Buffalo Burger, fries, onion rings, and a salad

I had the best lunch today! I split all of the above with a co-worker. It is nice to be able to go out for lunch. In my housewife years, I think going out for lunch was the thing I missed most about working.

Being sober and being actively involved in life is so good.

Better Now

Thanks for the nice comments. I appreciate it. I just met with my sponsee and we went through the tenth and eleventh steps. I am reminded that life is life and all is good. Even when things seem to be out of place, they really fit into a mosaic that I can't quite see yet.

I sat at my desk today and realized that I love my job. Wacky thought. I love my job. I am doing stuff I always dreamed of doing. Why don't I sit around and be grateful for that everyday? I am tired. I work with some true jackasses. However, I love my job and I am doing what I always wanted to do. How much better can you get than that?

Thanks to all you sober people. I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am grateful for all you sober bloggers as well as my other friends.

Super Size Cat

is sitting on my lap, making it very difficult to hit the keyboard accurately. She really is a large cat. Her name is Minerva.

A Monday morning in late January. It is 5:25 a.m., and I better get a move on. I need to be at work by 7:00 a.m. I don't like this. The alarm woke me up at 4:35 a.m. I don't like the alarm waking me up. Normally I wake up when my own natural internal alarm clock tells me to. And I like that a lot. But right now I need to be at work by 7 a.m. on both Mondays and Tuesdays until an event occurs that we do not know when will be. I don't like this.

In my personal life: waiting to find out when Eddie's funeral is. Planning a going away party for my sponsor. Getting ready for my son to leave for Iraq. Thank God for AA and the wonderful fellowship. I could not get through any of this alone.

Saturday Morning Meeting

I went to my old home group this morning. It was also Eddie's home group. There was a lot of crying going on there this morning, and there was a lot of hugging and a lot of us telling each other "I love you"- because we do - and we don't say it often enough.

It was Elmer's 22nd birthday and Harold's 16th. Thank God it was a birthday meeting. It was so affirming to me to sit next to Elmer and not only remember all the years we have been sober, but to joyfully look forward to more years. I am so grateful to be alive and sober. I am so very grateful for the friends I do have left.

I am so grateful for the people who just show up and stay sober year after year. If you are one of them, please accept my heartfelt thanks. If you are becoming one of those, please keep at it. It is worth it. It is life and it is good - no matter what happens.

My friend Eddie

killed himself yesterday. Oh man, those words even look ugly. I have known Eddie since I got sober. He was 50 years old, but to me, Eddie will always be the 20 something guy I knew back then. He was terminally ill. I could speculate about all the things that led to this, but I can't fathom the fact that Eddie - so much a part of the fabric of my life - is gone.

My sponsor said she would come over and just sit with me and I just might let her.

Friday Morning

I believe I am not going to work today. I had a headache yesterday and I still have it today. I have felt like I am coming down with something for a couple of weeks, but have been sucessful at fighting it. Or maybe I am just too tired and that is why I don't feel particularly well. I just checked my PDA to make sure I don't have any appointments I have forgotten about. I don't. *I have found that it is very difficult for many recovering alcoholics to call in sick to work. It is for me. I hate to call. I can be at death's door, but I feel like I am lying when I am dialing the phone. This is because of my history of being drunk or hung over and calling work and making up some b.s. that I think they will believe.

Yesterday I checked the website for the August triathlon I am so looking forward to. When I saw that registration is open, I cried from joy! This has felt like the longest winter of my life, and just having something to look forward to is wonderful. I set a picture of the race from last year as my desktop at work. It is a photo of the sun coming up over the swim finish line. Both of my twin daughters say they will do the race with me this year. One of them did it last year. The other one came to watch and decided she wants to do it too. This is very exciting. I am so grateful that I can do this and that my daughters can do it with me.

I am also grateful that I didn't write a book full of lies that has me in disgrace... with millions of dollars as a consolation prize.

reAAding

My father's 12 & 12 (seventh printing, 1965).
See the other folks at HNT

60 degrees

I will write what is good:
It is supposed to get into the 60s this afternoon.
The sun is shining now.
I love Diet Pepsi and have a freshly cracked open 20 oz. bottle in front of me.
I am going out for Vietnamese for lunch today.
I love Vietnamese food.
I have a nice friend I am dining with at lunch today.
My daughter is on her way to visit me at my office.
I love my daughter and I am so grateful for such a wonderful young woman in my life.
I am going to write a newletter today and I really like doing that.
Another friend at work gave me a small bottle of Clinique "happy to be" today.
I collect small bottles of perfume and cologne and they make me smile :)
I got a new sports bra yesterday - it is pink and it was great when I ran today.
I can run again.
I am sober and have been for 21 years, six months, and one day.

Thank you God.

Tuesday AM

"...the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill."

Not them. Me.

I sat on my sofa last night and just cried. My cat was nuzzling on my ears, my hair, my face - she had never seen me like this before.

Thank God for Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank God for the fellowship, and the program, and the way of life that will not allow me to stay in resentment. Also, thank God for my fellows at work. I have some very good friends there. I have an ongoing problem with one of my co-workers and it really flared up yesterday. I usually look at her as a thorn in my side that makes me stay vigilant in my program, my prayer life, and my constant guarding against having resentment. Yesterday that all flew out the window.

God Please Be With Me Today. "Grant me strength, as I go out from here, to do your bidding."

Back to Work

Monday Morning. It is cold outside. My beloved Broncos lost yesterday. I have back to back meetings all day today. I need to get excited about the day but I am not there yet.

I have been re-reading something I read the other day in my morning reading. I wish I could tattoo it on my heart.

The saints are what they are, not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else. It gives them a clarity of compassion that can find good in the most terrible criminals. It delivers them from the burden of judging others, condemning other men. It teaches them to bring the good out of others by compassion, mercy and pardon. A man becomes a saint not by conviction that he is better than sinners but by the realization that he is one of them, and that all together need the mercy of God!

Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, p. 57

Orange Cheesecake

I made 6 little orange cheesecakes for the game today. I will make blueberry sauce for them later. They are not orange flavored, just colored. I am going to my sponsee's to watch the game. They have a huge plasma TV, this should be fun. I guess it is a good thing I am not a Raiders fan... imagine a black and silver cheesecake (orange and blue is bad enough!)

The book game: I am absolutely the lamest. But I am not cheating.

Here are the rules:
1. Grab the nearest book
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence
4. Post the text of the next 3 sentences (#5,6,7) on your blog, along with these instructions.
5. Don't you dare dig for that "cool" or "intellectual" book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it. Just grab what is closest. No cheating.

"of the 10 conditions...the 5th condition
5 and 13 lines
in the 2nd and 11th grades...the 2nd-grade students"

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association

saturday morning meeting

I went to a meeeting this morning and then to the gym. I found out one of our members is in ICU and will most likely not leave there. Barbara has lung cancer. A bunch of us women stood around and cried and hugged each other after the meeting. I am astounded by the courage of sober women. She has suited up and shown up for a while. Without hair. With scarves and hats and wigs and sick as shit. God Bless Her. We not only teach each other how to live, we also teach each other how to die.

I made a page of 88 or more things about me last night. If you have a second, go have a look.

Barbeque Anyone?

This is after a whole day of melting. We got a LOT of snow!

Friday Night!

I have always liked Friday night the very best. When I was a kid, it was a time to have or go to a sleepover with friends. When I started drinking, it was the best night for drinking. When I started going to bars, it was absolutely the most exciting night to be at the bar. After I got sober, it was the best meeting night. I got sober at a group in a club, the club had dances every friday and saturday nights. I loved friday night meetings followed by friday night dances. Oh, the times we had!

My old home group's friday night meeting is now a mere smokey shadow of what it once was, so I don't go. I am now older and by friday night, I am dead on my feet, so I love to stay at home. I usually get to a meeting on saturday at 6:30 a.m.

This week I have reflected a lot on what an old boyfriend (AA member) used to say - something like "in the end, all you have are your memories, make sure they are good ones."

I have some wonderful, wonderful memories of my sober life. Thank you God!

Home Group in the snow

We must have gotten 8 inches of snow today. It is still snowing. The roads are a disaster. My home group is only a mile from my house, so I ventured out. I am so glad I did.

There were only 8 people there. It was such a good meeting. We talked about going to any length to stay sober.

I have been awake since 1:00 a.m., if I had more energy, I would take pictures. It is so pretty. I left a string of Christmas lights on my front porch and have them lit up tonight. They look wonderful.

More tomorrow. And Thanks so much for embracing me into this sober blogging community. It is really a wonderful thing. I am blown away by the creativity of the HNT posts.

Going to Spinning Class

I am off to spinning class.

Wednesday Morning

I almost removed my post from last night. If my daughters read it they would say
"Bitter, party of one..."

I just got home from the gym where I ran into my favorite personal trainer man. We had a nice chat. He was wondering where I have been, I told him about my broken rib, and we talked about that. He told me to come to the spinning class tomorrow and we will talk about getting me back in shape. It was so nice to see him.

Life is good. Sobriety is the most incredible thing in the universe. I am so grateful to be a fully alive sober woman - fully participating in life. That is a miracle.

Ominous Cloud

I just spoke with my drunken former boyfriend on the phone. Then I looked out the window and saw that dark, dark, cloud outside. It seemed so appropriate.

He was crying. He said the worst thing that could happen had just happened. Well, in my world, the worst thing that could happen would be that a loved one died. I got so scared as I listened to him sob. I thought that it must be one of his kids... his dad is so old that I couldn't imagine him carrying on so.

Then he told me that he can't live in the house that he just bought because of his DUI convictions. Apparently the community association has rules - or something - that prohibits a convicted felon from living there.

Well, a kind person might have commiserated with him. A kind person might have sympathized. But he didn't call a kind person, he called me. And when he asked me what I would do I told him what I wouldn't do. "I wouldn't get fucking drunk and cry like a baby." And I went on to tell him that he scared the crap out of me - I thought someone died.

He hung up on me. Thank God.

More Thomas Merton

"If you go into the desert merely to get away from people you dislike, you will find neither peace nor solitude; you will only isolate yourself with a tribe of devils."

Snow Day

This is what I woke up to this morning... first of all, when I woke up it was light out which is a freak occurrence in itself. Then the snow. It is pretty. It is cold. It looks slippery. I want to stay in bed. But I must go to the gym and run. Going to the gym in January is a very frightening thing... I seldom do it. But the sidewalks are covered in snow, so I am not going to risk running outside. After all the football games, all the sitting around, and all the eating this weekend, I MUST get some high quality calorie burnage this morning.

Quick list: I am grateful that Ron is doing better. He was sitting in a chair last night when I talked to him. I am grateful that my kids came over and spent the day with me yesterday while we watched football games. I am grateful that this is my fourth day off work. I can go back rested and refreshed tomorrow.