And The Days Dwindle Down....

Here is how my mind works: Let's say that I wake up in the morning and have 300 things to be grateful for and 2 things to be pissed off about. Guess what I'll spend the day dwelling on?

My life these days is basically happy, loving and secure. I'm surrounded by people I love and whom love me. So, naturally, I spent most of this week being pissed off at my cardiologist who have the NERVE to go on vacation when I needed him to be in town to do some paperwork so I can have my surgery a week from Monday.

Am I crazy?

Yes.

Then, of course, his office called yesterday and we got it all straightened out and now I won't have to postpone the surgery after all and it's still on for a week from this coming Monday (August 11th -- send cash.)

This also means that I get to spend this weekend and next loitering in the stacks at BJ's and Sam's Club looking for bargain cases of College Inn Lo-Fat Chicken Broth and tons of sugar-free Jello (ibid) and other stuff to try to ingest since I'll have to live on that stuff for about a month, supplemented only by the prayers of other recovering alkies and gallons of liquid vitamins.

But this is good. I am eager to have my Type II Diabetes "resolved" (doctors don't like the word "cured"). I am eager not to wind up, like so many of my immediate ancestors did, blind and footless, strapped into wheelchairs in hellhole nursing homes.

I am eager to not have that happen to me.

And for that I am truly grateful.

Maybe I'll get some photos of my weekend and post 'em here next week. BUT NO PROMISES.

Still Crazy After All These Years

There's a new addition at the JoyZeeBoy home. His name is Philips and he's a bouncing 72 pound, 42" 1080p, 120hz, LCD-HDTV.

He was landed not without a certain amount of high drama and self-loathing. It all started at my Big Gay 12-Step meeting in Princeton on Friday night when I asked for a "some strapping lad" to assist me in getting Philips home from Sam's Club Saturday afternoon. I got a volunteer, alright, all 5'6", 130 pounds sopping wet of him.

But beggars can't be choosers so I offered to buy my newfound friend lunch on Saturday in exchange for his services in picking up the new set and helping me to schlepp it home and up the stairs to my 2nd story aerie in the Oldest Decrepit Victorian in Hightstown, NJ.

I picked him up on Saturday, we had lunch at the beautiful Americana Diner on Route 130 and then drove cross-country to the Sam's Club out on Route 1 near Princeton.

Where a week ago had stood a plethora of boxes of 42" sets there now stood nada, nil, zip. They'd sold out all 9 of them in the course of one week. I cornered a couple of the young miscreants who pretend to work at Sam's and demanded to be shown to the hidden stash of tv's. But, alas, they really were out ... and they couldn't sell me the floor model because they "might" get more in later this week.

Well, later this week would NOT DO. I want my toys when I want 'em. And I wanted it then. I drove my new friend back to his place and then headed home for a well-deserved evening of self-pitying, isolationist, God-hating. I excel at that at times.

Sunday morning, after an evening of much acting out with inappropriate foodstuffs, I rousted myself out of the house to another 12-Step meeting where I knew I would see my sponsor. After the meeting, as I explained to him how God had carefully plotted and crafted the entire previous two weeks so that I would "think" I was getting a new TV but was, in reality, get a new sponsee (my friend from the day before who, at lunch, worked up the nerve to ask me to sponsor him), my sponsor just nodded sagely, commiserated fully, pronounced me a bat-shit-crazy alcoholic and asked me if I'd checked out the Sam's Club on Route 18 in East Brunswick.

Well, I sputtered, ahem, uh, er, well, no.

He smiled and went home. I tore across country to the turnpike northbound and was there in less than 20 minutes.

They had it.

I bought it.

I brought it home.

It's gorgeous.

And now, of course, I have buyer's regret.

Some weeks it just doesn't pay to get out of bed.

And it NEVER pays to be me.

Trigger

No, not Roy Rogers' horse. I mean "trigger" as in the buttons your family can push with ease because a) they installed them and b) they know where they are.

I used to think that one of my addiction triggers (as in, "if I hang around this long enough I'll have NO CHOICE but to get snot-slinging, commode-hugging, projectile-vomiting, technicolor-yawning, falling-down, drunk", was crazy women. I thought this because a) I'd spent my entire childhood surrounded by them.

There is no "b)".

However, lately, God has seen fit to saddle provide me with plenty of growth opportunities in the form of "sponsees." Sponsees are what we in recovery used to refer to as "pigeons." That was before recovery got all politically correct. Pigeon means somebody who a) shits all over you and b) flies the coop. Sponsees used to do that a lot. Nowadays it's very easy to track them down and kill them.

Anyway, these sponsee/pigeons are giving me fits. They seem to have mental meltdowns over nothing (or what I think is nothing but which, apparently, means a lot to them, like utility bills or Thanksgiving or shit like that there). They call at inopportune moments (like between midnight and dawn) when they have plenty of free time to work themselves into states over bullshit and can't understand why I don't share their enthusiasm for their latest load of insanity.

Oh, and to make it even more enjoyable, because He knows how much I adore lawyers, God has seen fit to saddle provide me with one of those as a sponsee, too!

I am blessed these days. I hardly know where to begin to express my gratitude. I don't have any time to wallow in my own insanity, that's for sure. My days fly by between work and talking my sponsees in from the ledges several times a day.

Was I this nuts when I was new?

I take back every bad thought I ever had about crazy, alcoholic women.

It's alcoholics in general that I can't stand.

And I oughta know.

I am one.

Miscellaneous Friday

The last time I checked, Generals and everyone else in the military... and in elected offices, for that matter, are sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America.

They are not sworn to uphold the religious literature of their choice, nor are they sworn to uphold any particular religion-based value system they may have been subjected to as children.

I am at a loss, then, to understand which part of the Constitution General Pace was upholding when he mouthed off to Congress the other day, reiterating his personal beliefs that homosexuality is immoral and that that was reason enough for the DADT policy.

If he believes, which he apparently does, that his personal beliefs trump the Constitution or the will of Congress, under what set of rules does he think this? By virtue of the fact that he's at the top of the military heap, therefore what he thinks and believes goes?

Or, perhaps, it's just a personally-held belief that he's right and everybody else is wrong.

I can think of a few other people in D.C. who feel the same way. Some of them occupy the White House. Most of them are unrecovered drunks. I wonder if General Pace enjoys a few cocktails now and then? Or more?

====================================
Follow-up to yesterday.

Like all dysfunctional families everyone in the office has chosen to pretend like nothing happened. Ah, there's nothing like an elephant in the living room to remind me of my childhood!

====================================
The Dating Game.

My friend Alan, who blogs over here, and often posts here, astonished me by expressing his opinion that I'm on the verge of dating again. AND, he added his belief that I'm a catch.

From your keyboard to God's ears, Alan!

There is an adorable little investment banker who's started appearing at my morning 12-Step group recently. Too bad he's taboo for the 1st year of his sobriety.

Have a great weekend, all! I know I will.

It seems like only 10 Years ago...

This coming weekend is the 10th anniversary of my planned death. No, I'm not kidding. I was horrifically drunk at the time. I'd been horrifically drunk for over 2 years (well, longer actually, but 2 seems like a good number.) I'd left my ex in November of '94 and moved into my "Apartment of Gloom" on East 78th Street.

I spent the next couple of years a) not working and b) pissing away every dime I'd banked during my lucrative Wall Street years ('83-'94).

By the summer of '97 I was drunk pretty much 24/7/365. The money was rapidly running out and I knew that it was only a matter of weeks before I had to shuck off this mortal coil.

(I'm sorry if this makes anyone out there feel squeamish, but it's the way it was.)

Now, in my insanity I hadn't actually "done" anything to prepare to do myself in. I hadn't bought any weapons or drugs to do the deed with. I vaguely recall having some notion of using "household goods" of some sort or another to do it. I remember a box cutter which I thought would do the trick (don't try this at home, kids), only it turns out you need a tub full of hot water in order to "bleed out". A bucket of warm vomit won't work.

Anyway, I didn't even get that far. The Labor Day weekend arrived and I was drifting in and out of consciousness when suddenly I became dimly aware that "something" was happening. That "something" was the announcement that Princess Diana had been in a horrific auto accident in Paris.

Well, that perked me right up. I remember blearily trying to focus on the screen (I had a 48" Sony XBR rear-projection tv in those days) and thinking (well, sort of), "OH, THISH IS SUCH A TRAGEDITY", so, naturally, I forgot all about dying (me, at any rate) and started thinking about what a wasted young life had been extinguished in Paris that weekend.

And I watched, every time I wasn't passed out, for the next week.

What had been missing from my life for months and even years at that point had been... TA-DAH! drama. Now I had plenty of drama. It wasn't my drama, but I made it my drama.

Anyway, I was pretty insane in those days (as you can tell), but I'm not nearly so now.

10 years ago Princess Di's life, which wasn't supposed to have ended, did. 10 years ago my life, which was supposed to have ended, didn't.

I'm glad God doesn't ask my opinions about anything. I'd be giving her all kinds of crazy-assed advice if She did.

Half Truths Availed Us Nothing

As I've previously blathered blogged, I've been doing this glucose monitoring test all week with the last reading being this morning at 2:15 a.m.

And boy, are my fingertips tired! (BA-DAH-BING!)

I mentioned, also, that the readings have all been quite within specs and reason. Yeah, well, I should elaborate on that.

You see, as a recovering alcoholic and, therefore a bald-faced, lying, conniving, dope-fiending, truth-twister, I may have gone out of my way all week to be on my VERY BEST BEHAVIOR, eating-wise, so that the readings would be well within specs when the time came to take them.

What I'm hoping is that the doctor, who knows I'm a recovering drunk, will take that into account when he looks at the numbers after I fax them to his office on Monday.

See, I've come a long way from the bad old days when, during my annual physicals when my doctor would ask if I drank and, cause I always answered yes to that, when he next asked me, "how much?" my stock response was the same stock response that every lying drunk gives...

"Oh.... a couple" (of quarts)

All doctors who treat active alcoholics (or even people whom they suspect are alcoholics) should automatically add in a "drunk factor" of at least 35-50% more than whatever the drunk/druggie as copped to.

Last week I avoided anything even faintly resembling a starch. No potatoes, no rice, no bread, mostly salads, soups, some fruit and some really lousy frozen TV dinners from Healthy Choice (sorry Healthy Choice, it's not your fault you don't make Hungry Man Dinners).

So when my doctor looks at the weeks numbers and sees that they "average" 100mg, he should probably see that as being more like 130-150mg, instead (which still ain't bad for an average that's fasting, pre and post meal, 1 hour prior to eating, bedtime and mid-sleep cycle.

Sigh. It's hard doing the right thing.

After all, I am an alcoholic.

And only human.
p.s. Go see "The Bourne Ultimatum." It's great and I'm in love with Matt Damon again.

Anonymity

Last February, at a huge get together of mostly family and many friends in honor of my sister and brother-in-law's anniversary, my sister inadvertently blurted out (via a Karaoke system) how proud she was of me, her brother, "the recovering alcoholic."

It's moments like that that make life worth living and sisters worth killing. But I forgave her. After all, heheheheheh, she was drunk at the time.

She's beaten herself up merciless since then over that little gaffe.

The subject came up again last week, when I was spending part of the week with my sister down at the Delaware shore. I am not anonymous about being a recovering alcoholic. I am, though, anonymous about my associations and associates. And that's for a very good reason.

Let's take, for example, someone like Lindsay Lohan. Clearly this young woman needs help, as evidenced by yet another arrest for drunk driving the other night. And she needs something a little more "hard-core" in the way of recovery than the "feel-good, easier, softer" way that they obviously taught her at Promises in Malibooboo.

Can you imagine what it would have been like if, for example, she'd been elected the national Celebrity Spokesperson for Recovery from Drug and Alcohol Addiction by any of the fine 12-Step Programs out there? Said program would've been ridiculed and scorned as a massive failure based SOLELY on the unfortunate circumstances of one individual.

Which is why ALL 12-Step Programs, in their Traditions, hold fast to the rule of Public Anonymity "at the level of Press, Radio and Film" (and tv, although they don't usually mention it). This is as much to protect the progams as it is to protect the people IN the programs.

"Anonymity is the spiritual foundation" of all 12-Step Programs, so the literature says, "ever reminding us to place principles before personalities."

There isn't a friend or relative left in my life who doesn't know I'm a recovering drunk. But I rarely, if ever, mention exactly WHERE I go to get sober.

That's the way it is, and that's the way it should be.

Trudging the Road of Happy Destiny

"High & Hard" Copyright © Austin Cline.

Today's poster is another fagulous creation of Austin Cline. Now THAT'S the Navy the way I wished it had been!

And speaking of wishful thinking, Spring has FINALLY sprung here in the Northeast (check out today's weather forecast for where I live and work, over there on the left). And it is WONDERFUL!

I have to share this little tidbit of wonderfulness. I wake at 4:45 a.m. and hit the shower by 5:10 (yeah, I'm that organized). There's a big window next to my bathtub/shower. And the birdies were in full song by the time I got in the shower this morning. It was glorious. I could hear the babies chirping out their insistence to be fed along with the parents singing loudly, trying to teach their youngsters their particular brand of birdsong. I revelled in it.

This is a far cry from 10 years ago, when I still lived on East 78th Street in Manhattan, and was skidding along near my alcoholic bottom. In those days, when I heard the "chirpers", I knew that I had blown through yet another night of alcoholic hell. That's when I'd think, "oh god... i've done it again" and I'd feel like shit. Monumental shit. The biggest piece of shit that ever walked the face of the earth. In fact, I was the ultimate piece of shit... at the center of the universe because, even at my bottom, it was still

all about me.

I hated the birds. I hated looking out the windows, overlooking 78th Street, and seeing all the "bright, shiny, people" on their way to wherever normal people went at that hour of the morning in Manhattan... probably to their jobs on the Today Show, or Good Morning America, or to their desks in the foreign exchange departments of Wall Street, to see what the European markets had done overnight.

And I'd take another pull off the bottle of scotch and pray that God would take pity on me and not let me wake up the next time I blacked out.

But of course God did take pity on me, much to my chagrin, and kept me alive.

And this morning, when the birds sang, I no longer wished I was dead. In fact I was very happy and grateful to be alive.

Alive enough to spend a glorious Spring Day just trudging the road of happy destiny.

Ain't it great to be alive?

Rainy Days and Sundays

"From God’s lips to His ears" Copyright © Austin Cline

Doesn't it seem like Dubya has always been President? I know it sure seems that way to me. Just like it seemed like Ronnie Rayguns had been President forever, too!

I'm sure it seems highly disrespective of me to refer to Ronnie that way but he was, after all, just an unemployed actor when he got the best gig of his career. I should know. I'm a card-carrying member of the Screen Actors Guild, too.

Just like the Governator.

And speaking of governors, I'd like to ask everyone out there who believes in such things, to put in a good word with the Deity of their choice on behalf of our New Jersey governor, Jon Corzine, who wasn't wearing his seat belt. I hope he's okay. And I hope they give his ass a ticket for $76.00 for not wearing his seat belt. Seventy-six bucks is nothing to Jon Corzine. When he got ousted as the Chairman of Goldman Sachs, he was a jillionaire. He still is.

On a totally different subject, I hope you all noticed a new design element in my website today. It's just over there on the left. I've added a feed from Accu-Weather. You can add one to your websites too. It's easy. Drop by the Accuweather website and check it out.

Weather has, obviously, been on my mind. Yesterday (Saturday) was beautiful here in New Jersey. So, naturally, I went to the movies, because I really like sitting alone in the dark for hours on end, stuffing my face with junk-food and mentally checking out of life. Particularly on a beautiful Spring day! I can't help it. It's the alcoholic in me.

Anyway, that was yesterday. Today we're in the midst of a monsoon here in glorious New Jersey, the Garden State. They're predicting that half the beaches will be gone by Monday. Not to worry! The Army Corps will be around to suck up half the ocean bed and redeposit it on the shore in plenty of time for the big Memorial Day kickoff to the summer season!

But it is pretty icky out and I'm seriously considering not going to my usual Sunday morning 12-Step meeting. Not that bad weather ever kept me indoors when I was drinking. Hell, I would've roller-skated over five miles of broken glass in the midst of a hurricane in order to have gotten a cocktail, way back when.


So I guess I'll go, after all. I suppose that going to the meeting, even if I don't feel like it, is kind of like putting on my "sober seatbelt." Sure, I might not need it, but why risk it?

Have a beautiful day, no matter what the weather is like wherever you are!

Je me souviens

"God is a Republican" © Austin Cline.

The title today means "I remember". It's the motto of the Canadian province of Quebec and you see it on license plates all over the east coast, usually at beach resorts up north in the summer and all over Florida in the winter.

It's alleged to be a truncated version of this, "Je me souviens que né sous le lys, je croîs sous la rose" ("I remember that born under the lily, I grew under the rose"), and it refers to the foundation of Quebec (and French Canada) under the French Kings, but how it actually flourished under the British Crown.

Some people think there's seperationist sentiment in it, which is actually not the case. In fact, it's a backhanded compliment to the English for introducing parliamentary democracy to Canada.

So much for the history lesson, but the real reason I introduced the topic today is because I've been thinking so much lately about how I was born one way, but have flourished in another.

I had to be dragged, kicking and screaming... well, more like bawling and shellshocked... into recovery. And as much as I might like to romanticize the past, the fact of the matter is, my life didn't really begin until I started getting sober. In that respect you could probably say I'm about 9 years old, in terms of my emotional and spiritual development.

Je me souviens. I remember. Another fact of my recovery is that I actually AM starting "to remember." Remember a lot of stuff that I totally ignored along the way. Looking back now, I can see, ever more clearly, just how far back into my past my alcoholism extends. Not the actual drinking (it turns out that drinking was the least of it), but in terms of my behaviors, attitudes and actions.

Look, all youth is wasted on the young, whether they're drunk or not. That's true. But not "all youths" ensure that they live "in the party house" so that they won't have to drive to the party house, do they? Nor do they "arrange" things so that they never have to bother with automobiles ever again. I did that. I always wondered why I wanted to live in big cities. I know now so that it was so I wouldn't have to drive while drunk. Oh, yeah, I kidded myself that it was because of the glamorous lifestyle or fabulous job opportunities (none of which I ever took advantage of, unless somebody kicked my ass into doing it, I might add), but those were never the "real" reasons.

I lived in big cities because a) the bars are open later and b) you don't have to drive to them.

I used to kid myself that I would go out on Saturday nights "looking for Mr. Right." Hell, Mr. Right could've been standing at the bar wearing a neon sign saying "HI RON, I'M IT!" and I would've knocked him over to get to the bartender!

Je me souviens. I remember. NOW. How it "really was" and not how I imagined it was.

And now that I finally start to really remember, my new mantra is:

"J'espère que je n'oublie jamais !"

I hope I never forget.

The Art of Compromise

"Take 'em out!" © Austin Cline.

I have an uncompromising view of life, and that's a real problem.

Life, like politics, is mostly the "art of the possible" meaning that we need the ability to adapt, bend and mold our attitudes, opinions and selves to suit current circumstances. We needn't be happy about it. In fact, we may even strive to change whatever circumstances we find ourselves in. But we do need the ability to, at least temporarily, "go with the flow."

I've always had a problem with this. I thought (and God only knows where I picked this up from!) that I was supposed to form ideas and opinions and, God help me and come what may, dammit, I was to hang onto them, right to the bitter end.

I used to refer to these thoughts and attitudes as "Ron's Rigid Rules." I guess I thought that because Holy Mother Church had rigid rules, it was okay for me to have them, too!

I can't begin to tell you the untold pain having all these "rigid rules" caused me over the decades. For example, Rigid Rule Number One was: "Never let anyone get too close to you because THEY'LL ONLY WIND UP HURTING YOU!" That was a good one. It prevented me, time and again, from telling people I genuinely had feelings for that I cared for them. I wonder, now, just how much happiness I let slip through my fingers over the decades because I was constitutionally incapable of bending the rules a little and taking a chance, by simply telling someone "I love you." GASP! What can of horrors would that have opened???!!! I can only imagine!!!

Rigid Rule Number Two was "Never Forgive, never Get Over." Or, as I've sometimes heard it called in 12-Step meetings, "Irish Alztheimer's - Forget Everything Except Your Resentments!" I carried grudges around since childhood and took them out and nursed them and showed them off to anybody who was stupid enough to sit still and listen to my self-pitying crap. "Oh, let me tell you about my horrible [childhood / 5th Grade Nun / botched dentistry in the Navy] / whatever..." Moving on was not a concept I'd learned at mommy's knee.

When, by sheer accident, I did find myself in relationships, despite my best efforts to the contrary, setting boundaries, telling the other person what I needed (and what I didn't need) and, well, striving to be a PARTNER in a relationship as opposed to being a needy child and/or doormat, things got even worse. I don't know what I expected, but it was probably for somebody to intuitively understand my every need and want WITH NO EXPLANATION FROM ME (they should be a mindreader and fortuneteller) AND to fulfill my every expectation.

In other words, Mommy.

It's said that an alcoholic is somebody who wants to be cradled, cuddled and cooed over... while they isolate and give nothing in return, which also happens to be the description of an infant.

Today I'm working on trying to grow up by trying to tell people what I want and need.

Today, I want a paycheck (and the payroll lady is here now! HOW'S THAT FOR SERVICE??)

It's a Long Way to Tipperary (and Sobriety)!

Poster: "Christian?" © Austin Cline

Somebody overturned an 18-wheel car carrier in the northbound lanes of the New Jersey Turnpike yesterday afternoon, thereby causing hours-long delays, northbound AND southbound for tens of thousands of motorists and commuters.

May whoever did it rot in Hell.

Okay, I don't really mean that. Look, I know that accidents happen. I even know that some nefarious, unseen, all-powerful force in the universe does not lie in wait for ME, does not pre-plan these catastrophes for the sole purpose of ruining MY evening and isn't deliberately trying to get ME drunk again.

Well, I know that intellectually. But deep down inside, on some gut level, I "feel" like all those things ARE true and that I am, magically, the only person being inconvenienced by something like that.

This is the alcoholic mind at work. Self-centered in the extreme. My default reaction to any situation is that it is "all about me!" Infantile pre-occupation with self. Something happens, early on, with us drunks. Maybe we get dropped on our heads. Maybe, at the age of six months, some well-meaning soul, just to shut us up, slips a couple of shots of whiskey into our bottles.

Or, maybe, we're just born this way.

I've worked pretty hard over the last nine years to delve into all these character defects of mine. I've looked at them "six-ways from Sunday." I think I have a real handle on a lot my "stuff" from why I seek out the sort of men I seek out, to why I distrust love in general.

But then something like this happens. Whether it's an accident on the turnpike, or pouring down rain, or the slow checkout line at the supermarket, I'll invariably think, "why do these things ALWAYS happen to ME??!!"

The honest answer is that these things happen... and I happen to be there at the time.

You should've seen me last night, at the back of my commuter bus. I would've looked "okay" on the outside, but inside I was a mess.

I wonder if any of the other 43,000 vehicles stuck in traffic had messes in them, too?

Glad to be Me!

I took Friday off. I had booked it off a while ago because an acquaintance of mine asked me to speak at a 12-Step meeting upstate at 7:00 a.m. on Saturday morning. That would've involved getting up at 5:15 or so to shower, shave, etc., and then driving 90 minutes to the sleepy little burg of Saddle River, NJ.

Instead, though, the guy who invited me to speak also threw in an invitation to come spend the night at the home of he and his partner, and they'd throw a little dinner party for me, too. They live in Saddle River, which is one of the ritziest areas of NJ. I couldn't wait to see how the upper crust really lives.

What they (and I) didn't bargain for was the slushie-storm from Hell that descended on the Northeast Thursday night and which lasted straight through Friday, well into the pre-dawn hours on Saturday.

So I found myself slogging up the NJTurnpike, mostly at 35 miles per hour, behind every wimpy driver on the East Coast. If you've ever checked out my personal data here, you're sure to have noticed that I'm leaning up against a Honda Element. What you can't tell from the photo, though, is that it has 4-wheel drive and that it's a stick (5-speed). A little nasty weather isn't going to slow me (or it) down.

However, a quarter of a million slow-moving vehicles will.

I left my house around 2:00 and FINALLY rolled into my destination in Saddle River around 5:00 p.m. After much dawdling, my host and I finally struck out for the supermarket around 6:00. I think we all arrived at the house around 7:00 p.m. Meanwhile somebody ran out to pick somebody else up and they didn't get back until around 8:00. Dinner, I think, was finally served around 10:00. This all seemed very "normal" to everybody else, so I didn't make a fuss about it. But between the pretentious conversation and Uber-Male posturing between two of the guys there (there were a total of 4 of us), I was worn out and thoroughly unimpressed with the whole evening, my hosts and the 4th guest.

I couldn't wait to get to bed, get up, get my commitment over with and to go home.

So that's exactly what I did.

After the commitment was over, around 8:30, I dug my car out and lit out for the Garden State Parkway. It was a slushy mess, but at least it was moving (at 70 mph). I got home around 11:00 a.m. The car is covered in dried salt and is probably rusting away, even as I type. With any luck it'll rain this week.

I've had better weekends. I've had worse. But I've learned two things.

1. I'm glad I'm single or, at the least, not hitched to some boringly pretentious queen.

2. Thank God I'm not rich, otherwise I'd have to spend all my time worrying about that, too.

I am truly grateful to be exactly who I am.

9 Years....

Exactly 9 years ago today I had, what I hope will be, my last drink of alcohol.

I've changed a lot in 9 years. All the resentment and bitterness of the past (well, mostly) is gone. I've grown up and accepted things. Not just about myself, but about others too. I've FINALLY gotten over my childhood (an alcoholic mom and grandmom, a non-existent father). I've "dropped a lot of rocks" as they say in the recovery business, about an ex-lover, about a science fiction writer, even about Sister Francesca who may have gotten a little over-eager in her vain attempts to get me to learn Algebra in the 9th grade, to which I may have over-reacted just a teensy-weensy bit.

It's funny, now, to look back and see how deluded (and so full of self-will) I was about so many things. We alkies are a strange bunch.

For example:

Non-addicts are perfectly capable of modifying their behavior in order to achieve their goals. Addicts, however, happily modify their goals in order to achieve their behavior.

Trust me, that short paragraph makes total sense to anybody with an addiction problem.

Yes, I've experienced a lot of growth in these last 9 years. My life has gotten better "beyond my wildest dreams". When I first came into recovery my secret goal was to stay sober long enough to pay off my debts (a whopping $18,000.00) and then to die, peacefully, in a year or so.

Thank goodness my Higher Power had other plans for me.

In year 4 of my recovery I had to confront and deal with my ACOA issues (adult children of alcoholics). I spent a week at the Caron Foundation in a program they have for people dealing with that. It was a wonderful experience. Yes, and scary too.

In year 6 of my recovery I got to walk through open heart surgery which didn't bother me in the least, but scared the crap out of my close friends in recovery (my sponsor and my home group). But they got to watch ME "walk through" the fear of it, and come out the other side. My courage in the face of that gave courage to OTHERS to face their own nameless fears regarding doctors and medicine. I know of at least two people (and there were probably more) who, thanks to me, made doctors appointments because their fears were lessened by my experience.

In year 7 I had more surgery. Bi-lateral endarectomies (they cut open the arteries in your neck and scrape out the congealed cholesterol). It wasn't pretty and now, close-up, I resemble Baron von Frankentstein's High School Science Project. But I got through it!

In year 8 they gave me diabetes (because otherwise it would've been a boring year).

The point is, by publicly dealing with all this stuff, I never know whom I was affecting. For decades I thought I lived in an isolated bubble, neither being affected by, nor having any affect on, others. I thought I didn't matter, that nobody cared, that my actions were lost and meaningless. It never occured to me that other people actually cared about me and had feelings that were often hurt by me. By sharing all of my feelings about my medical experiences in recovery with others in my circle of sober friends, it lessened their fears, too.

It also increased their love and compassion for me. And vice versa.

I know so much more now than I did 9 years ago. Sometimes I think I don't, but I do.

But what I know right now is, I'm really looking forward to staying sober...

Just for today.

(thank you, God!)