12 Years A-Sober

I just leapt (like the Lords in the song) through my 12th Sober Christmas. This week, God willing, I'll squeak through my 12th Sober New Years.

Not bad, considering I thought my life was over except for the dying part, 12 years ago.

That first sober Christmas was a scarey time. My friend Bev sent me an Advent package of little toys and goodies -- which meant the world to me. Every little thing in that package said "somebody cares" to me. This, at a time, when I didn't even care for myself. Bev and I have known each other since 1994 -- when we met on-line in CompuServe's Issues forum. She was a Section Leader and, later, a SysOp. I thought she was a nice lady.

She was. She is.

By the time my second sober Christmas came along, I was able to spend the day (mostly) with my family.

And now, I look forward to spending the day with them. They don't push any buttons. That's mostly because this family, which is not my family of origin, has no ideas where my buttons are -- they didn't install them.

This Christmas was the best yet. The former kids have all grown up, gotten married, and had kids. The grand-nieces and grand-nephews are at the perfect age (4-10) and still enthralled by the magic of Santa Claus.

Come to think of it, so am I. Santa brought me sobriety. Santa brought me Bev. Santa brought me hope. Santa brought me 11 years and 9 months of continuous sobriety. Santa brought me love.

It's good to be alive and to still believe in magic.

I really must ask Bev

I really must ask Bev how she manages all this blogging stuff.

I had a post ready to go (two of them, in fact) on Tradition Three, one of which I posted last week.

Then, today, I went to create a new post and KAFLOOEY, I wound up blowing up my hard-earned post du jour and wound up posting the 2nd draft of the post regarding Tradition Three I had leftover from last week.

Now, I can hold forth for hours with the best of them in recovery meetings, but two posts, virtually back to back, on the same subject, is a little much, even for a self-absorbed alkie like me.

My friend Bev, on the other hand, apparently posts about as much as Arianna Huffington does on a good day, not including video logs, cake-baking and puppy-tending.

Somewhere in there she manages to find time to whiz down to Santa Barbara to attend showers (wedding and baby), weddings, births, christenings, bat mitzvahs and God only knows what else. Drive visitors into San Francisco for the Cook's Tour of the place (hold on... this is Lombard Street) and still have time to drive up to Marin to have lunch with her Mom.

I don't know how the woman does it.

I wish she'd fill in for me now and then.

I need to go lie down now.

Car 54 Where Are You?

I've been MIA for a couple of days. Hence the obscure cultural reference in the Subject Line, above. If you weren't around in the very early 60's, you'd have no idea what it refers to. Suffice it to say that it comes from a time when JFK International Airport was still called "Idlewild."

I've gotten into this rut where I don't post over the weekends because I'm having way too much fun going to 12-Step meetings and shopping at BJ's afterwards.

I blew over a hundred bucks at BJs this past Sunday. I bought a 2-year supply of Ivory bathsoap and a year's supply of Gillette Mach 3 razor blades and about a year's supply of shaving gel to go with it. I also bought two 35 count boxes of Trail Mix bars, a 1 pound block of Havarti, 2 1-pound bags of Ruffles potato chips (bad JoyZeeBoy!) and some other crap I don't really need.

Oh, and I placed an order for two pumpkin pies to take with me when I go to Baltimore for Thanksgiving (OUT OF TOWN ALERT!). I hate to arrive empty-handed as a houseguest so I'm bringing dessert and (shhhh) I also bought my hosts the DVD of "Ratatouille" which we all saw on Cape Cod last summer, and which my friends really enjoyed.

So who has time to post anything? Well, my friend Bev does. Apparently at 30 or 40 websites, under various aliases, all day, every day. No wonder the woman never sleeps.

Habits come in all shapes and sizes, whether it's posting or shopping. Obsessions. Compulsions. Call 'em what you want. I got 'em. My friends all have 'em.

On a slightly different subject, you may have noticed a little logo down at the bottom of my blog for something called SiteMeter. It keeps tabs on who drops by here. Oh, it doesn't name names, but it does tell me the name of the server and/or IP address and the city, state and country of origin. It also tells me if the viewer got here by "googling" or searching for something.

And I have to tell you, one of the most popular phrases I ever posted here, based on how often it turns up in people's net-searches, is from an old song entitled "Young At Heart." It seems especially popular among netcruisers in Central and South America. Don't know why (there's no sun up in the sky...)

Anyway, the particular verse that seems so popular goes:

"fairy tales can come true
it can happen to you....
if you're young at heart"

The song was originally sung by Frank Sinatra. It became a giant hit for him and was subsequently used in the movie of the same name. It was released in 1954 and starred Doris Day, Frank Sinatra, Gig Young and Ethel Barrymore. It's a fluff of a nothing movie, a remake of 1938's "Four Daughters". Basically it's "good girls go for bad boys." But the song stuck.

And as I've previously mentioned, the best rendition of the song, I think, was by the late, great Jimmy Durante.

So, "Goodnight Mrs. Calabash.... wherever you are!" (Another obscure cultural reference. Look that one up yourselves.)

p.s. Today is my post number 300! Would somebody like to run 26.5 miles back to Athens to let everybody know? No? Wimps.

AugTober

Hot enuff fer ya?

It's sure as hell hot enough for me and I LOVE summer. My fellow blogger, Jake over at NoFo (and his huzband-to-be, Justin), had a heck of a time during the Chicago marathon yesterday, along with 100's of others, until the race organizers finally called a halt to the damned thing.

Now Chicago's weather has arrived here in NYC. It was hot last night. I had the a/c blasting in my bedroom all night long. I was still hot. When I got up it was hot (the house is an old Victorian, so only select rooms have window units). The bathroom was like an oven.

I can take this weather in July, but it's the middle of October, fer cryin'-out-loud, and although I'm no great fan of winters in New Jersey, I do the like the certainty that when the weather gets wearisome, no matter what the season, it will change in just a few months. But these days I'm starting to wonder.

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I sat down at my desk this morning and my cellphone immediately "dinged" to let me know that somebody had sent me a text-message. Someone, who shall remain nameless but she's spending today with her mother and cousins, had awakened in the dead of night (as is her wont) and, in a fit of boredom, couldn't get her iPod to reboot and wondered if I'd send her the instructions for rebooting it. I located the instructions (all 4 paragraphs of it) and realized that it would take me an hour to key it into my cellphone. Throwing caution to the wind I called her (6:30 a.m. PDT)and talked her through it (thrown the little switch on top. Hold down the "Menu" AND "Select" buttons simultaneously for about 10 seconds until the Apple logo appears. Lather, rinse, repeat if necessary. By then, though, her mom and cousins were up and they were all apparently ready to dive into the sauce (so I believe) so it was pointless to try to have a coherent conversation with any of them. These so-called "Cousins Days" of hers seem to me to be little more than excuses to get hammered and to card-shark the hell out of each other.

I hope they're having a good time today. (They usually do!)

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Whilst websurfing this ayem I came across an item (the Huffington Post?) about Bob Novak (remember him? Valerie Plame's outer?) saying he'd alleged that most of the Republican membership of the Senate (and probably the House, too) had always known about Larry Craig, not just that he was gay, but that he was a notorious tearoom queen, too.

Not to be outdone in terms of co-signing Larry's denial bullshit, another item alleged that Idaho has proposed to induct him into their Hall of Fame. I only wish I were kidding.

Apparently the Roy Cohn Memorial "Whatever the fuck it is that I am, I'm NOT THAT" Club in Washington (and Idaho) has a huge charter membership on both sides of the partition, er, aisle.

Actually, I DO feel like Dancing.

With all of this weeks' exciting events (dead preachers, abruptly unemployed neo-cons) I figured we could all use a bit of joyous noise (unto the Lord) to shake off our "blahs." [Clip from YouTube. "Scissor Sisters - I Don't Feel Like Dancin'"].

That is unless you're my friend, Bev, who is up to her eyeballs in puppies and plumbers this week (see it HERE) and has no time to shake anything except to shake puppy poopy off of herself while the plumbers dig more of it out of the garden.

There's another cause for celebration today. It's official. I've gotten a fax to prove it. Some big bank has foolishly agreed to loan me an obscene amount of money in order to buy an overpriced piece of real estate in central New Jersey. And on my salary, no less.

Whatever could they be thinking?

Nine years ago, when my life seemed all over but the actual dying, I never dreamed in a million years that this could happen to me. My self-esteem was exactly that shot.

Who knows? Maybe the dead preacher put in a good word for me with God. Hey! Stranger things have happened (I got sober. How friggin' weird is that?)

Now I can go shopping for real estate this weekend in peace (this is how we do things in NJ. You get the loan, THEN go looking for the place.)

Actually, as I've long noted here, I have been looking at places, but now, with this Imprimatur from a major bank, I feel... well... entitled to play with the big kids in terms of making demands on real estate agents to start adhering to my lists of wants and don't-wants in housing.

I want a top-floor apartment (nobody above me). I want a gas-fueled fireplace and I want a utility room big enough to hold a washer and dryer. I want two bedrooms and two baths and I want a balcony. I DON'T want cathedral ceilings but would like skylights in the bathrooms, provided they're guaranteed not to leak for 10 years. I want a kitchen big enough to swing a skillet in. I'd like to have all stainless-steel appliances (is it too much to expect Sub-Zero and KitchenAid ?)

I want to be close to the community pool (and there must be a community pool) but not NEXT to the community pool (too much noise on hot summer nights when I'm trying to sleep).

HOA (Homeowners Association) fees should not exceed $200 a month and should include garbage and snow removal, groundskeeping, external building maintenance and water, regardless of use.

The complex should be wired for BOTH Comcast high-speed cable AND Verizon FIOS fiber optic network, thus ensuring a constant choice between them.

I'm not asking for much. Just for everything I want.

And if I find all that in one place,

I'll really feel like dancin'.

Movin' On....

My friend Bev was wondering where she'd sleep when she came to visit. I told her she'd be in the guest room because it has "Verizon FIOS 25mbs ultra-high-speed, wide-bandwidth, internet access." Oh, yeah, and there's a couch for her to sleep on. She hates beds.

So, this is the guest room in the paint-job condo. Notice that the current owners have a couch and TWO (count 'em, TWO) computer workstations.

I joked with Bev years ago that even if we were in the same room we'd have to have two laptops and ethernet connections in order to communicate because we were much better at it in e-mail than we actually were in person.

Not to disappoint anyone, but I've made up my mind not to put a bid on the paint-job condo. That close proximity to the community pool, I decided, was actually a disadvantage in the summer because I've no doubt that there'll be poolside cocktail parties every night until all-hours whereas I'm in bed by 9:30 p.m. on weeknights in order to get up at the crack of dawn for my daily commute to Manhattan. And the master bedroom windows overlook the pool.

No thanks.

But this apartment was just the beginning. I've come to hate where I'm living, but I didn't even realize it. I moved in here the month after 9/11 in 2001. It was supposed to be a stop-gap measure and it's served it's purpose. I don't have too much privacy due to the weird layout of the house and my landlady is a busybody who flies out her door to check on everybody I invite over. And lately she's been tacking on hidden "surcharges" to the monthly rent. This past winter she started leaving the heating bill on the steps every month with a note asking if I "could help with this?" The first one was over $500.00. I gave 'em a check for a third of it. I don't mind, but there was no discussion in advance about it. Just a presentation of the bill along with the assumption that I had some sort of obligation to pay some of it, even though we'd never talked about it.

I hate that.

So, given my current rent PLUS the sudden utility surcharges, I realized that the total was coming close to a monthly mortgage payment and I might as well be building up some equity and so it goes.

It's another beautiful day in Paradise (New Jersey). I hope it's a beautiful day wherever you are!

Peace!

Sleeping Like a Baby

"Thank You, God..." Copyright © Austin Cline.

Somebody, I forget who, made a good point today about Dubya's refusal to "be funny" at the White House Correspondent's Dinner last Saturday night "out of respect for the dead at VT" ... that respect for the dead never stopped him before. I thought that was definitely worth noting.

And speaking of dead heroes, David Halberstam died yesterday. That's a real blow to the nation and to democracy. There was somebody who wasn't afraid to speak truth to power.

My friend Bev asked me recently what we old radicals should do now that we're finally getting pissed off enough to actually do something other than whine. I've given it a lot of thought.

Bitch. Loudly. Often. To anybody who'll listen and even to those who won't. One person DOES matter. One person can become thousands. I'm not that old that I don't remember how the "May Day" demonstrations grew in the early 70's until, by 1972, there were millions of people participating in mass demonstrations against the war in Viet Nam.

And bitch to the Supreme Court, too. Fat lot of good it'll do, but bitch anyway.

And get on the horn to your CongressCritter, too. There's a big vote coming up, maybe as soon as next Monday, on legislation to add the LGBT and Disabled communities to existing Hate Crimes legislation. Get on the horn now and nag the hell out of your representative to do the right thing and vote for passage. This is not the "Anti-Christian Act" that so many hatemongers are purporting it to be, unless the average Christian you know is a God-Fearing Fag Basher.

It's the little things that matter. Find some little thing to do. Change one incadescent light bulb in the house to one of those new-fangled mini-fluorescent bulbs. Anything.

And maybe, if you do just one little thing, when you go to bed tonight you'll wind up...

Sleeping like a baby.

Rove Gets Touchy!

Today's poster is not from my usual source. Rather it's from a series of billboards being put up around the country by the Metropolitan Community Church. I loved it. I hope you do, too.
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Karl Rove got cornered Saturday night at the annual Correspondent's Dinner in DC. He didn't like being touched by Sheryl Crow. I guess he is gay, after all. That's too bad because we already have enough bad press. And he ain't much to look at, either. Kind of like the Pillsbury Dough-Boy... or a maggot.

Anyway, my friend Bev mentions Lee Iacocca's new book in her blog today, here, and how fed up he is with the unrepentant Bozo who is currently in charge of the Ship of State. I perused the same tome at Barnes & Noble yesterday and even by hot-blooded Mediterranean standards, Lee is pretty het-up in his latest screed and doesn't hold back on pretty much calling the President a pea-brained shithead.

This is on the heels of the Constitution-Suspending Attorney General's rather poor showing before the Senate committee earlier in the week, Neo-Con Iraq-War-Architect Paul Wolfowitz's getting caught with his finger stuck up his girlfriend over at the World Bank, not to mention the Banner Week the Second Amendment was having, thanks to yet another self-pitying, self-important gun-wielder (aren't they all?).

It all added up to a Really Rotten Week for the Right! No wonder Karl was edgy by Saturday night!

And the good news is, there's no sign of it getting any better for them any time soon!!!!

There is a God.

And it ain't Karl Rove.

Or Shithead.