Nor'Easter Coming

We all get ready in our own way. It struck me this morning that even though I always go to the market on Saturdays, it will be filled with peeps buying up all things possible to get ready for the snow storm this weekend. Ugliness to be avoided!

Really, really, really, if power and roads are a no go, it is usually less than 8 hours before we are all back to normal. So, I got home from the morning meeting and took an inventory of my wares, channelled a little AKAnnie (ahoy, Elegant Blessings blog) and commenced baking/cooking etc. In my experience, I like to be power-less with floors vaccumed, clothing washed, my body shower-fresh and wood stacked next to the woodstove.

I've got an extra dog this weekend to keep me warm. He's a 13 year old named Andy and barks when he wants something, sort of like an alcoholic. He is a city boy, needs close supervision, that one. Picture an armadillo crossed with a grizzly bear cub and that's our boy.

Keeping city kids off the road, that's what's good about today.

I Am the Wax, I Am the Scuff, I Am the Answer, I Am the Question

Waxing philosophical again, what if the source running through me, that spark of divinity is really a river, common with the vortex of all things which flow through us, a sort of cosmic DNA that informs me I am all things at once. No separations. I am the victim, I am the thief, I am the sacred and I am the profane. The desolate, the hope, the problem, the solution, the meal, the hunger, the space and the thought that fills it.

Takes the burden off me. All I have to do is stay chemically sober and keep my home group supplied with coffee.

That's what's good about today, y'all.

A Bunch of Ants on the Anthill

Had I gotten a chance to talk in the group the other morning, I would have chimed in to talk about death, because, guess what, an alcoholic died.

I talk to dead people a lot. My father and my sister are deceased but quite nearby, I check in with them often, never at any length, just a nod of acknowledgement between us. At work I meet a lot of people, many who will be gone in a few weeks, months. Staff continues to be surprised by that, lots of drama.

A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore treats the subject lightly, I think there is mention of the cosmic force setting someone down for a nap. Not everyone is ready for a nap. Who knows what vortex we enter next.

Probably none of us were ready to be born. Just think of it, utterly secure in our own womb, thinking we know what's what, our lifeblood pumping in through our cord, a roof over our head. Then out we blast into the harsh light and caca-phony of noise and that vacuous stuff called air.

Life is a series of rude interruptions.

You Fall Down, You Get Up, You Fall Down, You Get Up

It's hard to say whether one is getting in or getting out, sliding downward or just coasting, going upward or headed for a fall.

I finished Sugar Nation last week in which the author relates that his labs were only normal as they passed from high to low and back again.

Siddhartha left a life of opulence for a life of renunciation and then left that daily grain of rice diet to come back to a comfortable middle way of life. Neither he nor anyone else pronounced him to be a failure. They spoke of him as Buddha.

Ten Years in 12 Step=Ten Years of Prayer

You have to have a bad day or you never realize that you're having a good one. My blog title was a random thought I had during my morning meeting, just thought I would share it. Don't know where I'm going with it, I am composing a spiritual autobiography for my class so was glad for the thought.

I felt normal today and that was very wonderful, like a new lease on life. I guess I am getting old and maybe the 'sugar crash' isn't the myth that I thought it was!

Even sugar has turned against me. Oh well, there's still . . .

Let me know what your preferred substitute would be!

Small Talk Might Kill Me or Maybe It Was the Sugar

Now this is low on the list of important things but I have to tell you what happened yesterday afternoon.

I was at a friendly, sedate (I don't think anyone slipped me a micky) anniversary party for a couple women that I know. There was a baker's dozen or more of us hanging out for about 6 hours. All of a sudden I realized that I had 'lost' a couple hours, could be that as more people arrived, the time went faster? Then I drove home with much difficulty. I could hardly stay awake, had trouble staying between the lines--this was all of 7:30pm and I had nothing chemical of any sort in me.

Any ideas?

Just a Girl

Being a 54 year old means that I do not look like a girl at all but as the tasks of middle age drift away from me I feel more like a girl than I have for some time. It's more precise to say that I'm living like a girl, I go to work (school) Monday through Friday and engage my above the neck apparatus to get good accounting rates (grades). I spend time cleaning & decorating my house (room), trying not to eat too many cookies and am innocent of alcohol and other mood altering substances.

I'm not dating anyone or even eyeing anyone on my radar. For the first time in decades, I have some favorite TV shows and almost know what day and time that they are scheduled. I go to church services and adult education (Sunday school) to a place recommended by others (Chrissy Tyson's grandmother would pick me up along with some other neighbor kids). My son (another kid) lives with me but we tool along in our individual fashions (parallel play, identifiable at the toddler stage).

My mother once complained that I was not a source of neighborhood information. I'm still not, just a nodding acquaintance, happy to be at an arms length away from confidences. It's true that I now worry about whether my roof will hold up or whether my son will get his life together. But at my best, my head is where my feet are and I trudge along the road (to happy destiny), just like the girl that I've always been.

Shucky Durn, Lost My Post

Here's the short version . . .

I love you bloggers, today I want to particularly love on Comfort Spiral by Cloudia and Elegant Blessings by AKAnnie. I would most like to travel to visit with Cloudia and then come home to be Annie's neighbor (think artisan bread and soup, oohhh the soups) and Nano buddy.

What's good about today is that I have what I need. I can be the change that I want in the world. I can make my own artisan bread even AND share it with my neighbor. Because it is in the giving that we receive. Thank you God.

Identification, Not Comparison

But before I get into that, an update on yesterday's blog.

Having gotten a full nights sleep and a day of perspective, I will continue with my Ed. for Lay Ministry Group. Over the summer I had forgotten how noisy, close and annoying it is and after a busy day, I can barely tolerate it. That said, I have to work on my expectations and lower them. I give that course too much attention in my head, I pledge to not take it so seriously and treat it as just a few hours out of the week and that's that. I do about 3 hours of homework a week, show up for 3 hours. And call it done. There. Done.

Everyone in a 12 step meeting has heard the advice, 'identify with others, don't compare'. Yesterday morning I had an important identification. To back up a little bit, I've been going to this open AA meeting for the past 3.8 (I count things for a living) years because I identify with the thinking part of the disease. The static in the attic, the problem between my ears.

Now that I view myself as a controlled drinker rather than a cautious drinker, I identify myself as Carol, Alcoholic, in that meeting. But I've had a hard time identifying with the chemical use of others because I feel like I'm crying over my skinned knee in comparison (there's that troublesome word) to an other's broken leg. Who has not heard the statement, ' I am a REAL alcoholic'?

So, yesterday I got my identification. A man was talking about coming home from work and having a drink that lead to another drink and another. Another wasted night. I, too, would sometimes come home and have a drink. And sometime in the past year, I started putting off the drink because I had become AWARE that after that drink, nothing else was going to happen. I wasn't going to get up off the couch and sweep the floor (provide myself with a pleasant environment). I wasn't going to (nurture my relationships) connect with someone by calling a friend. I certainly wasn't going to take a walk (stimulate my senses or play) or a drive. In short, I wasn't going to do the things that provide for my emotional well being.

Wasted evenings. It doesn't matter whether the quantity or type of substance makes one lethargic, a little drunk, stumbling drunk or wheeled out on a gurney drunk, the point is that it keeps you in a holding pattern, at best. One evening after another because you can't see what is happening.

Getting up off the couch is what's good about today! Ninety five days free of a drink and a drug is what's good about today. Celebrating my father's birthday fifteen years after his untimely death, another controlled drinker, that's what's good about today. Maybe more about him and identification tomorrow.