wanted to be miserable I could just start drinking again and pretty soon I would feel that way. At first I got sober so that I wouldn't get fired but after a while my continued sobriety has served to enrich, lengthen, and improve my life. My life is much simpler when all I have to do is to wake up at a specific time and go to work. That used to be so hard when I was active, I would never wake up at the same time and many days didn't need an alarm clock because my body would wake me when it sobered up. God, what a shitty way to live, I can't believe I did it for so long. I was talking to my sponsor about when I knew I was an alcoholic and how I knew. I always drank more often than most of my friends once college was over but I don't think I depended on it till I had surgery on my knee and was wrapped up in opiate addiction. If I had painkillers or heroin I didn't need to drink all the time but if I didn't have them then I drank every waking moment. My momma always asks me what I do when I want a drink and its hard for me to explain to her the correlation between my opiate and alcohol use. I was just so used to being high in some way that I was miserable when I wasn't. Or, I was just a total pussy who couldn't deal with life as a normal man and then felt really sorry for myself when I wasn't drunk or high. Thankfully I have discovered that life is really cool when I'm sober and believe it or not I enjoy having the ability to feel the life I am living. Life on life's terms or something along those lines.

Recovery Check In

Today is Tuesday April Fourth Two Thousand Ten. I am pretty fucking happy today because I finally broke the two twenty pound plane and now weigh two hundred eighteen pounds, a weight I have not seen in quite a few years. I've now lost thirty pounds and I only have eighteen to go to meet my first weight goal. Its cool that all those early winter mornings and gallons of sweat are paying off. Whats weird is that I will be at a certain weight for a few weeks and then I seem to lose five or more pounds in a week. I don't care how it happens, just that it is happening. I finally told my trainer about how my right knee gives out every once in a while after I've done cardio for an hour and she wasn't pleased. She had me do this exercise to test each quad at a time and my right quad was quite a bit weaker than my left. So she is going to come up with some exercises to target that muscle group and I am going to get a referral from my doc so I can get some phys therapy for that leg.

Just had an interesting conversation with my friend who is retiring in a few months and he mentioned that management isn't listening to him about a possible replacement. One thing I have learned in recovery is not to set yourself up for failure or disappointment therefore needing a drink to make things better. I very well may have a shot at the job or I may not, the important thing to me is to learn something from the experience. I did find out that one of the upper management types making these decisions is someone who I know and knows my name. We are only friendly on the work shuttle but still I will be more than just a name on a screen. We are waiting for them to create the job rec so there is something in writing that I can go after. He also mentioned that two of his staff are leaving and popular opinion is that the remaining staff person won't be able to handle the the job. He said that mgmt for the most part is lazy and that if I am able to present myself in such a way that it will be easy for them to make a decision then I should. He suggested that I maybe approach this mgmt guy and start talking him up. The question then becomes, how do I do that ? Do I ride the fucking shuttle a few hours a day and hope I run into him ? Do I stalk him and just bump into him ? Do I bribe his admin for a few of his schedule ? So many things to think about.

So this jay-Z parody has been making the rounds by a group called the super secret project. A good friend of mine in the program evidently knows the founder and hopefully they will get some traction from this. They do a bunch of music and short film projects and you never know whats going to happen. Ellen DeGenerous (sp?) contacted them to see if maybe they could get down to NYC and be on her show. I like when the internet helps bring people's creativity and message to people who wouldn't normally see or get it. I wish the best for them, they seem pretty creative and any song about New Hamster is ok with me.

I have not written about my own recovery for some time because things are going really well. I still have issues with my sponsor but I can deal, at least for now. I attend meetings, participate, and talk to others in the program as much as I can and thats what is working for me right now. There isn't any super secret formula or anything like that, I just have to place everything else behind my desire to stay sober. Sure, there are a few women I'd love to ask out that attend meetings but I won't ever do that because if they ran screaming from the room at such a suggestion then I wouldn't feel comfortable in those meetings ever again. Well, maybe ever is a bit much but it would take a really fucking long time before I stopped feeling like a heathen. Certainly dating someone in the program does make some sense but I dunno how to execute something like that. I dunno, as cool as having a cool woman to hang around with would be, its not worth me screwing up my meeting schedule over. I guess I need to worry about something these days now that the drama of drug and alcohol addiction is over but there are two sweet women in the program I'd love to get up against.

Last nite's speaker was awesome. He had this deadpan delivery and way of looking at things that was very refreshing. He kept mentioning that he didn't have a very long and difficult active period but I think thats just crap. Any time you plan your entire life around drugs and alcohol is pretty fucking grim. I don't care if you only drank stoli on the rocks rather than mouthwash, the fact that you were dependent on alcohol is the point. I remember some guy pschawing about another member who said that she only drank a couple of glasses of wine a nite. I didn't say anything but I remember thinking at the time what a jackass he was for saying any thing. This woman drank a couple of glasses of wine a nite, every nite for over twenty years. She planned he life around her evening drinks and she depended on them. Who knows, maybe her version of a glass was a quart milk container ? Alcoholism is so much more than drinking, there are so many other things at play for many people beyond the fact they drink every day. They say that drinking is but a symptom and I tend to agree with it.

So how have I grown over these last fourteen months ? I am more confident in my ability to see things thru, I don't lie except when its to spare other people's feelings (no, you don't look fat in that comes to mind) and I feel good about myself. The fact that I have not had a drink in that time period is just one part of my overall recovery. I do wish that someone would ask me to sponsor them, I am sure it will happen sometime but as the speaker mentioned last nite I feel like helping someone as much as this program has helped me. I had no idea how AA would effect me, I thought that it would help pass them time and that I would maybe learn a few things in the meetings. I am really gung ho when about the program because I am such a different person both inside and out due to AA. Yes, it does get tiring to hear about people's problems day after day but it feels good to know that I am helping them by just sitting there listening. People share stuff in meeting they wouldn't share anywhere else and I think it releases a bunch of crap inside you that normally wouldn't get released. I dunno, addiction = bad, recovery = good.