My Big Fat Sober Life!

I got way too busy to blog yesterday. They closed the office early and lawyers, being lawyers, they like to cram as much crap into Fridays as possible (because they don't do a friggin' thing all week), so that meant cramming even more crap into even less time than usual.

I had dinner with a friend of mine last night. A(nother) nice straight guy, divorced, with a 12 year old, pubescent daughter who has definitely taken a turn to the dark side (paging Darth Vader). But I never turn down a home cooked meal, if I can help it. And it's fun to watch hormonal teenagers in action and to wonder how I managed to survive my puberty. I think I postponed it until I was 20, which helped in the houseful of drunks I grew up in.

I crashed early but I was up at the crack of dawn today to shop. Tomorrow is my friend John's annual Labor Day Picnic, Ice Cream Social and Tractor Pull, which I wouldn't miss for the world. It has gotten to be a dubious habit of mine to bring my world-famous "Kitchen Sink Salad" which starts with loose spinach (a pound), Hearts of Romaine (chopped), crushed walnuts, shredded carrots, sliced red bell peppers (cleaned), red onions, mushrooms, mini-cubes of cheese, grape tomatoes, mandarin orange slices, croutons and tossed with a combination of Caesar and Ranch salad dressings (Maries).

I have to put it into a couple of those disposable aluminum oven roasting pans in order to transport it over to Pennsylvania for the party. It takes about an hour to get there and I like to keep it in the fridge right up until the moment of departure.

Anyway, it takes a fair amount of time to assemble the ingredients and to pre-prepare some of them, such as chopping the lettuce then washing and rinsing it and then stowing it in plastic bags in the vegetable crisper overnight.

The party will start at 2:00 p.m. (EDT) tomorrow, but I'm the coffeemaker for a Sunday morning 12-Step meeting, too, and I'll have to run over to the town hall tomorrow morning to get the coffee going, then come home and finish assembling the salad.

Oh, yeah, and I have to stop and pick up a sponsee I'm taking to the picnic with me, too.

I'm happy about all that. I'm really happy because some new shoes I ordered showed up yesterday. A pair of Sperry Topsider deck shoes and (be still my boyish heart) a pair of Jack Purcell low-top gym shoes which take me right back to my miserable youth! But Lord, I do love those sneaks!!!

Oh, and I've been sharing at my meetings about this being the 10th anniversary weekend of my emotional bottom, when all I wanted to do was die.

And my phone has not stopped ringing since yesterday with calls from people in recovery telling me how glad they are that I didn't get my wish that weekend 10 years ago.

I'm glad, too.

Have a lovely holiday, everyone!