Last Day of 2008

I love this shirt I got at the Houston Roundup. It is my favorite color! And it says SOBER on the back! I wear it to bed every night and it carries such wonderful memories of a wonderful weekend and some wonderful friends in Houston, TX.

I have since 2005 written a year end wrap-up here on my blog. I don't want to do that today. I could recap the deaths, the painful drama in the family, the athletic events, and the grueling training. It seems symmetrical to end the year this way. Start the year with a plan and end the year with an evaluation. I guess I did what I planned in 2008. It was good. Here is what is important to me: I started the year sober and ended the year sober, and didn't have a drink in between.

I met my new sponsee at the 5:30 meeting last night. It was insane. I was reminded of why I stopped going there. There was a drunk woman in the corner who did a running commentary throughout the meeting and talked several times for maybe a total of 15 minutes. Incoherent crying about how she needs to get sober. Someone finally told her that she got to talk once and didn't get to keep talking through the meeting. Another man pounded on the table and cussed about this. Then an elderly man started reading something -and God bless the chair of the meeting - he kindly but firmly told the man that we don't read anything that is not conference approved at that meeting. The elderly man didn't take kindly to that and started arguing with the chair. Then the angry man who had earlier pounded on the table, pounded on the table again and started swearing. He got up and threw his bottle of pop into the trash (from a distance, making a loud noise) and left the meeting, slamming the door. Oh, and then the crying drunk woman? She decided to leave the meeting - and 3 men followed her. Oh, and then another woman piped up and told the group that some people were allowed to cross talk and some weren't and she would talk when she wanted and "if you don't like it you can all get f****d." Charming.

Oh, there was a time when I would have loved this meeting! And there was a time when I would have felt that God had personally called me to infiltrate this group to provide some "stability" and maybe start talking about the Traditions.

But as it was, after the meeting, I walked to the front of the room and thanked the man who had chaired the meeting. He tried, he really did. He did as good a job as he could. I sat with my sponsee and told her about the First Tradition, and that our personal recovery depends on AA unity. That we cannot afford to disrupt the unity of the group. I told my new sponsee that we would need to find a different place to meet because I am not going to go to that group anymore.

But today I am going to call my sponsor and talk to her about this. Because there is a part of me who has a sickening feeling that there are probably groups like this in every city. Groups with a bunch of newbies and a few sober people who get some perverted sense of superiority by attending groups like this and letting the chaos continue. If the sober people would go to these groups, the nonsense would end - eventually. There will always be crazy stuff happening in AA meetings as long as drunks show up, but there should be enough women and men sprinkled about the room with strong sobriety to calmly put out the fires.

So, that is what I am pondering this morning. I am looking forward to a quiet day at work. I will do my grocery shopping at lunch today.

And tomorrow? I will have a house full of family! Oh, I cannot wait! I will have pies to bake and potatoes to peel and a ham to bake, etc., etc., etc.....

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Isn't this great? Scott just sent me this "fixed" photo - entitled "Rebos to Sober." I think these two photos look like my sober bookends on the year.

Love you all.

XXXOOO