These things I know...

Some October days in Colorado are as good as it is ever going to get. And this is one of those. I sat on my deck and shot photos of the sky above as the breeze came up and blew leaves off the aspen trees. By the time I was done, I was covered with aspen leaves. The aspen trees were good enough to change colors this year. The huge ash tree in my front yard did not change colors, the leaves just died and dropped off when it got so cold earlier this month.

Ed G. was nice enough to ask me to speak at a meeting last night. It was wonderful to meet him and his wife. It was good to see a huge room full of alcoholics, and particularly good to see that a lot of them were very young and enthusiastic about sobriety. They were very, very kind to me.

I know that I can't find my way out of a paperbag driving at night. Last night after the meeting I ended up hopelessly lost, stuck in after-college-football-game-drunken-traffic for an hour in this town with which I am unfamiliar. I kept thinking about a time in my early sobriety.... I was going to some wacky cosmic-cookie thing at some church in this same town (I was kind of a cosmic-cookie kind of gal back then), so I just drove to the town, sure that I would just drive to the right place, and I did. Well, that was then, and this is now. And now, twenty-five years later, I can no longer find anything. These recent couple of misadventures with getting lost are the first time I have really felt elderly. I am certain that a navigation system is in my future because this is not something I enjoy or think is necessary.

I had planned to run today, but decided that I need to be flexible and scratch that plan. I got only a couple of hours of sleep because I had to be at church this morning very early for something I committed to do. I am glad I did that, but I am not in any condition to go out and run. I am going to chill and knit today. And enjoy myself.

I will make phone calls between football games.

You know, this has been such a full weekend. I would have to write so much to even cover a fraction of it and I know I probably try your patience already, so I won't do that. But I want to say that the few moments I have had this weekend to talk eyeball to eyeball with other drunks have been the highlights. I have had more than one opportunity to do that.

What a blessing we are given in Alcoholics Anonymous. Even if we have been sober for one day, we have the opportunity to share that 24 hours of experience with someone else who despairs of ever being able to go a day without a drink.