Second Day into the Year...

(The photo was taken yesterday on the campus where I work. I went into my office to get something and when I came back outside, I thought I could take some photos because it looked so pretty.)

I am madly preparing for an AA event to be held here at my house tonight. I am not mad, I am just working like mad. Happily working like mad. I guess I could say I am working like crazy, but I am not crazy either. So either way, I am just working a lot - not working my butt off either. I love to cook, I love to bake. I don't like to clean so much. People laugh when I say my house is a mess because it doesn't appear to be so, but I know it is. I know where there is dust - and quite a bit of it. And I know where things are hidden. Great quantities of things... like sacks of mail in my bedroom closet! Honestly, I get enough mail in one day to keep a recycling plant going. And this is AFTER I opt out of everything you can opt out of, including paper billing. So in December, I just didn't feel like dealing with every little piece of it, so I stashed it. I will deal with it later. But not today.

I love to have this event at my house. We answer the phones for the central office after hours. Usually in January there are a few calls. I hope there will be tonight. We get to visit and get a chance to know one another better, we get a chance to eat some good food, and we get a chance to help a still suffering alcoholic - or two, or three. It is a wonderful way to spend a Saturday evening.

I am so grateful to be a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. How ironic it is that AA looks like the least appealing option when drinking becomes impossible - and yet, for me, and so many others, AA works and becomes something so much more than just a way to quit drinking. Yes, AA gave me the way to quit drinking, but it gave me so much more. I truly love my friends in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. To see them scattered all around my home is a pleasure that is indescribable.

"Many an alcoholic who entered there came away with an answer. He succumbed to that gay crowd inside, who laughed at their own misfortunes and understood his." -- Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 160.