Jump and Then Build Wings

When One Door Closes, Another Door Opens

2012-01-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

Sedona

It probably started the day before yesterday, knowing the time was getting down to the wire, preparing my son to be taken to the airport. I helped him by laundering his clothes. It’s a favorite mindless chore I do. Washing clothes, transferring them to the dryer, folding them while watching TV, putting everything away in it’s proper place. There’s not much to think about there.

He was sick all the way to the airport. He hates traveling and the thought of the ordeal ahead I think turned his stomach. By the time we pulled into the airport parking garage he was throwing up outside at the front of the car.

There was nothing I could do for him, except offer him my 7-up. I can help in small ways but I cannot take his anxiety away. We talked about it and he told me how he would cut the trip up into small segments. Find his flight. Get on the plane. Stop for a layover. Get on the next plane. I told him how smart he was to do that.

I asked him if he wanted me to go the ticket counter with him. He said that he did. Relieved that he’d let me spend as much of my last minutes with him as I could, I did not want to encroach on his abilities to find his way by himself if that’s what he wanted. I walked him as far as I could to the departing gate. My chest constricting as I felt like my heart was being ripped from the inside.

“Every time you go away, you take a piece of me with you.” Paul Young’s song kept swirling around my head. It’s just how I felt.

To offset what I knew I would face entering my empty home, I stopped at the grocery store. It gave me just enough time to not be alone, getting back from my drive to Phoenix in time to put away my purchases and then make it to my 3 p.m. Al-Anon meeting.

My ex-husband texted me, asking if I was alright. He knows. He goes through this too every time his children leave him and it was so considerate of him to remember me that I cried.

The topic of the Al-Anon meeting was on boundaries. It was a great meeting for me to attend, not only because I got to be in the presence of my friends, a group of people who embrace me as a part of this group, but because in listening to other’s share their experience I get to remember what boundaries mean. I live in the circle of my life and allow others to live in the circle of theirs. I shared about letting my son go. He has his life and I’m sure he was eager to get back to it.

When I got home I started the washer and dryer again. This time I broke down his bed and washed all the bedding. Bringing up boxes from the basement I packed the rest of his clothes that I will send to him. Christmas was good so he used up most of the room in his one suitcase. I boxed up all the extra bedding I have for the spare bedroom. I won’t need it when I move. Another family may enjoy all the moon and stars I’d used to decorate it. Besides, it’s time for a change.

I am keeping one small 4x4 inch picture that will remind me when my children where small and they lived within my world. Now they reach for their own moon and stars, they navigate their own worlds, and within my own boundaries I let them.

Today I woke up feeling much better, like everything is just the way it is suppose to be. I am alright as I course my path through all of life’s changes. The day before yesterday Grand Canyon Guy (see story here) called me, as he does from time to time, but this time the phone call was different.

You may remember we had sort-of-a-thing once. I met him in an Al-Anon meeting a couple of years ago when he used to winter here from his home in Iowa. We spent the entire season together, showing him places he‘d never seen, taking many pictures together. I really like him, I mean, I like who he is. He’s always been a good friend.

I think he asked me to move to Iowa, or at least he offered me a place to live there. I think in previous conversations he had hinted at this by mentioning the number of casinos in his area, but I wasn’t listening. I don’t know if I’m listening now, but I’m willing to consider…

When one door closes, another door opens.

I turned the conversation in this direction: I asked him when he would be back for a visit again. Perhaps, he said, he would consider a trip soon. “I think I’ll find a place in Sedona this time since we liked it there so much before.”

We did spend a lot of time taking pictures in Sedona.

Every day matters

After The Holidays Blues

2012-01-09T15:11:00.000-08:00

It’s mostly cloudy over the little city that I live in today. Such is the way I awoke this morning. I can’t readily describe to you the feelings I am feelings as they are a mixture of something old and something new.

Old are the familiar feelings of loss and grief as I’m considering the text message I received from my son’s father asking what time the boy is going to arrive back in Wisconsin on Wednesday. I have so enjoyed his being here.

Familiar too are the feelings of loss and grief as I finish boxing up the basement. Yes, there were many things to go through which brought back memories of those times when I wore and lost that one earring. I could not throw it away incase I found the other. I let it go now. Years later, there is no hope of finding it.

All of the junk that I needed to let go of was promptly thrown into the dumpster. More boxes are packed into the back of my car to be taken for donation. Still there is one box, the years of accumulated Christmas ornaments, that seem to be causing me the most resistance. I don’t really understand why. I haven’t used them in years, nor have I wanted to.

There is fear today. Fear of being alone. Fear of trying something new. Fear that it won’t work out. Fear that something will dreadfully go wrong. Fear that I won’t be able to fix it. Fear for the future.

Yet, behind all these clouds that cover the view I know the blue sky still exists. What I’m feeling today are only feelings. Thank God I am human and alive, awake in a colorful emotional environment. I know that these sometimes dark and obscure clouds pass through my sky, they never stay, and never once has God deserted me.

Mixed in with fear and loss and grieving are also feelings of hope and encouragement. Things are changing. They always do. There are dreams on the horizon that I get to walk toward and I think these ideals are good. The more “things” that I let go of the freer I become, but it’s like giving birth. It hurts a little.

I’m past the days when I made Christmas for little children. My children are not little anymore. They move on into their own lives and I have to let them go. It’s like giving birth again, and it hurts a little.

As my holiday closes with the departure of my son, as the boxes get sealed shut and Happy New Year wishes fade to yesterday’s remembrances, I move into the reality of this new year. Not resting on my laurels, not holding on to what was, I see it’s a day where more work needs to get done so I move toward doing it.

I’m not forgetting to take care of myself today. It’s an important thing for me to remember. To me it means to be gentle with myself. I’m taking some time to watch clouds go by, and I’m aware of the mental lists I’m planning for the upcoming week's things to do, but realizing, more than anything: I can make the best of this day only.

Every day matters.

Mortar That Holds Us: or 7 Things

2012-01-06T15:46:00.000-08:00

You never know what little bundle of encouragements artists carry around with them, what little pats on the back from what hands, what newspaper clipping, what word of hope from what teacher. I suppose that the so-called faith in ourselves is the foundation of our talent, but I am sure these encouragements are the mortar that hold it together. ~ Luciano Pavarotti

Hurt by others. Hurt by myself. Hurting others. My world was such a revolving swirl of hurt that there was nowhere else to run to except behind a gray cold wall to escape. I made a room of nothing. Nothing could get in. Nothing would get out. Nothing should ever touch me again.

I grew into self-doubt and loathing. Little by little, my heart became hardened and disconnected. It’s just not that way anymore. You helped me to see.

However you believe God created the world, I believe this: That when God created His greatest gift, He wondered where to hide it so that it would not be misused or abused. Would He place it at the top of the highest mountain or bury it at the bottom of the deepest sea? Could He entomb it deep within the core of the planet, or encase it in the thickest forest?

After much pondering He decided. The safest place where few would look would be inside the human being.

Ahhhh, you discovered the secret, didn’t you? You showed me where to look.

7 obscure facts about myself:

1) I won my first art award in the fourth grade, and I still carry that accomplishment in my heart as a sign of who I am destined to be.

2) When I was the age of 15 my sister, who shared a bedroom with me, woke up one night to find an angel dressed in a brilliant blue dress standing over my bed. This I consider to be the reason why I survived my disease and I acknowledge that we all are surrounded by angels.

3) At the age of 18 I named my daughter. When I was 20 years old doctors told me I would never conceive. Infertility runs in my family. My biological brothers never had their own children. Therefore I’ve never used birth control.

4) At the age of 30 and 33 I gave birth to a girl and a boy, both home birthed in their bedrooms with the assistance of a midwife. I endured the shortest labor ever, three and a half hours. I named my daughter the same name I desired for her when I was 18. In Hebrew her name means “Source of Joy”. These children I consider to be my greatest gift from God.

5) My favorite color is purple, blue purple, not red purple. Purple in an artist’s dictionary depicts the color of royalty, and signifies great self esteem, which I only wish I had. I’m also partial to dusty rose. I can never wear yellow because it makes me look I have hepatitis.

6) I had my first ear surgery when I was 10. I’ve had consecutive surgeries since then. I don’t hear very well out of my left ear, and have learned to compensate by reading lips. Don’t talk about me at a distance. I’ll know what you are saying.

7) I’ve had three cats in a row named Amos. I love that name for a cat but have since let that go.

Love is the treasure that we carry. You taught me that we get to have love by giving it away. In sharing it with other living beings we open up the lifeline that connects us to others, that links us to ourselves, that bonds us to God.

Let me love you until you can love yourself, you said. And you did.

Which is why I appreciate this gift from Syd, and am grateful for all the others who have shared this “award” too. It’s an award of love and I accept it from the depth of my heart, and pass it on to my new friend Jay at Jay’s Day That Was, my longer time friend Grace at Letting Go-Finding Hope Through Al-Anon, and to my interesting friend “Herself” at Bona Vacantia, The Musings of a Lurcher.

“He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him In!”
From the poem " Outwitted” ― Edwin Markham

Every day matters.

Personal Inventory

2012-01-04T08:50:00.001-08:00

Thoughts can be a powerful tool to sway my actions one way or the other. Negative thoughts will bind my actions; physically, emotionally, and spiritually, so I endeavor to ask God to change those thoughts to the positive.

The overwhelming aspects of going through my basement, sorting through my belongings which I have not seen in years, would have, could have caused me to stop in my tracks of procrastination, yet I did not let it.

I chose to look at this task differently.

First of all, this job did not have to be done all at once. Small attempts can lead to big accomplishments.

I did not have to dive into the basement by myself. My son is still here, and in an attempt to spend more time together I asked for his help. I’m grateful that he agreed, and what a great help he was to me.

Dividing what was down there into four piles; trash, donate, keep, and consider at another time, he helped me identify what should go where. He took out the trash. He helped me box up the donate.

In one of the boxes I found a long lost possession that I have been in search of for a very long time. I found an envelope containing vital paperwork, such as my original birth certificate, and all the documents from years of education. I was filled with such relief.

Encouraged by finding lost treasure, I’m ready to move on. We accomplished cleaning out half the basement yesterday. Today, together, my son and I will tackle the other half. I’m looking forward to finding out more about what is important to my life, and what can be given away. Many things, I’m sure, will be discarded.

Such an inventory can be cleansing in learning what I truly need in my life, and what can be let go. I have things in hiding that I’ve never used that might benefit someone else, and most of what I’ve been hording for so long can be discarded.

Going through my stuff is like going through my heart and soul. The more I discover the more I get to learn about myself. It’s pretty much like the moral inventory we take in clearing out the wreckage of our past and learning what we like about ourselves that we want to keep and nurture.

All those old magazines that I thought I would re-read someday, but never did: gone. All those size 9 clothes that I thought I would fit into again: gone. All those computer cords to connections that don’t even exist anymore: gone.

Family photo albums that I now want to scan into preservation onto a hard disk: priceless.

I'm the tallest on the right, 2nd Grade, the rest are my siblings.

Every day matters.

New View for 2012

2012-01-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

“The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical.”

~ Albert Einstein.

View from my new bedroom window.

I believe it’s true when they say: The universe has no limits.

I had no fear when I received word on New Years Eve that my hours at work would be cut drastically over the next couple of months. It’s rather expected as business slows down after the holidays. This week I’m scheduled three days and next week I'll work four. Good, I thought to myself.

My son is still visiting. I will have more time to spend with him.

While meditating a couple of days ago a remembrance came to me. My hairdresser, a good friend who owns a very large house on the top of hill, stated that she has an apartment downstairs that she would like to rent. She doesn’t advertise it but picks people she thinks would be a good candidate and asked if I was interested.

At the time I told her I was not, but when the thought returned to me I found it somewhat inviting. I had a very strong feeling to call her just to investigate.

The next day I went to look at her space available, and discuss with her more of the particulars. I called my sponsor and went over my plan. With my friend eager to have me, and her apartment quite impressive, I’ve made a decision to move.

I can see in so many ways how this is going to benefit my life. Financially I will be able to save a lot of money. Physically it is even closer to my work. Spiritually I will get to share a home with somebody that I actually like, who is in the program, and where I will not feel so isolated and alone as I do at some times.

The one draw back that I can see is climbing the single lane dirt road to the top of the hill in the snow. The drive is perched precariously with no guard rails but I do have, as I’ve mentioned many times, a four wheel drive vehicle.

So it looks like everything I need to make this move is in my favor.

Today I delivered my letter of intent to vacate my apartment to the current landlord.

There are more possibilities in the universe than one can ever imagine, and not becoming stuck with an idea or a concept sets my sights open to anything that can happen. I’m excited about this.

At one time I could not image my life without drugs and alcohol. I thought I would never be happy again when the day came that I had to leave them behind. Five years later my sobriety has worked out better than I have ever dreamed. Today I live in a whole new world with a view that far surpasses the four walls I was stuck within.

Happy New Year, my friends. I’m so grateful to share our sober lives together, our new way to live, and I look forward.

Every day matters.

Dream A Little Dream

2011-12-29T12:55:00.000-08:00

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

~ Proverbs 29:18

Drive into Skull Valley, Arizona

As the new year approaches I am thinking about goals for this coming year. Where do I want to go? What do I want that will make my life better?

Recently my dentist, of all people, has put me on a life track. I need medical and dental insurances. Health issues going on inside of my mouth is futuristically going to require me to look into costly and necessary procedures to save my teeth. Thankfully there is nothing I have to do today, but realistically I know that day is coming.

I have spent the beginning years of my recovery experimenting with possible paths. I’ve taken off from working in a casino and gone to school full time for a year. I’ve worked in a doctor’s office and then for the government doing social work. And now, as you know, I’ve come full circle to working in a casino again.

I don’t regret any of these new ideas I’ve followed with all the experiences I’ve been afforded in these endeavors. It may be what I’ve needed to get sober and stay clean. It’s been a journey of finding answers and asking questions, but today I feel the need to move closer to security.

I guess my goal this year is to settle down. I love living here, and would not mind it if God deems that I stay. My employment here is gratifying, with the income to sustain my life, and room for me grow and develop spiritually by being a little light in the corner, but it is a precarious position, unstable in that I am only scheduled when I am needed and those parameters can change at any minute.

This year my goal is to throw my resume into the wind to see if my dream of a secure position can be accomplished. I’m sure it will, but I need to start with the footwork.

My dream: to obtain a full time job with a company where I can grow. I would like to plant roots someplace, perhaps live in a small house, then in that stability find out what I really want to pursue as a passion. I have so many ideas on that.

Have you considered that it’s the feeling behind what you think you want? You may consider that having something externally like a new home will make you happy, but it’s really the internal feeling of peace, happiness, security, comfort, joy and love that you create when you visualize what you would like. ~ Elisabeth Blaikie, founder of Fragrant Heart Centered Meditations.

I do affirm that most of what I think I may find someplace else I already have. I don’t have to pack all my personal belongs in boxes for peace, or happiness, or comfort, or joy. In fact, in the process of moving on I may lose some of that temporarily. My fear is that I will, but I always like to remind my daughter in her life plan: “Short term pain, long term gratification.”

I don’t know what is going to happen next. It is a tough economy out there, and it feels like the obstacles might be insurmountable. Searching different web-sites for employment opportunities shows me that there are very few positions advertised, yet I am going to send my resume regardless.

My goal is to set a goal, make a plan, follow through one step at a time, dream, focus, and leave the outcome to my Higher Power.

I’ve applied online with a casino in Phoenix that was advertising for dealers. After visiting California and being around my family I’ve considered how nice it might be to return to that area. I’ve made a list of places there where I could apply. Initially I know I like living in the sunbelt and will pretty much keep my pursuits in the western regions, with places like New Mexico also in my mail out. I could go as far south as the east coast, or even end up in the Virgin Islands. Who knows?

Focusing on goals, whatever they may be, short term or long term, gives life energy and promotes more likely success. Through my intuition and ideas, God has probably been directing me toward this goal anyway.

Every day matters.

What You Think, You Become

2011-12-28T22:18:00.000-08:00

Lights! (My favorite picture from this trip) Downtown Riverside, CA

I arrived back in Arizona last night, and spent the day reacquainting myself with loading and unloading the dishwasher and cycling clothes needing to be cleaned through the washer and dryer. This is my routine. This is my domain. This is where I live. It feels good to be home.

Kept busy on my trip, I was carted from this house to that restaurant, from my father to my brother to my nieces and nephews. Everywhere I went I met them in clusters. Most of the time it was very warm and welcoming. Sometimes it was tense. On occasion there were feelings of blissful ambivalence, which I cherished just to relax in merely being present. There were those moments too where “issues” wanted to be hashed out.

My sister was the easiest, but we have been working on our relationship for quite some time now. Little by little, one step at a time, I am winning her trust. She says she trust me more. This part of my trip was truly happy. My nieces and nephews, all of which share a history visiting my home from their early childhoods, relished the time we got to reunite and share again our stories--like the time their lizard escaped the cardboard shoebox in the backseat of my car as I was driving them home on the freeway. There were many laughs.

My sister’s oldest boy drew me a picture when he was five, and meant to call me “Auntie” on it but could only write “Anti”. That has rather stuck too. Now this boy is 31 with a wife and two young sons of his own.

Seeing my father met with a lot of resistance to the peaceful reunion I had envisioned. Throwing expectations out the window, I acquiesced to the conversation he initiated. Let’s resolve issues! Those words came from his mouth, but I wonder, do we ever find resolve or just repeat the same condemning accusations over and over again. Most of these injuries are thirty years old, but we want to pull the scabs off to see if we still bleed.

I don’t know how successful I was in wading through the landmines of what it used to be like, or if I brought any peace to anybody else, or myself, in how I acknowledged this topic, yet I knew enough to only call out my part. Today I know this: I had felt too guilty to come home before now. It’s not about what they did. It was all about my choices, and my perception, and how I felt about me that stood in my way.

My father gave me one direct request. Our third sibling, my other brother, had stopped speaking to all of us, well, except the oldest brother. In true alcoholic family fashion, calling upon me as the oldest child and designated alternate parent to this brood, the responsibility, said my father, was mine to fix.

I gave him the Al-Anon answer: “Let me think about that.”

I left there feeling like a sand storm had blown through my soul.

Yet there is good news and that‘s that the story isn‘t over. More will be revealed. Courageously I feel like I did all that I could do by showing up, being aware, speaking my truth, then letting it go to let God direct the outcome. “It wasn’t an easy childhood," I said to my dad, "But we took something useful from the experience that makes us better adults today.”

By the way, my father’s health was impressively improved considering that I learned before seeing him that he had surgery for throat cancer. Up and outside on his front porch to greet us, I was relieved to see his rosy color and the clarity in his eyes. He could not talk very well, but we muttered through all of that.

More details, I’m sure, will still come out in my writing to come. There is so much to process I’ve decided to put most of it on the back burner to let all the ingredients of this visit simmer for a while.

Today I went to my regular 3 p.m. Al-Anon meeting where we talked about prayer and meditation. Since I recently have taken on this group’s Public Information commitment, I stayed for the business meeting after to learn about the tasks expected of me with help on how to carry these out.

Back in my life, my house, my intentions of living the best life that I can, today I’m thinking about the guilt that has kept me locked away from others for so long. I’m making a decision to give the guilt up, let it go, not tie myself down with the past any more.

“By the mind one is bound, by the mind one is freed…He who asserts with strong conviction, ‘I am not bound, I am free,’ becomes free.” ~ Ramakrishma.

Seeing my family, the crux of where I harbored all these feelings, allowed me to see that my life is not connected to what they do, or who they appear to be, or who they may think that I am.

My life is my life. I’m happy for all the people who accept my invitation to share it, but I won’t be unhappy because of those who don’t.

Every day matters.

The Mission Inn

2011-12-24T11:27:00.000-08:00

Spending the day with my sister has been cathartic. First we took care of the important things, like getting our toenails painted. Relaxed in our vibrating salon chairs, feet soaking in bubbling hot water, we’d peer out the window to watch our not so relaxed entourage sitting on a bench outside. Like monkeys on a log, her husband, her son, my son, all subdued and waiting for the polish to dry. I don’t know why we brought them, but we wanted to be together.

They were happy to go home. So we took them there, and we, my sister and I, continued our adventure to grocery stores and shopping malls as there was still more to buy.

In the parking lot before entering the huge conglomerate store, we did that which I have been putting off to do. I called my dad. This time we connected, with his wife at least since Dad was sleeping, and we were told of the time and place that we would meet--Monday between his intravenous feedings. This would cause us to clear our otherwise filled schedule, but it could be done and so we do, leave things open to be changed.

We picked up a plant, because what can you bring to someone who has everything and can eat nothing. Something, at least, in hand for the entry. It’s a pretty plant that looks like the tiniest white roses in a red shiny pot.

“Sometimes I feel like I don’t fit in. So much is changing and I don’t know what I’m going to do next.”

My sister replied, “It’s the same thing that’s happening to all of us. It is just where we are at, reevaluating, refiguring it out, things change and we change and we are always trying to adjust. Isn’t that where we should be in our lives, always trying to figure out what we want to do next?”
We went that night, leaving the teenage ranged boys at home so that we could enjoy the beautiful lights of downtown Mission Inn without the weight of their resistance. If they want to stay home to eat pizza and play video games then let them. They missed the best part.

Oh my God! This was prettier than Disneyland.

In the midst of the downtown Christmas party we stopped to have dinner at a wonderful unique eatery. It looked like, to us, an old bank that had been renovated. The food was unique and interestingly served, but best of all was the musician who sat high in the balcony, hardly seen but definitely heard. Solo in a Marc Cohn style, his guitar and his voice took us through the most beautiful renditions of many favorite songs. With every new song he broke into my sister and I would look at each other and awe.

I took an ink pen from my sister and wrote a message on a napkin. She chided me at first, but I told her, I would appreciate knowing so I wanted to tell him how much his music meant to our experience. I had the waiter take it to him.

“What are you doing?” Asked my sister.

“I’m following your advise,” I said. “I’m getting ready for whatever I am going to do next, and whatever that is, I am not going to be afraid to say how I feel.”

Every day matters.

Chasing A Western Sunset

2011-12-24T00:07:00.000-08:00

Hurling toward the western sunset at 80 miles per hour extended the time it took to enjoy the lingering last rays of daylight. Odd, it seemed, to be chasing the sun. By the time the sun won it‘s race to disappear off into an ocean I wouldn’t quite reach, I had already crossed the California state line and was close, not close to seeing the sun sink into the Pacific, but I was well into the Eastern Inland Empire, my destination, Riverside County.

My grandparent’s moved to Riverside in the 1950’s where my father’s father took a job working as a foreman for Sunkist. Rich in it’s heyday of orange tree groves, Riverside was once the capital of citrus fruits. As a child my father had nowhere else to ride his bike except through the acres and acres of fruit trees.

Riverside is not that way today. Still there are orange groves but buildings and freeways and people and bus lines and shopping malls and emission smog have eaten up much of that space. I did not grow up here through much of the city’s changes, but my father did, and he returned in time for my brothers and sister to stay here.

I was old enough to come or go, and so I did, many times.

Riverside holds many memories of my using, and drinking, and the shame of wandering University Avenue searching for contraband are here. I look down any street to find harbored between all the familiar sites reminders of our family’s discord and my disease. Yes, I got clean here and married here and gave birth to two children here, and I divorced here and relapsed and moved away again.

Now I’m coming back.

There’s a whole mixed bag of emotions for me in Riverside, and a whole lot of trepidation in hurling my vehicle toward a western sunset. I’m wondering what I’ll find here this time. It was fearsomely difficult to pack a bag, and pack my son, and overcome the anxiety in getting through those first few miles away from my safety zone.

Yet you taught me, and I remembered, today it’s the actions that I do that count, that feelings aren’t facts, do the next right thing, and leave the outcome to God.

I arrived safely at the end of a six hour drive in front of my sister’s house. In the dusk warmly lit windows outlined by twinkling Christmas lights beckoned me to the front door. She flung open wide her arms and her heart, laughing and happy to see me. In a deep sigh I relaxed, and fall deeply into the safety of home.

Every day matters.

The Four M's

2011-12-19T16:06:00.000-08:00

Some relief came in for a few days when my son’s elementary school friend traveled to visit us for a few days. My vacation starts on Wednesday. In the meantime I still have to work.

Working night shifts makes our visit somewhat weirder than most normal households, but my son is as nocturnal as I am, so we connect in the wee hours of the morning.

His friend visiting was a welcomed distraction for me. I was relieved to feel let off the hook in needing to, or wanting to entertain. Two twenty one year olds can entertain themselves.

In the meantime, on the work front, things are really busy. Asked to work overtime on Friday night I put in 10 hours. It was the last day of the pay period so the extra time helped to bolster my upcoming pay check. I was grateful.

The next night, when asked to work over again, I said I couldn’t. I really didn’t feel like I could. I was tired. Sleep too incomplete, and back in the kitchen cooking for the boys the next day, I declined another opportunity for overtime. Besides, there were other’s who might want to take their turn.

But instead of letting me go, after I said no I could not stay, I was intentionally kept on a game until way past the time I should have clocked out. There was nothing I could do about it. Feeling trapped and deceived I worked the extra time.

I was livid.

“If I was really working a good program, I wouldn’t feel angry.” “I don’t get angry. I’m a Christian. I forgive and forget.” “I’m not angry. I’m affirming that I’m happy.”

I was pissed. And I was still upset about it the next day.

Okay. So some of what I did about it was not okay. Some things I did to handle this was the right thing to do.

Not okay: I complained about the incident in the break room, talking about the offending supervisor behind her back, venting my frustration. For the most part I received my co-worker’s sympathy.

Not okay: when the offending supervisor came in to work her shift the next night I ignored her. I responded to her casual comments toward me with a punishing silence. My intent was to give her the message that her treatment of me was not okay. It could have been the prime opportunity for me to calmly tell to her how I felt, yet I still did not feel calm about the incident.

I did go to my immediate supervisor and told her about what happened. Not having been involved in the discretion, and being someone that I trusted to listen to me, I felt safe in letting her know in rational statements how I felt about being kept at work against my will.

“Part of working a program means acknowledging and dealing with our feelings. We strive to accept and deal with our anger so it doesn’t harden into resentments. We don’t use recovery as an excuse to shut down our emotions.”

Today I called my sponsor. And even though she confirmed that my emotions are valid, she helped me to recognize better ways to handle this situation. Watch out for the four M’s: Mothering, Martyring, Manipulating, and Managing.

Oh, I could be the martyr in this case, and I feel victimized, used and abused. But no one was really thinking about me, picked me out personally, conspired against me before they came in to work that night. They were considering their own agenda. I just happened to be standing in the path to their realizing their goals. It might have been anybody really, so QTIP it. (Quit Taking It Personally).

Yesterday I indulged myself in feeling angry about it. Today I’m letting it go. This really isn’t something I want to, need to, carry around with me. What’s done is done.

Every day God gives me another chance to do things differently, better perhaps, or learn another lesson. Maybe tonight I will get the chance to say something constructive to the offending boss that allows me to be honest in a clear cut, straight forward way. Something that I did not feel I could do yesterday.

If I proceed with a better attitude I’m sure that will help.

Every day matters.

Connections

2011-12-16T04:00:00.000-08:00

A young man stood looking down the corridor of the exiting gate where the latest plane just disembarked it‘s passengers. Not sitting, standing, anxiously, eagerly waiting. From the looks of him I thought he must be picking up his girlfriend coming to share the holidays. It was not.

He found the older woman who immediately reached out to touch the hair on his face. He too touched his beard and with a sheepish grin looked down to hide the mixture of his prideful embarrassment. Although I could not hear their conversation, I knew the communication transpiring between them.

Mom’s recognize how quickly their son’s grow up.

That’s when it hit me. It was my turn next so I took my queue, like the young man before me, I stood in that same prime spot, looking down the corridor for a swagger I might recognize in the distant crowd. It’s been a couple years since we last saw each other. I wondered if I would recognize him.

Then like the parting of the Red Sea, everyone surrounding him disappeared, and there he was.

He’s beautiful, as handsome as a young man in the prime of his youth can be. A mother’s pride and gratitude uncontrollably swelled within my heart and leaked from my eyes tears of joy to see him. I can never stop that.

And he’s funny. “I have a red bag, just like that red bag that man is walking away with. I hope that’s not my bag.” Yet he found his carry-all on the carousal and swiftly we left baggage claim.

Pheonix Sky Harbor has always been one of the easiest airports I’ve ever had to maneuver. I was able to leave quickly, find my way back to the freeway and embark on the two hour drive up the hill to Prescott.

We talked comfortably, after all this time, finding me impressed by a gentle young person promising wisdom in his yearning to learn of other cultures and studying different religions with wandering plans for his future and what he wants to do.

“I can’t sit around resting on my laurels,” He said.

“You are 21, my dear,” I replied. “You have no laurels.”

“But I have my good looks.”

“That you have…until you turn 30. Take advantage of it now while you are young.”

But I imagine he’ll grow more good looking with age. Men do, you know.

Back in a mother’s role, I cherish that I get to cook homemade dinners for him, play Scrabble, I hope, and talk and talk and talk until I get to know better who he has become now.

I love spending time with this person, this young man, my son.

Every day matters.

You're Not In Wisconsin Any More, Son

2011-12-15T10:20:00.000-08:00

I-17 South to Phoenix

Sunset Point Rest Stop. Everyone takes pictures here.

Arizona Icon -- the Saguaro Cactus

My pictorial diary of driving to Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix to pick up my son.

Every day matters.

Living With The Moon

2011-12-11T15:53:00.001-08:00

When I was a baby, my father used to say, I would sleep all day and stay up all night. This, he would explain, is why my nocturnal nature is so natural for me.

It’s true. My favorite time of day is the middle of night. There is something comforting for me to be awake when the majority of my community is sleeping.

My children are the same way. Although their father is definitely a morning person, they too live on a nighttime body clock.

There are a lot of advantages to being a night person.

My schedule at work has vacillated widely this week. I’ve worked from two in the afternoon to ten at night, then started the next day at 8 p.m. It’s no problem for me to still be awake at four in the morning.

Yesterday I had the awesome pleasure of watching the total eclipse of the moon. I didn’t plan on staying awake to see it at 7 a.m., just prior to falling asleep. Incidentally I looked out the window and saw the moon half disappearing and decided to sit quietly to watch the other half cover. It was a beautiful solitary experience.

My daughter, who also works a graveyard shift in home health services, was sleeping yesterday afternoon when I caught the tail of an obsessive thought to call her. I called her three times, not giving it much time in between calls, until finally she picked up the phone furious that I woke her up.

I felt bad because I knew that my motives were selfish and my actions were inconsiderate.

My sister said it best during one of our recent conversations about family, it’s important to treat each other with the same respect and consideration we would offer to our friends and co-workers.

I sent my daughter an email. I apologized for rude behavior. I told her what I did wrong, and let her know how I would do things different in the future. You taught me how to make amends.

At four in the morning my daughter called me. Contrite now, she gave me her forgiveness and we moved on to the great conversation I was seeking earlier.

As her mother, I am not entitled to her life just because I carried her for nine month 23 years ago. There was a time when I got to pick her up and put her where I wanted her to be, but she grew out of that to learn to stand on her own two feet. I recognize and respect her as she pays her own rent, drives her own car, works her own job, and is putting herself through school on the University level. She is her own person.

And I’m so grateful that Al-Anon and the 12 steps teach me how to have successful relationships, with my children, with my friends, with my community, and with the world.

Every day matters.

AA Mafia

2011-12-09T17:08:00.001-08:00

Waking up this morning I felt unloved and unlovable. It stemmed from an encounter last night at the casino when Washer/Dryer Guy showed up at my table. He wasn’t there to play. He was meeting a friend for dinner. While his friend played blackjack, he sat down at the otherwise empty table and the three of us chatted.

I have to say, Washer/Dryer Guy was looking pretty good, but then I’ve always thought that. But didn’t he tell me I’m not his type because I don’t drink?

Waking up this morning I did what I’ve done since I was nine years old, go through a mental list of all the things I need to change about myself to become more attractive. If only I was X then Y would happen.

In mid thought, I knew I’d learned enough to know that was malarkey and put down the list to check my phone for calls I missed while I was working.

I called the friend who urgently needed to talk about her experience with another friend, and I’m only going to say this:

If someone calls me up threatening suicide, and they tell me when, and they tell me how, I’m going to call the police.

My experience working with multiple, multiple suicide cases taught me one thing--I believe all of us who have had this in our lives would agree--talk of suicide is a subject to be taken very seriously.

It’s like screaming bomb in an airport.

Although I know the Big Book says if someone wants to go out and drink again we should take our hats off to them. I want to help those who want to be helped, and do what I can to intervene if it is possible and asked for, but live and let live. I don’t cause consequences from other people’s behavior and I don’t prevent consequences in other people’s lives. Suicide is different.

I think calling the police sets good boundaries. If suicide is stated as a real initiative (or even if it‘s just meant as an idle manipulative threat), calling the authorities will be the most help that can be offered. Locking someone up temporarily protects them from themselves, allows them an opportunity at professional diagnosis, and is the quickest way to set in motion the gears that will take them to the destination of their best cure. Honestly, in the case of suicide, to guess the motive then find out the truth may be too late.

On my way to an Al-Anon meeting I was waylaid by my friend Laney on the sidewalk going into the same church. She was going to attend the AA meeting so I decided to go to that room with her.

The topic of the meeting was on gratitude for being sober. I felt sadness for addicts whose cry for help is: “I can’t stop using so I’m gonna kill myself”. I recognize this emotionally painful end of it all scenario that I’ve descended to many times in my addiction. I’ve witnessed the repercussions of death from suicide in other alcoholics and addicts.

In a room with thirty others, doing the deal, living life on life’s own terms, talking of being grateful alcoholics, some were recovering addicts too, I thought to myself…yeah, I GET to be HERE.

I found my people there, talked to them after the meeting, and received a lot of hugs. In the parking lot I saw my fellow Al-Anon group members leaving their meeting, and touched bases with some of them.

Getting my car cleaned at the car wash, I ran into still other AA friends. When I went to the store I ran into two more friends from the program there too. Every where I went today I found several people to hug.

Being in the program is like being in the Mafia. We are a family and family is everywhere.

I got over the loneliness of not having a significant other in my life in a heartbeat. I realize my singleness gives me an ability to work on our singleness of purpose. I’m always available to help, even if it’s just talking to another suffering person on the phone. The majority of the time I enjoy my freedom.

As I learn that my life is more about spiritual connections than the physical outward appearances or comparing myself to what other‘s have, I’m able to touch on the truth of how my life is exactly the way it is suppose to be. My life is not perfect, but God has chosen perfectly all that I have in my life right now. When or if anything is suppose to change I’m sure God will let me know.

Every day matters.

Ordinary Sunset

2011-12-07T17:25:00.001-08:00

Last night I watched a documentary on National Geographic photographers. Each of their stories, and especially their photographs, were inspiring. I enjoy watching these types of shows because I figure I could learn something.

As a creative hobby I enjoy taking pictures because while growing up I dreamed of being an artist, and I did study art at one time. I worked as a graphic designer for almost twenty years. My work could in no way compare to those professionals who spend their lives in the field taking pictures, yet I learned in art class: To be a great painter one must paint a hundred pictures and eventually will wind up with a few good ones.

I've been asking myself lately whether I have a "passion" for anything. Then it hit me as I was driving home after an Al-Anon meeting, and a trip to the grocery store shopping for dinner. Having not eaten since the bowl of cereal I had for breakfast, I was really hungry.

But today, more important than anything else, I realized I was driving through my favorite time to photograph. Mesmerized by long shadows and the golden haze of a falling sun, I'm always and continually surprised at what comes next. I don't go anywhere without my camera so I ventured up a nearby hill instead of going home to cook. I thought it would be just another day of capturing an ordinary sunset. But I don't think so.

If nothing else it gives me great joy. Welcome to my world and thank you for looking. I took 107 pictures this week. These are the seven that I think are "lucky" shots.

Every day matters.

Miracle Cures

2011-12-06T19:14:00.001-08:00

“Miracle cures” come into my life everyday bringing new ideas and tools that make my life better. Like--did you know there is a product on the market that can be sprayed on a frozen windshield which instantly de-ices the frost? Great idea!

No more scraping ice off my car windows at two in the morning while preparing to leave from work. I’m so grateful to my friend who turned me on to this concept. How much easier it has made my life.

Did you know that the best way to clean walls is to use a dry sponge? I looked for this helpful tip in a manual I have called “Is There Life After Housework?“ by Don Aslett. Then I picked up a couple of these dry sponge products about a month ago thinking my bathroom walls could use a good wiping.

Wanting to wait before I called my dad again, after some time to gather my thoughts and do a little on-line research concerning throat cancer, today I felt better prepared to ask certain questions and to check on his well-being.

His wife answered the phone, pleasantly sounding like she was glad to hear from me, but busy intravenously feeding my father so it was not a good time for her to talk. She said she’d call me back.

I told her not to rush, I’d be home all day.

Then I just sat there, wishing I had the opportunity I wanted to have my needs met. Waiting for the phone to ring back was not going to help.

When I got busy I got better. ~ Al-Anon slogan.

Today I finally took on the task of washing the bathroom walls. Using the miracle cure of the dry sponge made the job easy and efficient and within a short time I felt like I had accomplished something useful.

My phone did ring. It was a call from an AA member who needed to talk. Then my sister called. We’ve been discussing my father’s illness and our family’s estrangement (oh, it’s sooo complicated) that’s been running a muck for years.

“I’ve been praying this entire last year for some kind of resolution to all this silence,” she told me. “You’re the oldest. I’m waiting for you to make a decision as to what we should do next.”

All I can do is wait, but I can share with my sister some of the good news I learned about this particular cancer. The success rate of surgery is 90% if the tumor is caught in the early stages. Until we hear differently I’m choosing to look hopefully optimistic at a time of recovery.

And I can share with her what I’ve learned about letting go of the past. We’ve all done the best we could. This is not the time for a heartfelt, long lost, soul conversion conversation. It may be just time to talk, plain and simple, about love in our lives today.

My brother, you know, the one who said he was coming to visit me then no-showed and never called to explain, has agreed to meet with us for lunch when I go home for Christmas.

I still have another brother. I don’t know who he’s speaking to, perhaps the other brother, but for now he’s not communicating with my sister nor me. Perhaps there will be a way shown for this relationship to work it’s way out too.

In the meantime, I have a program. Most of the time the miracle cure does not come from a can or a box. Waiting patiently is part of learning how and when to proceed toward healthy recovery, to open-mindedness, and a willingness to try. I may not get what I'm looking for right now, but I'm still excited about the prospects of learning more about my HP today.

Windshield defrosted and clean bathroom walls--I’m grateful.

People who love me and are willing to take the time to work through the hurt--I’m so very grateful today.

Every day matters.

A Winter's Saturday

2011-12-03T14:05:00.001-08:00

I woke up this morning knowing that once again I have been hit by that bug that’s been trying to take me down. I’m sure it got me while I was back at work last night.

While standing on a dead game (where there were no players), my boss approached me for a conversation about the air filtration system. After professional testing the company was advised that it’s become necessary to do a thorough cleaning. There must be something bad in there.

I can attest to that just by how I’m getting sick every time I go in to work lately.

Well, I’m up and moving around and getting things done anyway. I’ve taken a couple caplets of cold medication, always careful that medicines I take are safe for me by not setting off any diseased cravings, seem to be holding down most of the symptoms. The news told me that a couple off our major freeways have been closed but I’m moving through the coziness indoors, watching snow continue to fall through my kitchen window.

We’ve accumulated a few inches on the ground and it’s absolutely beautiful outside.

There were calls to return today. One to an Al-Anon member who knows I’m interested in taking over her Public Relations commitment. Since she is also a health care worker she recommended to me a homeopathic remedy that can help me stay healthy by building up my immune system.

Calling my friend Laney, she also recommended the same product. When we hear the same thing from two separate people on the same day the message becomes worth listening to. So I’ll be going to the vitamin store to shop on my way to work today.

The cats are in the window, mesmerized by falling flakes. I’m gracefully getting through the agenda of my day, taking care of tasks that need be done before I go to work. I made some chicken and rice soup with a cup of hot chocolate. Life is good.

That’s all I got to share today.

Every day matters.

Today God Gave Me Snow

2011-12-02T13:38:00.001-08:00

It’s snowing today. Snow is just something that never stops making me happy. Everything gets covered in a twinkling winter wonderland, which is not how I grew up, having always lived in the sun belt.

Every year at this time my heart fills with the glee of it. Snow!

Luckily for me, snow didn’t start falling until after I got home from an Al-Anon meeting. As usual, I am so glad I went. It was warm and comfortable as I just listened today to the heartfelt honesty of how we learn to love ourselves. For me there was a bright light of hope.

Little snips of what each person said was exactly what I needed to hear. Escaping self-made drama was one of the best.

I don’t have to live in drama today, even though events may feel dramatic.

Yesterday my father called. I told you that already. But the rest of the story is about why he had not contacted me previously, and how I took that as personal rejection, until I learned of what happened.

My father had been in surgery for throat cancer.

Here we are, trying to have our first conversation in over ten years and he could hardly talk. Yet he tried, and I am so grateful that as rough as it was I could hear his voice. I could tell he was happy to hear from me.

While my mind could jump to the disaster here, you’ve taught my heart to look for the gift. Thank you for showing me this because I know now where to look.

Just at the perfect moment God comes through for me. I wonder if a moment too soon would have found me unprepared. Unprepared to let go of the past. Unprepared to accept what is compared to what I would have wanted. Unprepared to find forgiveness and compassion. Unprepared to love.

My mind wants to jump to the end of the story before the truth unfolds. Thank you for showing me this because now I know to cherish the moment.

I don’t know what I can do for him today, but I stopped after the meeting to pick up a couple cards. I am sending him positive thoughts, encouragement for the conversations we will have in the future, news of my happiness and how much I love snow.

I don’t know what else I can give him except peace.

Today God gave me snow.

Every day matters.

On The Healing Side

2011-12-01T20:22:00.001-08:00

On the healing side of things now, Thanksgiving I came down with a flu bug which made me extremely tired. I couldn’t put it together why the day before I could not stay awake for more than three hours without wanting to go back to bed.

I let myself sleep. When I woke up again I realized what that groggy feeling in my head, upset in my stomach, lack of appetite, and onset of diarrhea meant. So I slept some more.

Gratitude is having a couple days off from work to recover.

This week has been about me dealing with my impatience, grumpiness, easy aggravation, but I realized, as I usually do, that it really has nothing to do with what’s going on around me. It stems from someplace within myself that isn’t centered.

Gratitude is remembering words heard from the program that teaches me to contain my emotions.

Many times during the working night this week I would remind myself to pull it in. It wasn’t a good time to express my opinion because my outlook was colored by the way I was feeling. Just suit up, show up, do my job, then go home.

HALT. Realizing when I am Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired I need to consider taking additional care.

My sponsor says S can be added to the end of that acronym: Sick.

There has been a flu going around work and I’m sure, after sitting with a contagion in the break room complaining of symptoms, that's where I picked up the bug. I’m feeling better now.

So while I’m still quietly sitting in rest mode, I’m slowly coming back to my world. I met yesterday with my Al-Anon sponsor over my new found love, Chi Tea Cappuccino. There were no real issues to discuss, except I did talk about waking up with feelings of rejection from not hearing from my father in a couple of months. It’s been hauntingly on my mind often lately.

Things were going so well toward our reconnecting. In October, for his birthday, I sent him a card inviting him to a meeting over coffee during my trip home to California for Christmas.

Nothing. I’ve heard nothing so, of course, I go to that place where I wonder what I did wrong.

Wisely, my sponsor admonished me not to form an opinion until I find out more about the truth in the situation.

Today my father called and we talked for the first time in over a decade. I found out why he had not contacted me. It had nothing to do with me. Humility, I'm reminded, when I find out that the world does not revolve around me.

On the healing side of things now comes a wonderful opportunity, a gift you might say, to let the past go, moving on to the future, we leave the sickness behind.

There’s a time for rest, recuperation, for gathering the pieces of ourselves that allows God to reconstruct us anew.

Gratitude is having a program that teaches me how to move on, recover.

Every day matters.

Decide

2011-11-22T17:07:00.001-08:00

The raw chicken legs I was planning to cook for lunch did not smell fresh when I pulled them out of the meat bin of my refrigerator, so I decided to throw them away. I pan fried a little white fish in olive oil and sturred up some homemade corn chowder instead.

I don’t take any chances on things I eat, which is strange when I think about it because I never considered the contents of the drugs I took or how much alcohol I drank or what adverse affect either may have on my health.

About 6 p.m Arizona time.

I do think about those things today.

Waking up this morning there was circling around my brain a feeling of gratitude. I don’t know why I woke up thinking about this, but I felt thankful I don’t have to stress over the ways and means to live in oblivion or how I‘m going to get more.

I believe the things I’ve been doing to take care of myself lately has been giving me the payoff of a serene mind. Prayer, meditation, daily reading, working on my writing, calling friends in the program, and of course, going to meetings.

I’ve had a wonderful week at the casino, working nearly eight hours every night because the boss that would usually initiate sending people home early has been promoted and designated to work another shift.

Imagine…God doing for me what I cannot do for myself.

One day this week I was asked to commandeer the floor while the shift manager left to take care of other business upstairs in the poker room. I’ve never been asked to be the pit boss before so I was rather initially intimidated. So many things could happen I had never handled before, but I thought of two things: I’ve witnessed what pit bosses do for many years, and I was looking for a job when I found this one (in case I made a decision that ended in my termination).

I stood up for an hour and a half and, of course, there were so many issues to address during that time where I was able to use my own decision making process. When a dealer made a mistake, skipping a player from hitting his hand, I decided to have the dealer pay the player anyway. The player is a long time regular. Giving up the $40 could only bring good will and everyone at the table was uplifted by the easy happiness it brought. Even the players that weren’t affected said their thanks to me.

The next thing I did was announce that I was giving all the dealers raises. There’s nothing like promoting good will.

It was a good time, and a good experience. I wasn’t fired, yet I haven’t been asked to act in the pit boss position again. I’m sure if I was needed they would ask. It’s not a position I’m actually qualified for since I have not officially been trained, though I can do in a pinch.

Realizing when I woke up this morning, that my life is about choices, I thought about my options for the Thanksgiving holiday. I’ve been invited to my friend Shari’s house for dinner with her family, or, since I only have two days off anyway, I can spend the day alone and go to a meeting.

It’s nice having choices, and having the choice to decide. This leads me to quote some reading I did this morning from You Can’t Make Me Angry written by Dr. Paul O. (Dr. Paul wrote “Acceptance Was The Answer” in the BB.)

While waiting, the man saw another man return home from a relatively short business trip. As he watched, the returnee was enthusiastically greeted by his wife and three children.

The joy, love and caring in the encounter was obvious that the first man asked the couple how long they had been married. When told they had been married twelve years, he said, “Gee, I hope my marriage is still that passionate after twelve years!”

At this, he said the family man suddenly stopped smiling. “He looked me straight in the eye, and with forcefulness that burned right into my soul, he told me something that left me a different person. He told me, “Don’t hope, friend…DECIDE!”

Every day matters.

Identifying The Solution

2011-11-20T13:51:00.001-08:00

Identifying what we want and need, then writing it down, sets in motion a powerful chain of events. It indicates that we are taking responsibility for ourselves, giving God and the Universe permission to supply our wants and needs. ~ The Language of Letting Go; Melody Beattie (Nov. 20)

The word has come down from the powers to be that our casino is no longer considering separating poker and blackjack. I’ve been poised especially eager to hear what this decision would be because it determines what I want in my job and what I can do to have those needs met.

I want a job where I can move fluently, doing the best I can in what I know, where upward mobility could be a possibility, and have an income that supports my living expenses with the ability to pursue some fiscal dreams.

I need a job that offers me a full time position, where I have set days to work, time off for vacations and personal leave, and medical and dental benefits.

Hearing the final word on this issue brings me consider two things: I can stay and learn poker or go to a “house” that is best suited for my talents. I do get a choice. I can do either.

Most of my needs are being met in my on-call position. I don’t suffer financially, and all my necessities are comfortably met. I’m in an arena where I get to learn new spiritual lessons, experience being sober in an environment where I wasn't sober before, and know I'm being prepared for whatever happens next.

A lot of thought has gone into all the great reasons why I should stay. I do love it here and the network that envelopes me, yet I don’t feel particularly drawn to learning poker, dealing poker, investing the time it would take me to travel to Phoenix three days a week for school, or the amount of money I would need to outlay in re-taking a professional class.

It’s not that I won’t do it. It’s just that my instincts tell me it’s not a good fit for me. I’ve dealt live poker in a previous job and learned there how much I don’t enjoy it.

Some of the problems we all face in this particular “house” would not be solved even if I were to attain a full time position. This casino is considered a “break-in house”, a place where new dealers come to learn the trade. Most will move on to bigger, better places to work. I’ve worked in those bigger, better places and know of their advantages (and disadvantages too, I guess.)

Right now everything is the way it is, and I can accept that for the time being. In the Spring I am speculating a mass scattering in our immediate casino world. Two new places are opening up, one in Phoenix and another in Flagstaff. I may be apart of that fresh jockeying for positions.

The plan for now is to put first things first. Well, recently most of my attention went toward putting my car insurance in order as I made a decision, from a recent disagreement with my previous insurance company, to look at my options. It was good timing since I had not reevaluated my insurance needs for quite some time. Yet, I digress, the next course of business will be to put together a job resume.

I have a girlfriend in the program who helps put together professional resumes and she’s offered to help me with mine. My part is to put all my previous job experiences down on paper.

Getting ahead of myself somewhat I’m thinking of all the new possibilities. I will send a resume to the Virgin Islands (of course), and I will send a few to Tucson. I have this great big sober life and I really can do whatever I want to do.

I can pass a drug test.

Nevertheless, just for today, I live in today. I enjoy where I am and know I am here for a purpose. First things first, I have immediate plans which need care; feeding the cats (yes, the watering system for them has fixed itself with water flowing nicely), feeding myself, cleaning the place where I live now, getting ready for work tonight.

I can do the footwork and leave the rest to God.

When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away. ~ BB; pg. 417

Every day matters.

No Big Deal

2011-11-19T15:23:00.001-08:00

Granite Mountain in the background

It’s a beautiful day today in the high desert of Arizona. I tried to wake up earlier than I actually did. I mean my alarm clock went off every five minutes after I hit the snooze, but eventually I did give in to getting out of bed.

It’s no wonder. I worked till 4 a.m., yet I told my friend I’d connect with her today to get her instructions on how to take care of her dogs while she goes to an AA convention in Las Vegas.

I kept my word, planning ahead to allow for my need to sleep. My friend and I are working out a trade, which I really appreciate. She will take care of the cats while I’m away for Christmas holidays.

I did eventually get out of bed, easier than I thought once my feet hit the floor. Washed my face, did some daily reading, vacuumed the living room (because you know how cat hair can be) before she arrived. So far it feels like an easy day. It’s so nice outside that I was even able to open the door to the balcony to let some fresh air in. It’s only 53 degrees outside under sunny skies.

Following her to her house in my car took me up winding roads to look over glorious vistas. I love climbing high on the side of the hill to look down over the terrain. Today’s picture I snapped from her balcony.

There’s no big deals today. Everything seems to be going well. I am well and happy just way things are at the moment. I’m enjoying my home, trying to fix the electric water fountain from which the cats drink. Yesterday water overflowed from the brim, today I took it apart and put it back together again--only cleaner this time--yet now it won’t drizzle the stream of water into the basin. Still no big deal. I’m watching it and thinking perhaps I just need to get a new motor.

Just for today I will be happy. This assumes to be true what Abraham Lincoln said, that “Most folds are as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Every day matters.

One

2011-11-18T16:56:00.001-08:00

We try to live apart from God. We try to do without Him. We act as though we had life of our own; as separate minds; as though we could have plans and purposes and interests separate from His. All this, if it were true, would mean that existence is not one and harmonious, but a chaos of competition and strife. It would mean that we are quite separate from our fellow man and could injure him, rob him, or hurt him, or even destroy him, without any damage to ourselves, and, in fact, that the more we took from other people the more we should have for ourselves. It would mean that the more we considered our own interests, and the more indifferent we were to the welfare of others, the better off we should be. ~ Emmet Fox

It’s a jungle out there. A real dog eat dog world, and if I allow myself to get caught up in the competition then I lose myself in my selfish and self centered want for more.

My fear and my insecurities call out for more control, yet it’s the paradox that control is only an illusion.

I have no control. There is no more that would be enough.

What I do have control over is my own thinking, and sometimes I laugh at that concept of control because it seems that my mind has a mind of it’s own. Yet there are tools I can use to change the way I think.

For example: I am getting what I want in my schedule at work. Where I thought I would only work four days this week, I found that another day was added for me to work. This, to me, is good news.

On the other hand, other on-call dealers are complaining that they are only being given two or three days a week. My overabundance makes me feel defensive, leery of what others must be thinking about me, paranoid (there’s that word again), and guilty. I have heard some statements said that feel like a personal attack, perhaps there's a bit of jealously on their part.

I recognize that the schism going on in my head is merely just that. My thinking has become protective toward what I think is mine. Instead of throwing myself on the sword and giving up a day, and realizing it’s not my job to rally for someone else, I pray for us all in my next day’s prayers.

I ask that we all be safe, that we all get what we need, that all of us, as a team, as a whole, find what it is that God is doing for us.

My next night at work felt much more emotionally cohesive. I felt apart of the group, forgiving those that are in fear as I have been in fear, not separated by days or hours assigned to work, by competition, by wanting to step over others to get our needs met.

And I noticed, while checking my schedule, that the dealers who were complaining had been given extra days to work also. They had to do the footwork. They had to go to the scheduler and work out their own plans. They had to speak for themselves.

This ended my work week beautifully. I left feeling relaxed and in community with those I do care about and don’t want to hurt by my selfish competitive nature, or see struggle because of lack of needs met. Caring doesn’t mean I get to jump in and try to direct things, yet I can go to the One who can change anything.

I can't say that my prayers had any effect on the changes that took place, but I can say this: It changed my frame of thinking to stop worrying about myself so much, and to consider what others might need.

Because we are all one with the great Whole of which we are spiritually a part, it follows that we are one with all men. Just because in Him we live and move and have our being, we are, in the absolute sense, all essentially one. ~ Emmet Fox

Every day matters.

What I Like About Step Ten

2011-11-11T17:26:00.001-08:00

Continue to take personal inventory

and when we were wrong promptly admit it.

The road to where I work.

I have a friend who outlines an inventory of his day every evening. He writes down the behaviors spotted that he thinks needs improvement, AND, he writes down all the giving, loving gestures he has made for that day. Then he mails it to God. (Runs it through his paper shredder.)

Personally, this kind of daily work impresses me. I, on the other hand, am aware on a daily basis that which needs to be worked on. It hits me right between the eyes of my conscience.

I deal with my character defects as they come up by writing about them and talking to my sponsor. Then, in dealing with whatever the case may be, I seek some kind of direction and follow that to the best of my ability.

Note: This step does not say we promptly apologize. It says we promptly admit it; to God, to ourselves and to another human being. Sometimes I need to properly take a look at my action to find exactly what it is that may need an apology. Or maybe, in some instances, there is no apology necessary. Changing my behavior may be my amends, but I like to check it out with someone before I make that decision.

A thought came to me recently, as part of my concern about having hours cut at my job, concerning what the part may be I play in management’s coming to me first to lighten their payroll.

I always acquiesce quickly to their request when asked to if I want to leave.

This leads us to still another thought: not to allow ourselves to be affected or influenced, by the demands and expectations of others. In our relationship…we may have felt we were only trying to please when we did what someone else thought we should. We thought we were being unselfish when we put aside our own preferences and went along meekly with what somebody else wanted of us. What we were really doing was damaging ourselves, and for this, too, we needed the constant reminder of Step Ten. ~ Al-Anon’s Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions; pg. 64-65.

Last week I was sent home early one evening. I noticed I was the first asked, yet I agreed. After considering the writings above, I had an idea that perhaps I can say something next time my boss approaches me. When that happened the next night I courageously took a stand.

Not defensively. Not cowering. I simply asked if someone else might be considered to leave early since I was the first to go the night before. I was not comfortable standing before my boss stating my position, but I was willing to take the chance.

Much to my surprise their response was more nonchalant than I had anticipated. “Oh sure,” was their reply, “Let me go ask so-and-so if they would like to go home early.”

There would be a time and a place for me to participate in taking my fair share of time off as part of my job description, yet if I am the first one to always say yes then it makes it easy for scheduling to always come to me first.

Asking was easier than I thought. I was allowed to stay that evening, working the entire shift. The next night I was anticipating taking my turn to be let off early again but God works in mysterious ways. About three of the young men dealers wanted to leave so they could go out drinking together.

So be it.

The basic message of Step Ten added up to just this: We need to keep observing what we did and why we did it. Examining our motives provides us with the tools we need to free ourselves of many problems that had beset us in the past. ~ Continued from the previous reading.

How do you work Step Ten, and what have you learned recently about yourself that has made your life better?

Every day matters.

Relationships

2011-11-10T15:10:00.001-08:00

Cruise Ship

Battleship

Cargo Ship

Rescue Ship

Partnership

There is a gift for us in each relationship that comes our way.

Sometimes the gift is a behavior we're learning to acquire: detachment, self-esteem, becoming confident enough to set a boundary, or owning our power in another way.

Some relationships trigger healing in us -- healing from issues of the past or an issue we're facing today.

Today, I'll be grateful for all my relationships. I will open myself to the lesson and the gift from each person in my life. I will trust that I, too, am a gift in other people's lives.

from: The Language of Letting Go; Melody Beattie. Nov. 7

Leading A Meeting

2011-11-09T17:38:00.000-08:00

I was asked a couple weeks ago if I would lead the Al-Anon meeting that I recently started to attend. It was a wonderful way for the original group to help me feel apart of.

There was a lot for me to learn to lead this group. First they asked me to pick a topic, sharing the theme of my idea at the next week’s meeting. I like how this system worked because it committed me to attend, not just the meeting I was slated to lead, but also the meeting the week before. I probably would have gone anyways, but this gave me a purpose.

Given a key the week before my commitment, I learned I was also to show up early, open the doors to the meeting place, and set up chairs. I should have put out the literature but I did not know where that was kept.

Also, having been given the key, I was suppose to stay and lock the doors after the meeting previous to my commitment, but it did not occur to me to do this. Honestly, I really need things spelled out for me, yet it worked out fine. The church lady came and locked the door in my absence. And everyone at today’s meeting told me of incidents where they did the same thing.

Taking on this commitment helped immerse me into this group. Even with all the mistakes on my part, it worked out well. Others were willing to take up the slack.

I’ve lead meetings before so the format was not different than what I have followed in the past. When, at times, I fumbled over timing, there were others carefully, lovingly, nudged me in the right direction.

I chose Step 10 to be today's topic. This caused me read or re-read several different Al-Anon literatures to prepare for the subject. It also allowed me to hear everyone’s differing experience and opinions as to what that step means to them. I found it to be very interesting.

All in all, I left feeling more acquainted with my fellow members. Everyone thanked me for leading a good meeting, and I believe it was a good meeting for me.

I am enjoying this new group that I found because they laugh a lot. Some shared details of serious problems with the addicts/alcoholics in their life. New to the program, they said they felt like they found the place where they belong.

I’m glad I went, participated, put myself out on the line for others to know me, and I’m especially grateful for the new people who showed up to remind me why we are all here.

Every day matters.

Meditation

2011-11-09T00:53:00.000-08:00

It was set up to be a grueling day, but it didn’t have to be so. After working until 2 a.m. there were classes that I had to attend that same morning at 10:30. It would be difficult but I knew I could do it.

Annually there are four classes I have to take to maintain a dealer’s license. I have already taken one, Title 31 (Banking laws). Today knocked out Compact Awareness (Laws governing Indian gaming by the Governor); and Customer Service. Next week I will take Alcohol/Drug Awareness. I could teach that class.

These classes have to be completed by the end of the year if I want to continue working. I am doing better this year than last. At least this year I am not in the last class on the last day of December.

Progress, not perfection.

This year, since I am making plans for Christmas and do not want too much hanging over my head, I am getting projects finished.

I did complete making arrangements for my son to come visit. That’s out of the way.

This past week I have incorporated meditation into my daily routine. I’ve never been good at meditation. It could be because it’s difficult for me to sit still for any length of time without entertainment, but because I have heard so many of my AA friends state that it’s an important part of their daily routine I thought I would give it a serious attempt.

In order to learn more about meditation, and how to do it, I did what I always do: I Googled it on the internet.

I found a great little website (here) with guided meditations which appeals to me. Listening through a set of headphones, I set aside 10 to 15 minutes in the morning and the evening to sit quietly, center my breathing, and follow the gentle guidance to relaxation.

It’s only been a week, yet I’m finding the affects to be a more calmer, relaxed, centered me. I’m learning breathing techniques that I can use anywhere whenever I become agitated or excited.

Getting home at night after working in the bells and whistles and hooting and hollering in a casino, I’m home in the quiet of my surrounding still hearing the buzzing in my head. Meditating has helped me to let that stress go. I am falling asleep quicker, quieter, deeper.

I think that’s why this morning, after sleeping only six hours, I woke up before my 9:30 a.m. alarm went off. I felt clear headed and energized enough to dress nicely, gather the important things I needed for the day, and took off to accomplish my chores clear headed.

And even though I had limited time to get ready for the day ahead, I would not leave the house until I sat down for another morning’s meditation.

After my classes I kept an appointment with my hairdresser. This made for a long day out, but gratefully I have the night off. My hairdresser is the woman I had sponsored at one time, but who relapsed. Thankfully she is back in the program again, and thankfully, even though I don’t sponsor her anymore, we have remained good friends. She has five months sober now.

It was a quiet, relaxing, spa afternoon having my hair washed and brushed, blow dried, and pampered, all the while talking about the treatment for alcoholism.

We get to have a program that teaches us how to live which not everybody gets. What a gift!

Every day matters.

Paranoid, Pronoia, and Balance

2011-11-06T15:20:00.000-08:00

I didn’t realize when I chose to take on a part-time position that I would be experiencing such influx of insecurity. Realistically I knew what I could expect in the amount of hours I might be given, and the amount of money I would be reduced to living upon, but I could have never anticipated how my new living arrangements would affect me emotionally.

The good news about all of this is I feel I am in a new classroom for learning, but not just acquiring mental knowledge, which I’m sure helps, but to practice newer, deeper principals in how to live sober.

First of all I have to admit I am making a lot of mistakes. Mistakes that I wish I would not make but otherwise feel powerless in controlling. Mistakes that bring me to a place of awareness.

Looking up the meaning of paranoid, which is what I’m feeling, undue suspicion, fear of persecution, I’m afraid that the world is out to get me. Well, maybe not the world but a particular person or two cause me concern. Then I realize how often I fall into this trap of thinking. I do this a lot.

If I were to act the opposite, which would be pronoia, "the sneaking feeling one has that others are conspiring behind your back to help you", I again probably would not be in a sane state of mind. My sponsor has told me of times when she’d sit on the bus and tell the stranger sitting next to her the intimate details of her sex life.

Transcending through the process has brought me back to the thing that I can do to relieve my mental illness. Working the steps and turning it over to my HP is the only solution. I certainly am powerless and feel like my life is unmanageable.

There is a Power Greater than myself who can restore me to sanity.

I’ve always resented the saying that my mind is a dangerous neighborhood. Today I accept not going there alone.

After prayer and meditation my day does feel safer, steadier, in the face of everything my life is exactly the way it is suppose to be. Grateful that I have everything I need, the evidence is before me that I am alright.

I guess the real word of the day is BALANCE: “mental steadiness or emotional stability; habit of calm behavior, judgment.” God; grant me the serenity...

"If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how hard we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could wish these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshaled by the will, were NOT sufficient; they failed utterly.” ~ BB; pg 44

The book continues:

"Lack of power, THAT was our dilemma. We HAD to find a power by which we could live, and it HAD to be a POWER GREATER THAN OURSELVES."

Every day matters.

Modifications of the Day

2011-11-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

Tiara checking out the cold, wet stuff on the balcony.

Wet weather suddenly precipitated us into Winter here in the higher elevations of Arizona.

Last night our little town received at least a couple inches of snow, albeit this morning it is mostly just wet mushy white patches. It may snow again tonight.

I think snow is beautiful. I’m not fond of the cold weather it brings, yet it hasn't been that uncomfortable. Light flurries that piled up frosty flakes were easy to brush off my car at 4 a.m. when I got off from work.

I worked eight hours. In fact, to be exact, I worked eight hours and 15 minutes. I get caught up in the worry at times, that I’ll not get enough, but the truth is the comment Grace posted on my blog from yesterday. It’s a comfort to be reminded how much of what she said is true.

It was a pleasant night. The gentleman whose rhetoric caused me to worry was silent towards me, yet I could be pleasant in saying hello and thank you when he opened the rope to allow me into the pit. Mostly I concentrated on all the other people I work with whose friendly demeanor and welcoming attitude brings me to feel apart of this environment.

Awakened this morning by the blaring of my phone ringing, way too early to my liking, I think I really should turn that thing off before I go to sleep. But it is what it is and I’m awake so I check my calls. Lydia left a message, which I returned later, and my son sent a text message informing me that he wants to come visit for Christmas.

My son turned 21 last month.

There are some issues with my son, but I love him dearly and miss him. He messaged me this same sentiment last month. That’s when I invited him to come spend Christmas with me. But he wasn’t ready to answer that invitation then and since I didn’t hear from him for a while I decided to make other plans.

You know, my sister and I have been on a road to healing our relationship for some time now. I’m happy to say that this effort has been both satisfying and rewarding. Not having been back to California (where my family lives) in years, I made a decision to visit her home over the holidays.

We’ve been working on the details of the plan together. Our last conversation had her offering to pay for my plane ticket to Los Angeles. I seriously considered this alternative to driving as the way to go, yet I told her I would think about it. I’m glad I did.

Today everything changed.

Now I’m shopping for airline tickets for my son to come out from Wisconsin. “I’m sick of the snow.” he said, although his neighborhood still had not received any.

I got on the phone with my son. I called his dad. Still planning on going to California, there are so many details I feel I need to attend. As I proceeded into my day feeling excited and agitated, I realized something was missing.

So I stopped.

In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. we relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. ~ BB, pg 86

I went into my daily routine of prayer and meditation. It’s nice to remember that I can stop and start my day all over again whenever I feel the need.

I ate breakfast, talked to Lydia, then reconciled my bank account to check out my reality. I made a decision to not make any more decisions today. Tomorrow I will explore airline options and see how this adventure unfolds.

Every day matters.

What's So Funny About Peace, Love & Understanding?

2011-11-04T17:40:00.000-07:00

Don’t ask for patience, that’s what I’ve got to say. In doing so God will put you in the longest lines.

This is how I feel about looking at anger issues for myself. It seems every time I turn around I am being shown how deep I carry the threads of this emotion.

Things have been going very well. I was taking some new information and applying them to ways in which to handle myself, putting forth more effort to see myself acting more compassionate and unselfish.

For example; Halloween I was coming off an hour of dealing where nobody tipped, my usual source of disgruntlement. Instead of walking off muttering under my breath, I ended the game by giving everyone candy. The Universe supplies the meeting of my needs. I don’t have to harbor ill feelings toward this particular group.

Yet, at the end of my night I overheard a conversation that deeply hurt my feelings, and although it was not directed at me, I felt it was something said that threatened my financial security. A co-worker was spouting his usual rhetoric of opinion that on-call dealers should be given less hours.

How dare he take from me to give more to himself. Well, that’s what I thought he was implying.

Waking up the next day this overheard conversation was the first thing that came to mind. Before I even turn down the covers and throw my legs to the side of the bed, as soon as I open my eyes, I’m mentally barraged with all the reasons why I dislike this guy.

Okay, -- I don’t have to spend the day trapped in this raging hamster wheel of thinking. I call my sponsor to spell out for her my reasoning behind the resentment.

I didn’t initially like what my sponsor had to say either, but I listened, and when she gives me a course of action, like writing an inventory on my resentment, I did follow through.

Becoming aware of my long learned, deeply ingrained thinking patterns takes a lot of patience. Changing the things I can really isn’t difficult. It just takes consistency. I washed the dishes, cleaned all the appliances in the kitchen, baked scalloped potatoes from scratch, focusing instead on the task at hand. All these things helped.

My sponsor reminded me: "When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically." ~ BB; page 64.

I went to an Al-Anon meeting where I took a commitment to lead the meeting next week, listened to the group talk about judgmental thinking, then went to the grocery store to buy my week’s groceries.

My thoughts of condemnation, fear, and anger don’t completely leave me. I am given huge chunks of time where my obsession is diverted.

Today when I woke up I went straight to prayer and meditation. It has been the best and the true form of help for me with this resentment.

I am feeling better today. I get to be reminded that I work for a new employer, my HP. Understanding, after having looked at my part and why I feel so touched by distant comments, I am feeling afraid and insecure about changes going on with my job. I don’t know how comfortable I am remaining in an on-call position where I have no security.

Feeling angry -- and sometimes, the act of blaming -- is a natural and necessary part of accepting loss and change -- of grieving. We can allow ourselves and others to become angry as we move from denial toward acceptance. ~ November 4 in the The Language of Letting Go; Melody Beattie.

And as i walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes
So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony.

'cause each time i feel it slippin' away,

just makes me wanna cry.
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding? ohhhh
What's so funny 'bout peace love & understanding?
~ Elvis Costello

Let it begin with me.

Every day matters.

Harvest Festival

2011-10-30T16:56:00.000-07:00

I had read in the local paper that there was to be an annual Harvest Festival held downtown.

So I was grateful when I woke up early and decided to follow through on a plan to get outside of my congested surroundings, my congested thinking, my little hole in the wall, to check out what is going on around me.

It was surely a festive occasion. I especially enjoyed seeing all the kids, both large and small, dressed up in costumes that made me smile.

In beautiful warm 75 degree weather, I did what I love to do. I took pictures.

Then while walking home I stopped at a nearby sandwich shop, purchased a Bavarian Ham and cheese sandwich with a caramel frappuccino, sat outdoors on the patio, and called it a wonderful day.

Every day matters.

Anger: One Letter Away From Danger

2011-10-28T15:56:00.000-07:00

If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison. ~ BB pg 66

One night during dinner I was arguing with my husband (yes, I was clean and sober at the time) and in a fit of rage I threw a bowl of cole slaw against the wall. To my own defense I will add that I was pregnant with our second child. This became the defining moment for my husband to decide that he would not have any more children with me.

Can you blame him?

It took me years to clean up that mess. Mayonnaised cabbage clung behind picture frames hung on the wall and in the crevices of furniture.

I’m still having to take a look at my negative reactive anger issues today.

I’ve had a great weekend, off kilter from the majority of the working world, unless you are in the entertainment-service occupations, my usual days off are Wednesday and Thursday.

This weekend I talked on the phone to distant program friends, called my sponsor, went to the Wednesday afternoon Al-Anon meeting and, of course, found my way to what I now call my “home group”, the Thursday Night Toolbox AA meeting.

There is a great group of long term recovery in both of these meetings. I get to learn so much.

The funniest thing said in the AA meeting, where the topic was anger:

“I heard when we first come into these rooms we need to identify if we are psychotic or neurotic. Psychotics believe 2 plus 2 equal 5. They don’t have a clue about reality. Neurotics know that 2 plus 2 equal 4, they are just angry about it.”

I guess I could relate, feeling a times that I’m a little of both.

“I know I’m in trouble when I can feel the swell of troops marching in, gathering their artillery, planning for war.”

I know that feeling of tension in my chest.

We are all afflicted with this God-given, human emotion. In the right circumstance it would be appropriate to become angry. It’s an indicator. How I’ve handled my anger has caused me great problems.

These are the things I’ve done:

Completely forget the Steps, Slogans, Big Book and Recovery
Mirror the other person’s abusive behavior
Insist on controlling the other person’s behavior and mood
Continue to punish the other person
Develop a long list of “shoulds” and “oughts”
Obsess on “If only” and “What if”
Demand to know why
Fight
Pout
Escape into health (I’m fine. You’re the crazy person.)
Get angry
Play the martyr
Plan my suicide. (I’ll show you; I’ll kill myself--so I drank and blacked out using drugs)

(From the book: You Can't Make Me Angry; Dr. Paul O.)

Last night I decided to do an online Big Book word search using the word “anger“. This is what I found:

Because the words danger and anger have the same letters, in red letters the search kept telling me: danger, danger, danger! I thought that was interesting.

The solution:

As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions. We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves. ~ BB pg 87-88

When he angers you, remember that he is very ill. ~ BB pg 108

Oh, and here’s a great Al-Anon warning:

His wife is one of those persons who really feels there is something rather sinful about these commodities (her husband is sober, but he drinks too much coffee and smokes cigarettes), so she nagged, and her intolerance finally threw him into a fit of anger. He got drunk. ~ BB pg. 135

Anger. How important is it, really?

Every day matters.

Happy As I Make Up My Mind To Be

2011-10-27T16:26:00.000-07:00

Mural on the side of Art Store building downtown.

I’ve slowly, insidiously, almost unbeknown to me until it smacks me in the gut, acquired resentments toward a group of new employees at my work. They are professionals from a downsized career course that lead them to casino dealing to again become employable.

They are proficient, skilled, well trained, industrious, and ambitious. I, on the other hand, have been in this business for so long that I have come to rest on my laurels.

Hence my feelings of jealousy, disgust, dissatisfaction, unhappiness, annoyance, bitterness, malice and ill will toward this small group.

I’m sure, in my malicious little head, these new employees are judging me, talking about me behind my back, and generally just don’t like me at all.

All of this leads to my all time favorite state of mind: victim hood.

Stop! Stop! Stop!

A good friend of mine says if we say “Stop!” three times out loud to ourselves we can actually stop the brain from going into this destructive thinking. I am learning to change how my mind works. I don’t have to harbor and fester these resentments.

Taking a look at my part I can find gratitude in what my new coworkers are teaching me. Instead of comfortably operating in my mostly usual auto-pilot mode, I can wake up to putting more constructive effort into my work.

I have lived in victim mode for most of my life. It’s a path of least resistance that my brain travels, yet it’s never too late to change. Every day I can practice not allowing myself to fall into this well oiled trap.

A baby elephant is trained not to wander by tying it’s leg with a rope to a post hammered into the ground. When the baby grows into it’s adult strength he easily can break that rope, but won’t because it has been taught that it can’t.

Practice, practice, practice and baby steps. Becoming aware that any little thing can set me off into negativity allows me the opportunity today to change. I can break the old neuron connection to build new cognitive bridges which enables better happiness.

I can see my part, note what it is that I need to change, stop making up stories in my head (that probably aren't true), and let it go. No one from this group has been anything but nice to me. Why I think what I think is just old behavior.

I'm asking God to remove my character defects, or as I heard in the Al-Anon meeting yesterday, finding areas of improvement with God's help.

I am as happy as I make up my mind to be.

Why not? It’s so much more pleasant than the old alternative.

Peace!

Every day matters.

Bitter With The Better

2011-10-24T15:04:00.000-07:00

I’m telling ya! It’s a constant endeavor, every day, to keep my head on the positive side of thinking. It’s makes sense as to why we say: One Day At A Time.

When I took this casino gig back in June I would have been grateful to take any schedule they would give me. Only four month later I’m a little spoiled, a little expectant, a little in the mind set of “don’t they know who I am?”

In order for me to maintain a peaceful mindset I always need to go back to my original agenda: Let God be my new employer.

When I allow this belief to glide me through my day I experience perfect acceptance. But nothing is perfect, and neither am I, so I work on it.

This week has brought the business more customers than usual. I worked 10 hours on Saturday night. Tired and a little resentful, I tried to get out of it but there was no one else that would stay, I pushed through knowing I would get my break later. Last night, when the casino was empty and I was bored, I was able to go home a couple hours early.

I give; I get. That’s not a bad deal.

This week I’m working five days again. That’s a good thing except one day I’m slated to start at 8 p.m., not the usual 6 p.m. I’m used to. Again the small hairs on the back of my neck flare up.

But wait a minute. Where did my gratitude go in having a job? In getting to work? To being put on the schedule at all?

The ODAT (One Day At A Time) reading for today was perfect for me. It said:

Am I expecting everything in life to be just the way I want it? Maybe I ought to take a good look at those expectations and see if they are realistic for my particular situation. If I’m constantly reaching for the moon, I’m going to miss a lot of pleasant things right here in my little world.

I’m bemoaning luxury problems. I’d rather choose to live in the serenity of the pleasantness right here in my little world.

My little world has more than everything I need. I’m changing my mind to choose serenity. Just for today.

Every day matters.

Got Talent?

2011-10-21T16:23:00.000-07:00

"I wouldn’t have so much trouble with interpersonal relationships if it weren’t for my special talent.

The Bible says if you don’t use your talent, it will be taken away from you. As mentioned, I have this special ability to see the fault, the defect, the thing that is wrong with any person, place, thing or situation.

I see right to the core of the problem.

Not only can I see it, I need to tell you about it because I’m sure you want to know."

~ Dr. Paul O.; You Can’t Make Me Angry

Hummm?

I laughed at this hardily because I related so much.

Every day matters.

I Am Responsible

2011-10-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

An old friend from the government job sent me an email inviting me to go to coffee. He gave me his cell phone number and I called him. The time that he wanted to meet was somewhat inconvenient to me, but I chose to change my daily habit to his agenda, and I’m so glad I did.

My preference would have been to lazily meander around my home, unencumbered, no encroachment. It’s the first response I like in living my selfish life, but that isn’t living--is it?

So I got out of bed early, got myself ready, and walked to the coffee shop just a block from where I live. It was easy.

Our history as friends stems from the many hours of talking while on break at my old job. My friend and I have lived in many of the same places, he’s an ex-Marine, a Viet Nam Veteran suffering with PTSD from 18 months in combat, and he has talked to me on numerous occasions about his heavy drinking.

I'm no expert on floods or starvation, war or pestilence, abuse or persecution, or any other disaster, but when it comes to drinking I sure can relate. Today my friend talked about his six months without a drink.

He told me he went to the VA Medical Center yesterday for a physical. Since he’s stopped drinking his labs all came back healthy and normal, but even more amazing was the fatty deposits in his liver has disappeared. He even dropped 30 pounds to a healthy weight. His doctors told him if he didn't quit drinking he'd suffer more painful inflammation of his pancreas. At 62 years old, he is feeling and looking the best he’s ever been. I have to agree. He did look great.

At the end of our meeting he rode off looking lean and clean on his big Harley machine, and I made my way back home again to catalog new pictures that I’d taken on my walk.

Physical and mental sobriety are only the beginning, as wonderfully life giving and miraculous as this is. I didn’t bother to mention to him more miracles to come, the hard work to emotional and spiritual sobriety. I really didn't do anything except suit up and show up today, but I did speculate for my friend that because he is taking care of himself he may give himself another 30 years to live.

“I hope so,” he said, “I just signed up for my social security and I want to live long enough to get back what I put into the system.”

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone-even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. ~ BB; pg. 85

When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help,

I want the hand of A.A. always to be there.

And for that: I am responsible.

Every day matters.

Free Wednesday

2011-10-19T20:28:00.000-07:00

Planning my day ahead this morning, looking forward to another day off, I had some things in mind that I really wanted to do. I checked online for an Al-Anon meeting I‘ve never been to. 3:00 p.m. Perfect. It’s an odd timed meetings but just right for me since I slept too late for a noon meeting and am usually working during evening meetings.

Yet, as well timed as this meeting seemed, I rather had it in my head to do this other project instead. Timing the light at the lake seemed important. I’ve missed going out to photograph many beautiful areas where I live. I put it on my list of things to do today to drive to Linx Lake. We have five lakes in this area. It’s been a while since I’ve been to this one.

Dressed, out the door, in the car I slid an old Cat Stevens CD into the stereo, proceeding into my nice, calm, serene day. On my way to the edge of town where this lake exists I thought I would accomplish some business and take care of my car insurance payment.

Crash! Slam! Boom! My plan did not work out as I had planned. My expectations of paying the bill then moving on from the insurance agent went awry. Unexpectedly I learned that payment confusions from a couple months had not been resolved. The determination of the company’s solution was not in my favor. Surprised by this I became infuriated.

Leaving the office I turned to go home. I was going there to fume. The clock on my dash board stated 2:45 so I gave my alternatives a second thought. Maybe I really should go that Al-Anon meeting.

The topic today: Serenity.

I found a small group of women, all of whom shared before me as I was last in the circle. Wonderful. This gave me an hour to calm down, take perspective, listen to other’s ideas and experience, shared about the deviation in the plan of my day, then decided I would go back to follow my original course to Linx Lake.

Look, I’m human. I get mad, frustrated, thrown off track, and that’s okay. It’s what I do with these feelings that determines how I choose serenity and what I have to do to get there. I must have made the right choice today to go to the meeting because in awesome gratitude, in the glory of fall, in the letting go and moving on, I had a great day after all.

When I pulled into the lake’s parking area I dug out my wallet to pay the $5 park fee. Well worth it, it thought, for already I was touched by it’s peacefulness. I stood in front of the box to drop in my payment when I spotted the large sign on the board before me:

PARK FREE ALL DAY ON WEDNESDAYS

What a gift.

Every day matters.

More To Sobriety Than Just Not Drinking

2011-10-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

Photo by Judy @ Prescott Area Daily Photo

It’s a pleasant day off today, having a birthday get-together for Lydia. You remember Lydia, my friend from the government job. As it turned out, soon after I quit my position there she quit her job too. She did not have another job to go to like I did.

Yet, it’s her belly-button birthday and I have not seen her for a while so we made it a special occasion by planning a walk to an ice cream specialty store at the square. My AA friend from the casino also came to join us. But before our third to the party showed up, Lydia confessed that a couple weeks ago she had a beer.

Fourteen years she had been sober, yet at this time the fear and anxiety of leaving her job got the best of her.

I asked her what it was like.

She said the beer tasted good, just like she remembered. Her initial reaction was the relief she was looking for, but then she found herself falling back into the old behavior of having to hide it, feeling sick to her stomach, all the guilt came back, then she went to bed to sleep it off. After that her fear and anxiety came back, now with feelings of remorse and regret. Still she has not told her husband.

I can’t predict what will happen to Lydia next. She may not drink again, or it may make it easier to drink the next beer. Perhaps one drink did not turn out disastrous, but permission to drink the next one might. Every alcoholic is different. I know when I relapsed there was no stopping until I hit bottom again, and again, and again. Then enough was enough.

Lydia stopped going to meetings years ago. Oh, she’d go to one or two with me but then make excuses why she wouldn’t go to any more. I could share with her all the recovery I’d gather in my own course of actions, but I could never do for her what she could have done for herself.

Dr. Paul wrote in “You Can’t Make Me Angry” a quote from Father Barney, a Jesuit Priest, who compares the recovery process to a baseball diamond:

He pictured physical sobriety as first base, mental sobriety as second base, emotional sobriety as third base and spiritual sobriety as home plate…once alcoholics get physically sober and pass first base, the problems they face are essentially those faced by Al-Anon members. From that point on, both AA and Al-Anon members struggle toward the same goal--increasing their mental, emotional and spiritual sobriety.

I won't judge my friend for drinking, as sad as that is, because I struggle too with my emotional state of relapsing into a dry-drunk state of mind. It’s really hard. It’s often painful. I’m discouraged and self-loathing and judgmental and I abhor those days or hours or moments.

My relief has come from this: I go to meetings. As embarrassing as it feels to be honest, I talk about what is really going on with me. People still come up to me after the meeting and tell me that they are glad to hear what I had to say. In fact, I have made some new friends in the people who have approached me.

I work the steps, put it on paper, call my sponsor and read to her what I wrote. She then advises me of a good next course of action. Usually, most often, it is the advice of giving it to God. Usually, most often, she helps me get in touch with my part of the situation so I can look at what needs to change. That's the part I turn over.

Grateful that the physical drinking part has left my life, I can’t say there aren’t moments when I think like Lydia and desire that escape out of the feeling. Doing the work is time consuming, I won’t say harder, but the results have been liberating.

Lately I have been happier. Not that the things that were bothering me before have disappeared. All of the unknowns in my life that disturb me are put in their proper place, in God’s hands, so I feel comfortable in the right now.

Spending the afternoon with my friends is a requirement for my happiness. I’m learning that for my mental, emotional, and spiritual journey I need to be aware of this need and provide that for myself.

It was a beautiful day at the square, the warm autumn sun casting afternoon shadows on the changing leaves. Talking to friends about everyday things took me to a place where I learned something personal about them and myself.

Every day matters.

Not Lost, Just Undiscovered

2011-10-16T06:00:00.000-07:00


I love the question mark which implies anything can be ahead.

With an hour left to work last night I was asked to clock out early. I asked for the correct time so I could sign out accurately, left the pit, gathered my belongings from the break room, and walked out the door.

It’s not that I didn’t have feelings of fear about being asked to leave, but what would I gain if I had expressed them? My schedule has been minimized to four days a week, and even in the four days that I am showing up I am not being given the full eight hours to work.

Other employees are also being effected. Everyone is losing hours, part timers and full time alike. The casino had hired a group of new dealers, which they always do at this time of the year, and when this happens hours are divided. Not to mention that this time of year business always slows down. I do not like how this will effects my paycheck, but it is not my place to say.

So I choose to focus on this: I just came off a great run of almost 40 hours for many weeks extended. It’s more than I anticipated in the beginning of my foray into casino world. During this time I was able to put some money away in a savings account, and I also took advantage of some very good paychecks to pay off some outstanding bills.

The promises state that the “fear of financial insecurity will leave us”, but it does not say that the insecurity will go away. I am choosing to not live in fear.

I’m sick of living in fear. I’ve just had enough of it.

My sponsor has recommended that I read “The Imperfection of Spirituality” by Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham. From this I took to myself a passage quoted by a Trappist monk, Thomas Merton:

Once Merton met a Zen novice who had just finished his first year of living in a monastery. Merton asked the novice what he had learned during the course of his novitiate, half expecting to hear of encounters with enlightenment, discoveries of the spirit, perhaps even altered states of consciousness. But the novice replied that during the first year in the contemplative life he has simply learned to open and close doors.

This is what I am doing today. I am learning to open and shut doors. Trying not to impetuously slam them, not hurrying from one place to another, not building doors that are not there, I am simply being.

I don’t know how this new hourly arrangement will work out for me financially, but I know right now I have all my needs met. It’s time for me to learn who I am outside the description of what I do for a living.

What do I do to live?

That’s a hard question for me to answer right now, yet right now I seem to have all this time on my hands to figure that out.

“I’m not lost, not lost, just undiscovered”, sings a favorite artist, James Morrison.

Every day matters.

Still Here

2011-10-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

I’ve been struggling these past couple of weeks, which is why I’ve found it difficult to write. Wrestling with my own concerns about recovery and spirituality, unable to put words to it, I settled to letting things settle for a while.

Making a decision to not make a decision about moving finds me before a flood gate of new experiences, feelings, concepts, ideas. It’s mostly confusing and uncomfortable. It’s not what I do, sitting in one place for a long period of time, with no chaos to distract or misdirect my thinking.

Still, I must admit, I find myself periodically sitting in front of a map throwing darts. Dreaming of where I could go next, the Virgin Islands, or Toledo, Ohio. Toledo has come up now because I Googled new casinos opening in the country that I could apply for a position with. Really? What am I thinking? Toledo?

I’m sure it’s a nice place to live and I could think of some good reasons to move there. It’s a seven hour drive to my children’s home. My mother has family in Ohio. Not that I’ve had any interest in the past to know or participate in my mother’s family before, but maybe now would be a good time to start. Or not.

There is so much truth in what Mr. Fox wrote about in the parable of the music hall that I copied to begin this writing yesterday. My life as a military brat had taught me there is no place as memorable as where we’ve been, or no place as wonderful as where we are going, there’s always something wrong with where we are now.

I’m getting in touch with my negative mentality, a character defect that wakes up with me every morning, my need to run away to find that which is better when what I suspect can be found right here, right now, exactly where I am.

What I think I’m looking for is not somewhere over the rainbow.

Today, in the moment, in everything that surrounds me and that is--is exactly where I’m suppose to be. Quiet. Serene. Becoming aware of myself in ways I’ve never seen before, although it does not always look pretty, it’s the truth. The truth will set us free.

So it’s with gratitude that I face these disturbing times of reflection and revelation that makes me wake up to facts about myself that need to change, that can change, that will change because I believe with I’m learning these things now for a reason.

Not putting everything I own in a box. Not calling the moving van or outlining my own course on a map, but looking down a road that we trudge to happy destiny doesn’t mean I literally have to go someplace.

And it doesn’t mean I can’t someday move to the Virgin Islands. Someday I may.

Once I was holed up within myself afraid to move, afraid to come out in the light of day because then you would know who I really am; drunk, loaded, lost, insecure, a lunatic without the presence of mind to live in a normal world.

Today my life has grown to huge proportions in all the tools I’ve learned to carry that allow me to function and work my life well. I’ll always be broken by the disease that I carry but that’s okay.

I’m finding that it’s in the cracks of who I am that God is able to come in.

So I sit.

Every day matters.

Prelude With A Parable

2011-10-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

Let us suppose for the sake of example that a deaf man goes to Carnegie Hall to a Kreisler recital; and that he happens to be a very foolish person. He sits in the middle of the orchestra and, of course, he does not hear a sound. He is annoyed at this, and changes his ticket for a seat in the first balcony. Here, naturally, he fares no better, and, foolishly thinking that the acoustics of the building are at fault, moves again to the top balcony. Still he cannot hear a sound; so now he goes downstairs again and this time chooses a seat in the very front of the orchestra, only a few yards from the violinist.

Of course, he has no better fortune here, and so he stamps out of the theatre in a huff, declaring that evidently Kreisler cannot play, and that the hall is badly designed for music.

It is easy for us to see that the trouble is really within himself, and that he cannot remedy matters by merely changing his seat. The only thing for him to do is to overcome his deafness in some way, and then he will enjoy the concert. He must change himself.

This parable applies literally to all the problems of life. We see inharmony because of a spiritual lack within ourselves. As we gain greater spiritual understanding, the true Nature of Being opens up. As long as we move from one place to another in search of harmony, or try to bring it about by changing outer things, we are like the foolish man who could not hear Kreisler, and ran about all over the theatre. ~ Emmett Fox

How The Game Is Played

2011-09-30T15:51:00.000-07:00

Last week while dealing one particular blackjack game I had two players on my table. One was open, gregarious, and very, very generous. The other was quiet, playing for his own profit.

The fun player was placing $25 chips in front of his bet as a tip for me if he should win. Fortunately, most of the time, due to the luck of the cards, he won. The other player was also winning. Not once did he put a tip on his bet for the dealer, although he did throw toward me two one dollar chips as a tribute to his gratitude.

Insulted, I thought about the four or five hundred dollars “I had just given him”. This is not how the game is played!

Toward the end of my time on that game the very generous gamer had given me more than $200 in tips. He asked the pit boss if he could be “comped” a meal, which means because he is such a high-end player the house would give him dinner for free.

Laughingly I replied, “Forget the comp, I’ll go get my purse and buy you dinner myself.” Beaming with gratitude to his kindness, I knew I was offering something I could not realistically do, but it told him I appreciated him.

The two dollar tipper then chimed in asking, “Will you buy me a dinner too?”

I said nothing to his comment, in fact, I preferred to ignore him since I felt my alternative would have been to say something rude. For me I considered this growth. If I can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.

Honestly, that was growth for me in that I have been know to react, give smart ass replies, talk from the top of my head. “I never get in trouble for things I don’t say.” I’ve heard this a lot in Al-Anon. Being quiet at the appropriate times has saved me from making rude and hurtful remarks.

Yet what would it have cost me if I had just stated “Sure! I’ll buy you dinner.”

My sponsor pointed out to me that it would have only cost me my pride and my ego since I am not actually allowed to buy people anything. I can talk the talk, but my gesture was merely my way of showing gratitude to one, and punishing the other with my silence.

I get it, people change when it’s time to change, and for me my changes have come slowly, but they have come. Then more will be revealed and I’m learning that a simple word, no matter what the words actually are, focusing on the intent instead, can be the place where love exists and God moves in.

Reveling in the fact that I did not do as badly as I once might have, I can see today where I can do better. It’s only an encouragement to me in the opening of new understanding. Time takes time.

Being the little light in the corner, as my sponsor likes to call it, narrows the road in my behavior. God lives where love meets. It becomes within my capability to bring God into a casino. It’s not so much about words, it’s about the commitment of my actions.

“Do you know the difference between praying in church and praying in a casino?”

No is the answer from my players when I tell them this joke.

“When you pray in a casino you mean it.”

It’s meant to be funny, but only because there’s some level of truth in it.

Every day matters.

The Set Aside Prayer

2011-09-23T00:08:00.000-07:00

“You don’t drink, even if your ass is falling off. If your ass is falling off then you put it in a brown paper bag and take it to a meeting. There we will teach you how to sit differently.” ~ my AA sponsor.

It’s an old AA saying, she was recalling it as I was telling her what a disappointing, depressing week I had been having. It’s my old rigid, perfectionist behavior trying to control everyone else. I become handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice, just like it says on page 47 of the Big Book. My old behaviors crop up and hit me in the gut.

This makes me very unhappy.

When in reality what I’m trying to do now is move into more acceptance, maybe not so much what other’s are doing but mostly about where I am and what I am doing. I’m not cured.

I’m merely putting out there all the judgment I hold within toward myself. I’m told when I can let myself off the hook, other’s will be set free.

I heard someone say once when I’m hit with an onslaught of emotional upheaval, look at the calendar. What’s going on that may have some connection to a particular time?

Yep, this past week contained my belly-button birthday. Not that it wasn’t met with many friends and love from those in my life all around me. But it also came with expectations and judgments from myself that I should be better, healed, different. Looking at where I am in my life, comparing myself to others, I think I should be farther along.

I relapse sometimes in my emotional sobriety. I can go all the way to the bottom shelf in self esteem imagining what I think is important. This is dangerous because what I imagine can sometimes be fall-out from my alcoholic thinking.

So I check it out with others.

I called, like I’ve learned, other members in the program, my sponsor in particular, both to be specific, being honest about what I was doing. It’s good to get outside perspective and direction on what I can do different.

It’s good to let some laughter in, not take myself so seriously, allow myself to be loved.

Tonight I took the brown paper bag with my ass in it and went to a meeting. It was the perfect place for me to be, and when my number was called, as this is a ticket meeting, I shared honestly to nodding heads with hugs after.

It’s okay that I’m not perfect, my ego is shattered but that’s the point, isn’t it? To let my ego fall by the wayside to that God can do for me what I cannot do for myself. And I can do the things I can.

My latest assignment is to recite the “Set Aside” prayer every day.

“Dear God, please set aside anything I think I know
about myself, about my disease, about the Big Book, the
12 Steps, the Program, the Fellowship, the people in the
fellowship, and all spiritual terms, especially you God; so
that I may have an open mind and a new experience with
all these things. Please help me see the Truth. Amen.”

Every day matters.

Change Is In The Air

2011-09-14T15:24:00.001-07:00

It smells like September. I’ve always loved this month. This is the month of my birth, birthdays and celebrations. This is the month that as a child I would start a new school year with wild anticipation of great things to come. This is the month, for me, where all things feel like they are starting over again.

I cut my hair. I pull sweaters out of the back of my closet. The buoyancy of the cool air brings promise of new colors, new experiences, a new season, more changes.

Optimistic, this is my favorite time of the year.

Today it’s a balmy, sunny 68 degrees. All my windows are open. It’s pleasant in my office and a great day to be outside.

It’s been a couple weeks now since the table games manager where I work had been let go. Who knows the reason why, but we know in this business the higher up the echelon ladder you are the more precarious and volatile is your job security. Casino managers rarely make it past a couple years in their position.

I pray for my ex-boss because I know when one door closes another door opens. He is meant to be gently pushed toward another direction. I hold no animosity toward him. He’s always been good to me. I wish him the best.

As usual, when changes like this happen there comes a great swirl of other modifications. New thinkers with new ideas take over and they want to make their mark. The rumor mill is grinding away at all the new renovations coming.

There are two directions concerning me that are coming to my ears.

Approached by a pit boss, I was asked if I was hired full time yet. I answered with my usual response; I won’t get a full time position because I don’t deal poker.

That, I’m told, is going to change now. Poker dealers and blackjack dealers are going to be divided with each department holding their own. I would like this new change if it actually transpires.

The other rumor going around is all on-call dealers (which is what I am) will be pushed back on the schedule to two days a week.

That’s the best and worst of what I am hearing.

We are still waiting, waiting to see what happens next. All I know is I am still on the schedule. This week is my final week of working six days, and next week I am scheduled to work my usual five.

Whatever happens next I know that right now I am exactly where I am suppose to be. If and when things change I will get the opportunity to explore my options, whatever my choices that will present themselves at the time.

We do our jobs. We do the best we can. When one door closes then another door opens, and that’s the way it is.

Every thing changes.

Every day matters.

Bad For Good

2011-09-13T16:30:00.000-07:00

Integrity is going over to the elderly couple’s house even though I know I won’t be able to fill the bird feeders in the rain. As I wake up in my cozy house not really wanting to go anywhere, I consider the fact that both these people have dementia. They won’t remember me when I show up, let alone recall the conversation we had yesterday about hungry birds.

But I go anyway.

I know I am not going over there to work on the bird feeders, but I can check on how they are doing. There’s always something I can do to help, even if it is just sitting down to talk for a few minutes. That’s pretty much what happened.

Earlier this week my sponsor, who has been the primary visitor to this couple, talked to me about the disintegrating circumstances of their ability to live on their own. As you know from a previous post, Jay was ambulanced off to the hospital. We did not expect him to come home. Yet he did.

Elle, 85 years old, is in no condition to care for him. They won’t call for professional in home health care, even though the hospital sent him home with written instructions to find someone. I don’t think they are mentally capable of putting together such a plan.

Traumatically the situation has worked itself out.

Yesterday when my sponsor went to visit she found Jay and Elle in a fist fight. My sponsor, an RN, is obligated by law to report the altercation which then required the police to show up, which leads to an investigation by Adult Protective Services.

Perfect, I told my sponsor. From my experience working with the Public Fiduciary office, this is the exact thing that needs to happen in order for our friends to get the help they need.

It’s important to note here that we are not family members and have no legal right to order help for them. It’s better, since family members at this time are not coming forward for Elle and Jay, that the proper authorities do what is best.

My sponsor was upset to have had to go through such an ordeal with the police by her side, yet it was something that had to be done.

Sometimes doing the right things for others does not seem like it at the time.

In the long run, this tribulation will work out to do for us what we could not do for Jay and Elle.

Today, after visiting my elderly friends, all seemed calm. Taking just a few minutes out of my day, following through on doing what I said I would do, brings me peace and a sense of well being about myself.

They never remember who I am. I always do.

I learned about bird food today, different types of seeds they use for different types of birds. When it stops raining I will go back to fill the bird feeders.

I learned about integrity today. I’m learning how much it matters for me.

Every day brings a new experience.

That’s why every day matters.

Divine Intervention

2011-09-10T13:35:00.001-07:00

I can’t make my hair dry any faster than the plummeting wind of my hand held blow dryer will force heat onto soaked, stringy strands. It takes what it takes and I’m committed now, to this process, to this routine of getting ready for the work ahead. All I can do is proceed.

Be calm, I tell myself. Stay in your routine. Don’t panic. Just go through the motions. Do the next right thing.

At 4:30 p.m. I turned off the shower, grabbed a towel, looked at the clock in calmness.

At 4:35 I galloped down the stairs to the second level where the dryer in the washroom is tumbling wrinkles out of a couple pairs of black slacks. That’s where it hits me like the weight of impending doom.

Today my schedule to show up at work is different than the usual 6:00 p.m. Today I’m suppose to be there at 5:00! I really didn’t want to screw this up.

The next right thing to do is to call. In my phone’s auto dial is the number that connects me directly to the podium in the middle off the blackjack pit. Donald answers the phone reassuring me that everything is alright but I tell him, it’s not alright with me. I’m going to be late.

Befuddled I tell him I don’t know when I’ll get there, but it will be as soon as possible.

Thank God I had my hair cut a couple days ago. It’s much shorter now, I like it, with lots of varying lengths of layers, cleaner, healthier, and much quicker to dry. I still have to curl it. I still have to get dressed, find all the different pieces to my uniform.

Accessing my emotional state I inventory my anxiety level. I’d put it a five. That’s not much considering. I’m not worried about getting in trouble. If I can clock in before seven minutes after I am not officially late. I will still be alright even at twenty minutes after, it’s considered taking first break.

Putting on my makeup, and don’t miss a step. I know if I panic I will miss an important step that will effect my whole evening. Don’t forget something as important as my clock-in badge, my dealer’s license that has to be worn on the front of my blouse in order to stand behind a table. Take a vitamin. Put on a nice pair of earrings. It’s the only choice I get to dressing in the usual black pants, cranberry shirt that every dealer wears.

I still make a lunch. The one thing I have to do to take care of myself is make sure I eat sometime tonight.

I can’t control the outcome of traffic, make cars go faster, get them to get out of my way. Don’t they know? But it really doesn’t matter. If I get a ticket for driving recklessly, foolishly, it will really detour my intentions. Yet traffic is light.

Running by the blackjack pit to the stairs going up to the break room I wave to Donald, showing him I arrived. He smiles sheepishly and waves back. I like Donald. He’s such an easy going guy.

By the time I reach the time clock I’ve already fished my card out of the bottom of my purse. I run it through the slot like an ATM card at the grocery store when I note the time: 1700.

I don’t know how I made it. It’s exactly 5:00 p.m.

I call it divine intervention. It truly is a miracle.

Every day matters.

Life At The End of the Rainbow

2011-09-09T01:00:00.000-07:00

Father Sam said on a speaker CD from a NA Convention that in his addiction he allowed people to do whatever they wanted to with him. I can relate to that statement.

In my own addiction I thought in order to be accepted by my peers I needed to do whatever they were doing. The list of things I did against my better judgment is endless, but you know what I mean. The details are unimportant, but I know you can relate to my fear of the crowd leaving me behind.

The crowd, the endless stream of nameless faces, it didn’t really matter who they were, were my survival line. They were who I copped drugs from, used with, justified my using by what they did, and lived a dark underground lifestyle that kept me from the sunlight of the spirit.

I could get lost in the crowd. In them I never had to look at myself, or think for myself. I just followed the crowd.

Today I’m hanging out with different people, but this group is teaching me how to think for myself.

Laney and I went out to dinner tonight, like we have been doing these past few Thursday nights. Connecting with Laney felt like instant friendship. We just hit it off.

The great thing about hanging out with Laney is that she has over 25 years sober, and when she shares I hear layers and layers of spirituality that she has learned over the years. I always leave with one thing that she says sticking in my thoughts.

I don’t think she means to be profound. She just talks about stuff. I love having her as a friend.

Lately Laney has been talking about dating. She has explored on-line connection sites, met someone, had a few fun dates with him, decided she didn’t really feel the connection and has since ended it with him. From my vantage point it all looked natural and healthy.

I, on the other hand, told my current pursuer that I am not interested, didn’t even venture out on the first date, and he has since stopped calling.

Laney and I are not the same, nor are we in the same place.

I just didn’t feel it. Not interested. After a few phone calls I felt like there was no connection. But I had some other concerns too.

Then I learned that my concerns were warranted. Intuitive at first, but then I heard confirmation from another woman in the program.

I’ve had my experience with a man in AA who drank after I broke up with him. He felt to me to be needy and desperate to the point where I started to wonder if it was really me he was interested in. Or was he merely looking for a replacement?

I don’t want to be a replacement.

So when this current guy calls me up immediately talking about wanting a relationship, a big red flag went waving.

Wait a minute.

Don’t you want to get to know me first?

Joining us at dinner tonight is my ex-sponsee, the one who relapsed and is back with us again. I’m glad she’s back. In fact, I visited with her yesterday inviting her to join Laney and I tonight, which she did. She’s asked someone else to sponsor her this time, which is not important, just thought I would tell you. I told her I just want her to be happy. She seemed happy at dinner tonight, sober and working her program.

And she told me about this guy who was pursuing me was also pursuing her. Three days sober, she said she had, and he asked her out to coffee knowing the amount of days she had not drank.

I’m grateful I am learning not to make any decisions without giving it some time. Details fall out with time, and with more things to look at I can make a better plan.

I’m not making any judgments about this guy. We all want to be loved and accepted. Me too. I’m always flattered when anyone shows interest in wanting to get to know me better, but I think I’m looking for something different than instant gratification.

My dream relationship would be with a man that I’ve been friends with for a long time and then wake up one day surprised that I fell in love with him.

It could happen.

In the meantime, Laney and my other girlfriends and I hang out. I really appreciate the circle of friends I have today. My life is good.

Living life at the end of the rainbow!

Every day matters.

(I’ve been working six days, and sleeping a lot to keep up with the schedule. I’m checking in the best I can right now but love and think of you guys always…my online recovery group.)

Learning How to Live

2011-08-31T22:14:00.001-07:00

Hallelujah! It’s great to finally have a weekend, two days off. Looking back I think this past week at work has been successful. Things aren’t perfect, but definitely better. Every day I learn new things that help me get through the highly volcanic environment of working in a casino.

My need to be perfect is getting better. I’m learning this through acquiring new skills in my poker game. Progress, not perfection certainly applies here. It’s encouraging to hear players spot that I am recognizing poker hands quicker. I am still making easily correctable mistakes. It’s okay. Surveillance isn’t calling down anymore.

As I was leaving work last night a graveyard dealer offered to teach me poker (real, live poker in an actual poker room, Texas Hold-em type of poker). He has asked me out before. Now this guy has something that I want. He’s smart to make this offer to me because it is something I will definitely take him up on.

Today I spent time with my Al-Anon sponsor, not working on me or my issues, although we do get a little time to talk. This week, like last week, we went to a fellow Al-Anon member’s house who needs help. My sponsor has been going over to clean this 92 year old woman’s house for some time. I invited myself to go with her. I wanted this kind of service work for myself too. My sponsor doesn’t seem to mind that I tag along.

I spent most of my time today talking to Louise. Her husband was carted off in an ambulance today and she’s convinced he’s dying. He may be, but we don’t know yet. So it becomes clear to me, at any and all stages of our lives, the Al-Anon program is still and always will remain essential.

By taking Al-Anon to a shut-in’s home I get to learn about a fellowship that reaches much farther than the rooms we meet in. How fortunate for Louise that she has a friend like my sponsor who teaches me to reach out in action with love and care for one another. It makes me want to stay and remain apart of this family.

With this experience in my back pocket I continued toward the end of my day by going to a meeting with my AA friend that I work with. After the meeting we went out for a bite to eat where we could talk, openly and honestly for the first time since we’ve come to know each other, and I got to learn where she comes from.

Making a connection, getting to know who she is, sharing with her my insecurities and fears about letting other people really get to know me opened the door to find that place with her where I know we are the same.

Driving home, dodging fluorescent cones in the middle of the road while traffic is funneled to one lane, I received a phone call from Dominic, the guy who is asking to date me. He pretty much laid it all out on the line. He wants to venture into learning how to have a relationship. He’s coming up to his 50th birthday. He’s about to turn five years sober. He wants to learn how to live.

I gave him my most honest answer. Commending him for being honest, and open, and willing, I tell him he will find what he is looking for.

I live a wacky life. My schedule at work for the next two weeks is six days each so I am going to be pulling a long haul. With my program and the friends I have now I don’t know what kind of time I have to give him. But I’m willing to answer my phone. I’m willing to not close any doors. I’m willing to meet him tomorrow for dinner with friends and I’m willing to be his friend. If something else happens after that then I will try to show up and be available. But today I don’t know what the future holds.

My sponsor says the smartest thing I could do right now is date two guys at one time. Why not?

As she dropped me off after our service work together, she looked at me to say: This is a pretty healthy life you are living.

Thinking about it, I had to agree. My life is pretty phenomenal.

I’m so glad I am clean and sober. Who knew that from the depths of the fatal disease of alcoholism and drug addiction I would one day look around to find all the hard work to recover would be worth it.

I am learning how to live. Thank you God!

Every day matters.

476, And Still Counting

2011-08-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

Revisiting my first blog here from over three years ago, I thought about what brought me to writing my most innermost thoughts on the world wide web, out in the open for everyone to read.

I had just broken up from a relationship with a recovering alcoholic who relapsed and took my sponsee down with him. My best friend at those meetings asked me to find other meetings for myself so that they could get sober again. That was one of my most painful and confusing times thus far in AA.

Searching the internet for Al-Anon material I found Syd. I started reading Syd’s blog a lot and then I decided I would write my way through the situation I was experiencing, from start to finish. I am still writing today.

It all started here.

After that I literally had to redefine my own program. It’s been three years now, and I’m happy with the program that I have. Nothing is perfect, and I’m always being awakened to new issues about myself to work on and relish, but I have learned to stand on my own two feet in a fellowship where I feel comfortable again.

The most important new addition to my life has been the Al-Anon program. This situation drove me into these rooms where I heard others share their experience about living with alcoholism. I learned that my personal sanity is an inside job.

I’m so grateful today for all that I’ve learned from this, but the lessons I’m learning are far from over.

From time to time I still run into the ex-boyfriend and if we make eye contact I will wave to him from afar. If I see him and he doesn’t see me I will walk on by. Good thing or bad thing, I don’t know, but it’s a door I just prefer not to walk through today. I think it’s best just to let it go.

I do forgive him. Understanding more about the disease and how we are afflicted with it, I think it’s amazing any of us stay sober. Relapse is part of my story. I understand it when it happens to others of us too.

Not just his relapse, but his secretly meeting with my sponsee, their drinking together, my friend asking me to go away, all of it hit me in a tender spot where I questioned my value, my responsibility, and my fault. All of my deep seated emotions of having grown up in an alcoholic environment exploded.

Interesting, I’m thinking today, that the only person I’m sponsoring lives on an island in American territory. How safe is that?

All of this gets touched off again as I’m entertaining phone calls from a fellow member of AA who is asking me to meet him for coffee. He has made himself perfectly clear. He wants to get to know me better. And he has called me every day since then.

My first response is pretty negative. I’m not interested. I don’t have time and my schedule is so wacky that I won’t be able to fit him in. I don’t think I even like him.

Is this contempt prior to investigation? Or am I being intuitive about things that used to baffle me?

When a different member of AA started asking me out I stopped answering my phone when he called. I wouldn’t answer the door when he knocked. When I run into him at the grocery store I run in the opposite direction. That’s how I handled that.

I’m really missing something here on not being direct.

But this time I’m deciding to do something different. What harm can there be in my talking to Dominic? He is merely asking me to coffee and if I don’t want things to go any further than just being friends, I have the power to stop that.

So I answer the phone when he calls, and we talk about our day. I offered him the opportunity to meet with some friends and I as we go out to eat after the Thursday night meeting. If he shows up he can join us.

Other than that, I’m just going about my day doing the next indicated thing I need to do to go to work tonight.

This is my 476th blog page.

Every day matters.

Going Pretty Good Here

2011-08-28T23:38:00.001-07:00

Things are going pretty good here. I learned that it’s not a good thing when the microwave starts arching, even when regular food is in the oven, and from what I’ve read it means I should purchase a new one. I’m not going to do that.

I’m not running the microwave anymore either. I’ve unplugged it and carried it down to the basement. I’m minimizing, I keep telling myself. This will be a test to see if I really need a microwave. So far, over the past couple of days, microwave-less has been successful.

Just in case I decide to run off to the Virgin Islands there will be one less thing I need to get rid of.

I’ve decided that my job at the casino is a breeding ground for disease. I really have to take extra good care of myself to go in there every day. I wonder if I’ve made a mistake in taking this job.

But there are no mistakes. Out of the two choices of jobs that I had to go to, this one pays my bills. This is also a wonderful environment to learn, hone, and express my Al-Anon skills.

Perhaps this is the reason why I’m here.

Friday night I decided to shut down, which is different than detaching with love. Tired of the bullshit and bullying from players, even before anybody said anything to me, I put up my guard against any interaction. Basically I showed up in body only.

Saturday morning I found that this behavior really doesn’t work for me. I just didn’t feel good about myself.

Not every day is a good day. That’s okay. My sponsor says: What do you expect? If we have 90 percent good days, that means we have 36.5 bad days a year. I guess those are pretty good odds.

I told her I’d be happy with 80 percent good days.

Saturday night I got the opportunity to do it all over again, only this time I could adjust my attitude. This worked out much better. Even though I had a relapsing drunk on my game from an AA meeting we’ve attended together, and even though a player from the table next to me yelled “You should be ashamed of yourself” when I rolled over a blackjack on my table and took everybody’s money (I hate it when other people put shame on me), I decided that detachment with love worked a whole lot better.

Besides, bad moments don’t make the whole day bad.

I figure I don’t actually have to love anybody. I can just be nice if that’s the best I can do. Sometimes just being quiet is being nice.

I often hear a woman in our Al-Anon meeting say: I never get in trouble for the things I don’t say.

Tonight the casino was slow, so I came home after working four hours. I can take my relief whenever I can. It gave me an opportunity to write you a few lines to let you know things are going pretty good here.

Every day matters.

Old Ideas

2011-08-25T22:25:00.001-07:00

Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.

The phone rang as I was sitting in the kitchen with my AA friend from work. She had called me earlier that day asking if I would go to a meeting with her. I told her I would.

But the phone call was from work, the supervisor was asking if I would come in to deal cards for a couple of hours. I reacted. I told him I would.

When my friend looked at me from across the table I knew I had done the wrong thing. My second reaction was to justify to her what I had just done.

“You know I need the money. I’m helping my daughter with college.”

I compromised and went with her to half of the meeting, which did not absolve the knot in the pit of my stomach that told me I was wrong, then went home to change my clothes. Gracious, as she always is, she said she understood.

What really happened is by the time I got to work the “emergency” was over. I’m finding this happens a lot when I am called in. I basically sat for an hour and half at “dead” tables, games with no players, because the few players I did have did not win. For some reason I was hotter than firecracker and nobody could win with me.

Leaving soon after I got there, I wished I had not been so hasty in saying I would come to work. I didn’t really have to work for me. I am already getting a five day schedule and two days off is an important part of taking care of myself.

Being raised by a Marine Corp drill instructor I was reared in a household with strong work ethics. By the time I was in the first grade I could bounce a quarter on my bed, the sheets were so tight. And I’m grateful that what I learned has carried me through life with the ability to take care of myself in that I’ve always been a good employee.

The other side of this old thinking is that I think I can work my way through anything, scheming and conniving and controlling using all my might. Even in my recovery, thinking that if I am good enough, strong enough, work hard enough, try to be enough I will get to where I am suppose to be.

Yet not one bit of this type of “work” has relieved me of my self-centered, selfishness, my need to control others, my fears, my worries, it has not improved my spiritual life by one iota.

Looking at this I can see who I’ve made my higher power. Me.

At times it scares me when I think about turning my life over to a Power Greater than myself. I always ask: What if there isn’t a God? How can I trust something I don’t see? Is the concept of God just for weak minded people who need the comfort of a pretend fairy godfather/mother?

Yes. I ask those questions all the time.

The Big Book says: When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.

In baby steps I learn to let go. Looking back, despite my off kilter faith or even the lack of it, I can see that something has been working in my life, something out of my control, that has brought me to where I am now.

I mean, think about it. What else could make a daily user of alcohol and drugs able to live without what we considered the life saving substance? I couldn’t live with my addictions anymore, and thought I would die without it.

The answer is God and it will always be God, it’s the only way I can change. It’s not all the things I do, not even prayer, or going to meetings, or having a sponsor, or reading all the books, although I do the foot work. It’s about living in the solution of God making the actual change in me, and the rest is my journey to getting to God.

The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection.

I made amends to my friend today. I told her that I was wrong to chose working over being with a friend. I promised her if the situation ever came up again I would decline going in to work for the plans I had already made. I asked her what I could do to make it up to her. I let her say whatever else she wanted to add.

I listened to her lovingly, kindly, forgive me.

When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.

Every day matters.

Bake Chicken, Not Fear

2011-08-23T16:42:00.000-07:00

Listening to world news on NPR, I’m baking chicken from a recipe I found on-line through Cooking Light.com. I like cooking from recipes. I like shopping for all the ingredients and then carefully measuring spices and cutting up vegetables, setting the oven to the exact degree recommended, setting the timer.

At least once or twice a week I try a new recipe. I hardly eat the same home cooked meal twice. This type of cooking feels controlled, manageable, and usually turns out delicious. Since I don’t have an imagination for putting foods together it’s better for me to trust other’s ideas.

In my kitchen, stirring together the garlic, and butter, and salt, and pepper with the potatoes and butternut squash, listening to the reports of the fighting going on in the city of Tripoli, I think about the insignificance of my waking up in fear about my future.

Here are people fighting to overthrow an oppressive regime, loosing life, and home, and safety, my cats are sleeping on the kitchen table and on the kitchen chair. All is quiet in my house except for the fork methodically scraping the mixing bowl and the cadence of the voice of the news reporter.

And I wake up in fear?

Truly I forget how good I have it.

Hurricane Ilene just skirts the island of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. I know this because instead of thinking about myself I decide to return a favor that was asked of me. “Why don’t you call me sometime?” So I call Mony in V.I. I’ve already heard the weather report that Ilene may be violently swirling toward the coast of Florida.

For Mony, Ilene turned out to be a heavy storm, passed now and all is well again. We talk about her purchase of the Al-Anon book, How Al-Anon Works for Families & Friends of Alcoholics. She says she wants to go through it with me. So we agreed that we would both read the first chapter then call each other again on Thursday to discuss it.

I thanked her. By working with someone else I get the opportunity go over my own recovery in a way that I may not do on my own. Sponsorship is a two way street. She laughed, but agreed.

Before heading out to work, with a half hour to spare, I pick up the book and start to read my part. Stopping abruptly at the reading in this passage, I ponder:

“We may, for instance, have picked up the struggle in the form of daily bouts with anxiety, or we may have difficulty trusting anyone or anything, always waiting for chaos or disaster to strike, even when all seems well.”

This is my disease. Fear I carry with me from the family disease of living with alcoholics, addicts. Fear that I carry in the inability to trust myself to take care of myself from my own experience with alcohol and drugs. Even when there is nothing for me to be afraid of, I manufacture it.

Perhaps fear has become a blanket that I subconsciously believe protects me, in a sick morbid way, keeping me ever vigilant to stay aware of all the horrible things that can happen so that I can be prepared.

Fear becomes a form of control, part of my recipe of existence, and although I hate it I feel protected by it. Always having my senses heightened to a hyper level of awareness might seem like I’m protecting me, saving me from the possibility of all the bad things that could happened, I’m actually wearing my body down with high blood pressure, mental anxiety, spiritual deficiency, cognitive worry.

I looked up fear in the One Day At A Time in Al-Anon book, on pg. 52:

“Mental sobriety is a state of reasonableness, rational judgment, balance. It is emotional sickness when we continue to be apprehensive and anxious when we really have no reason to doubt.

I will pray today and every day for healthful wholesome thinking, so that I may not generate trouble for myself.”

And so I pray for fear to be removed.

Here’s the chicken recipe that I tried and liked. I hope you have a peaceful, fearless day appreciating that we all have what we need today. All is well.

Roast Chicken with Potatoes and Butternut Squash

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: about 3 ounces chicken and about 3/4 cup vegetables) from Cooking Light

* 2 tablespoons minced garlic, divided
* 1 teaspoon salt, divided
* 3/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, divided
* 1/2 teaspoon dried rubbed sage
* 1 (3 1/2-pound) roasting chicken
* Cooking spray
* 12 ounces red potatoes, cut into wedges
* 1 1/2 cups cubed peeled butternut squash (about 8 ounces)
* 2 tablespoons butter, melted

Preparation

* 1. Preheat oven to 400°.
* 2. Combine 1 1/2 tablespoons garlic, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon pepper, and sage in a small bowl. Remove and discard giblets and neck from chicken. Starting at neck cavity, loosen skin from breast and drumsticks by inserting fingers, gently pushing between skin and meat. Lift wing tips up and over back; tuck under chicken. Rub garlic mixture under loosened skin. Place chicken, breast side up, on rack of a broiler pan coated with cooking spray. Place rack in broiler pan.
* 3. Combine potatoes, squash, butter, 1 1/2 teaspoons garlic, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Arrange vegetable mixture around chicken. Bake at 400° for 1 hour or until a thermometer inserted into meaty part of thigh registers 165°. Let stand 10 minutes. Discard skin.

Amount per serving

* Calories: 399
* Fat: 12.1g
* Saturated fat: 5g
* Monounsaturated fat: 3.2g
* Polyunsaturated fat: 1.7g
* Protein: 43.8g
* Carbohydrate: 25.9g
* Fiber: 3.4g
* Cholesterol: 147mg
* Iron: 3.5mg
* Sodium: 791mg
* Calcium: 77mg

Every day matters.

Commitment

2011-08-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

Commitment can mean a lot of things. Commitment to an insane asylum, commitment to a relationship (which I always made after the first date), commitment to volunteer for every position available because you know how important I am, or I could go in the polar opposite direction. Make no commitment at all.

When I walked into the Al-Anon meeting today the first person I saw sitting there was the woman I was sponsoring in AA who had gone back out to drink. That was a couple months ago.

I had not seen or heard from her since.

Nor did I hunt her down.

Today she saw me and the first words out of her mouth were to ask me to sponsor her again, or to continue sponsoring her, I don’t know what the proper terminology would be for this scenario, but again I made the commitment. I told her yes, I would.

I don’t know what this commitment I am making to her today will do for her. I know that anytime I get a chance to go through the steps with someone else, it’s me that gets a message.

We then sat in the Al-Anon meeting together listening to the group share on their experiences of commitment.

For me the issue of commitment means I try to find a balance. I have made commitments to lead a meeting and then forgot all about it and didn’t show up. Then I learned to set an alarm when I made the same commitment again so I would be there. I’ve had to ask people to trade commitments with me when I could not be available. And there are times when I just don’t sign up because I know how precarious my schedule can be now that I’m working at night.

When I tell people I will be somewhere I show up. When I can’t make it I call.

Keeping in contact with relationships is my commitment to want to remain friends, even if it is an occasional phone call, or an email, or a text, or a post card.

Thinking of this now reminds me of how far behind I can fall. I can forgive myself and try to do better.

Financial commitments keep me paying my bills on time (or close to it, or calling to explain why I’m not). My physical commitment is to get enough sleep, eat well, take my vitamins, slow down, or speed up whatever the case may be.

I say speed up because I can fall into lethargy where I’m not accomplishing some of my commitments as I should be. At any rate, I’m striving for a even pace.

But the most important commitment I have today is the one I’m making to myself. Keeping all these other commitments adds to the life I am already living, yet what good would it do if I didn’t make a daily commitment to my own recovery?

Staying clean and sober, practicing the principals of the program, doing step work every day helps me maintain the proper frame of mind to do all the other commitments that life seems to deem necessary.

This week is turning out to be “take care of my car insurance” week. Things run smoothly until I hit a glitch, in this case I learned that the auto payment I sent through my bank was directed to the wrong account. The problem has been solved, but thankfully I’m making a commitment to spend some time with the agent to go over and renew my policy while it is foremost in my mind.

I believe today that I’ll be able to make this commitment, barring of course other situations that may come to stand in the way. Today I’ve done all I can do to take care of myself. I’ve done all I can do to be of service and keep all the other commitments I have which have turned into a daily routine. I’ll leave my computer to get ready for work, and if all goes as planned, I’ll do what is planned before me.

If not, I know I’ve made a commitment to let go, and let God. Whatever happens after this is going to be taken care of, and whatever I need to know next will come to me.

Every day matters.

Living On The Edge--Not

2011-08-18T21:48:00.001-07:00

I spent my two days off (Wednesday and Thursday) going to the boring Department of Motor Vehicles. Then I visited the equally boring office of my automobile insurance company. These are not my happy places. Yet, despite my reluctance in wanting to spend my time going to these places, I suit up and show up anyway.

I still had to pay the $5 to replace the registration that I purchased on line that did not show up in my mail box. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t argue with them either. It really wasn’t their fault. Inadvertently I forgot to tell them to change my address from two years ago.

And yes, I paid my car insurance on time last month, but for some reason their computers did not register that payment. Writing them a check today for what they say I owe, I figure having insurance is more important than an argument right now and the rest will get sorted out. I have an inquiry in at the bank to question the lost transaction.

Not everything goes as planned, or how I think it should be. I do what I do, and sometimes I have to follow up with foot work to confer with others that they are doing what they can do too.

I’ve been researching my move to the Virgin Islands. It’s an idea I’ve developed after talking to my sponsee who lives on St. Thomas, and it feels exciting and romantic and an adventure I might like to go on someday, but there are other things that have come to light that has slowed this endeavor to perhaps a later date.

Not that jumping and then building wings doesn’t appeal to me. It’s been my life style for my whole life, but some careful consideration has made me look at my past impulsive behavior. Moving to the Virgin Islands is not off my map. I’m deciding to take a little more time before actually jumping over there.

I just changed job, or changed directions in my career choice, and being newly exclusively working where I am makes me consider whether changing again so quickly is a good idea. In this economy it’s good to have a job and this one is working out fine for me on so many levels. Do I really want to change that right now?

My daughter called this past week needing help with the cost of this college semester. College on a university level is so expensive, and up to now she has done it all by herself, but due to the fact that some of her grants were cut she needs help. I’m glad I can do it.

That took a little of my “moving to the Virgin Island” savings. But what is more important?

Where chaos was the norm in my life, today it doesn’t have to be that way. When things became too calm and serene there was always a way to push myself toward living on the edge.

Find a husband.

Leave a husband.

Change careers.

Move to another state.

Get clean.

Get loaded.

Get clean again.

Thousand of different ways I can find to avoid the void of nothing really exciting happening here.

It’s typical from where I come from to be accustomed to chaos. Never being able to predict when the other shoe was going to drop, I lived in a time bomb of a dysfunctional ticking clock. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. And then all hell would break loose.

As an adult, miles from where I came from, I continued to keep cadence in a life of upheaval. Comfortable in the mess, I’d clean it up just to make the mess again. It’s the only way I knew how to live. Without it it didn’t feel like living.

Mundane are my days taking care of little things that would become big things if I didn’t. There are no big deals anymore. I don’t live in erratic emotional swings, financial disorder, physical craziness, or spiritual depravity. Due to constant care on a daily basis everything has pretty much evened out to be working just fine.

And sometimes I don’t like it--this smooth, this easy, this serene.

Every day matters.

10th Step Promises

2011-08-15T16:49:00.000-07:00

They say that if you listen long enough you will hear someone tell your story at a meeting. This does happen for me from time to time. It always amazes me to hear someone say they experienced the same things as I have. It leaves me feeling like I am not alone.

I guess that’s the point.

A couple of weeks ago I heard a man introduce himself sharing a lot of the same life experiences that I have had; military family, doesn’t have a place that he calls home, relapsed, back again, spoke with a southern drawl, all the things that made me want to approach him after the meeting and say--me too!

Yet our conversation took a unpromising turn. Instead of having his own words to say to me, he spoke in links of quotes from the Big Book. I do what I always do when I come across Big Book thumpers; I run in the opposite direction.

It’s just not something that I’m attracted to.

So, extremism in many forms bothers me. I tend to find living in balance is so much more liberating, comfortable, and sometimes even rewarding. Although many times I hear radical opinions and find something useful for me, still, every once in a while I will disregard my health conscience friends and eat a bowl of gooey, decadent, Ben and Jerry‘s Fish Food ice cream.

I think I have digressed.

What I really wanted to say today is personally I do find it necessary to stay in the Big Book which really does hold a lot of answers for me. Going to a new meeting called the Tool Box Group, based in solutions, I hear Big Book quotes that apply to what I need to hear.

Lately I have been looking at what the Big Book says about Step 10 on pages 84 and 85. I feel it’s a heads up for me to be reminded to “Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code.”

Yep, I can use this helpful information every day before I go to work in the addiction-ridden world of a casino.

Then, later in the reading I’m reminded of the 10th Step promises:

“Much has already been said about receiving strength, inspiration, and direction from Him who has all knowledge and power. If we have carefully followed directions, we have begun to sense the flow of His Spirit into us. To some extent we have become God-conscious. We have begun to develop this vital sixth sense. But we must go further and that means more action.”

Life is an everyday ordeal so every day I seek the answer, and I’m learning to find it by taking a look at myself, my motives, and my relationship with a Higher Power.

I write to remind myself today, because you know…

Every day matters.

Surviving A Borderline Parent

2011-08-14T15:36:00.000-07:00

I’m reading “Surviving a Borderline Parent; How to Heal Your Childhood Wounds & Build Trust, Boundaries, and Self-Esteem.”

What I watch on television is all the ways I wish my life was by seeing seemingly normal acting households. What I’m reading is the ways it really was. As I am in the beginning of the book, identifying the effects of being raised by someone diagnosed with symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder, I am connecting with the painful parts of everything I saw and learned.

I’m not diagnosing my addict mother with BPD. I’ve compared the behavior patterns of a ward that we took care of while I was with the Public Fiduciary office. This ward acts out in the same manner as I witness my mother. This ward was clinically diagnosed, and I spent hours talking with the ward’s guardian about what doctors say. It gave me a heads up.

My sister called last week upset because she sent my mother flowers for a special occasion but my mother refused them when the florist came to her door. Hurtful to my sister because she couldn’t figure out what she did wrong, we spent a lot of time talking about what I learned from my last job and how my sister could not have done anything to make my mother react in the hurtful way that she did. We commiserated that our lives with mom has always been an unpredictable, walking on eggshells, volatile existence that left us never knowing what catastrophe was going to strike next.

This conversation prompted me to go on line and purchase this book that I had previously researched written by Kimberlee Roth and Freda B Friedman, PH.D.

Even in the beginning the author writes: “They (BPD symptoms) occur in many, many families, including those with a parent--or parents--who is depressed, anxious, traumatized, alcohol- or substance-abusing, or who suffers from another personality disorder or mental illness.”

I went to dinner this week with friends and talked about my current read. It was interesting to hear someone with 23 years sober talk about their exploration of BPD as part of their life experience. They said they found that it’s a “garbage can diagnosis that put a lot of mental illnesses in a class that can’t otherwise be classified.”

What I’m experiencing from the first 48 pages that I’ve read so far is a clear outline from shared experiences of what it was like to grow up with my alcoholic/drug induced parent. I am not alone in the childhood trauma that I experienced. And it has explained a lot as to why I react and have the feelings that I have today.

I learned growing up with a parent who fits the description of BPD is:

You can’t trust others.
You’re damned if you, and damned if you don’t.
It’s unsafe to express your true feelings.
You can’t trust yourself.
People manipulate.
Life holds little physical affection.
You are undeserving of love and affection.
You are guilty of being of burden.
It’s risky to assert yourself.

It’s true, slowly I am unlearning those lessons that have been deeply ingrained. I’m no longer a victim as I find boundaries and people who are safe to let in. I make mistakes, reassess and learn some more, build a different foundation and take care of myself.

Dealing with my own addiction issues and living one day at a time in the solution, not the problem, has given me the opportunity to look at the assets of who I am and what growing up in a difficult environment has done for me.

I’ve become adaptable, confident in at least some of the important areas of my life, curious and interested in the world, engaged more at times, and I do have a good sense of humor. The promises come true in that I’ve been given a new intuition, an understanding of others and how they behave, and an inventiveness that allows me to figure things out with alternatives to a problem.

It isn’t all bad, but sometimes it is painful. Wishing things were different is not going to help me or make my life change. Acceptance is the key, understanding is essential, and if there is anything I can learn here that will facilitate in healing with compassion then I am willing to trudge through to see what is on the other side.

Every day matters.

When I Need Help

2011-08-09T15:08:00.000-07:00

It took him a few minutes, not long really, to work his tool through the tumblers of the lock on my basement door. Running out the door in a hurry to leave for work early, my keys remained hanging on the hook by the upstairs basement door.

I tried breaking in through my living room ground floor window. Good and bad, the window was very securely locked tight.

At least I had my cell phone in my purse. At this time of the day I had no choice but to call a locksmith. Gratefully he came right over. Gratefully I could call my work and they understood I’d be late, not even making a big deal out of it. Comfortable and with the resolution at hand, all I could do was wait and follow through to the next indicated step when my door was finally opened.

Sometimes I need help. Most of the time when I ask the help comes pretty easily.

I practiced at home all day yesterday the new poker game I am learning. It’s repetitious and boring and there is a thousand other things I would rather be doing, yet I ask myself: which icky feeling do I want to live with? The one where I don’t know what I’m doing on a crowded gaming table or the one where I’m inconvenienced from comfortably, mindlessly meandering around my home?

I sat in the break room when I got to work and admitted to my co-workers my complete defeat and emotional breakdown at wanting to quit learning the game. I recognize it’s my pride and ego that wants to be the “senior” employee, the one with ALL the experience, me--with all the answers. Today I joined the ranks with everybody else as somebody who needs help.

My fellow workers all commiserated at how difficult it is to learn this game. I received some very helpful pointers as to what I can do to practice at home more efficiently. One dealer asked to put my phone number in his cell phone, promising to call me when he gave his next poker class. Where my pride and my ego wants to separate me, humility made me part of my environment.

“We may get angry before we ask, deciding that we’ll never get what we want, or anticipating the “fight” we’ll have to endure.” ~ Language of Letting Go; pg. 226.

My little meltdown, understood by everyone but embarrassing to me, opened the door to a conversation where management and I could talk about what I need to learn this game. I asked not to be put on a game on a busy Friday or Saturday night until I get more comfortable in knowing how to run it. I asked for someone to watch me as I deal to make sure I don’t do anything that compromises my employment. My bosses deemed what I need to be reasonable, and I promised to do my part. Hence, I practice every day laying cards out across my bed to find the pair in the game that is correct for me to hold.

Last night I was given another opportunity to deal the poker game. I felt much more comfortable than before, connecting with the players so that we could all have fun with it. Surveillance called down one time on a mistake I made. Once the error was brought to my attention I realized what I did wrong. My boss reassured me that everyone gets a call from surveillance on this game every once in a while, even the experienced dealers.

Of course, my goal is to be perfect. It’s always my goal, but it rarely ever happens that I get to experience the euphoria of that bliss.

Mostly what I find is I need help. I am not a rock or an island but a human being apart of this race that gets through every day the best we can.

I call my sponsor. My sponsee calls me. I call a friend who has had the same experiences as my sponsee. We all share our experience, strength and hope.

“Freely you receive, freely give.”

I often forget the first part as I think I am more important to do the giving. Being able to receive can be just as crucial in connecting me to the world and other people in it. Being an alcoholic in recovery I learn to spot the ways I try to isolate. Being a recovering al-anon I learn that there are safe resources of people who are willing to be there for me.

Thank you for all your love, encouragement, and support. I am feeling it.

Every day matters.

Who Cares to Admit Complete Defeat?

2011-08-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

I just muddle through. At work my new poker game is kicking my ass and I’m struggling on so many levels.

Last night, fed up with players telling me how to deal the game, upset because they are right and I really haven’t a clue as to what I am doing, powerless, ignorant, frustrated, I told my boss I don’t want to learn this game anymore. I’m done. I quit wanting to learn how to deal poker.

I’m falling into feeling even worse about myself because I can’t believe I’m saying all this out loud. I’m defeated.

Yet my boss lets me say what I have to say. And I can see the look of disappointment on her face.

Later, after she’s given me some time to cool off, she approached me again. Her answer to my rant is she is not going to allow me to fail. I’m dumbfounded by her attempt to help.

Both bosses took me aside at the end of the night and explained to me that the game is so difficult the house almost got rid of it because nobody could deal it. They offered to give me more help, more instruction, more time to get a grasp of it. I asked for more intimate help, someone to watch me deal for a while, more on-game supervision, more training.

So, I just muddle through. Things I thought I learned I find out I didn’t and back I go to square one. I want to quit. It would be easy to quit, but people who seemingly care about me are not allowing me to do that.

I called my AA sponsor today. She reminded me that I need to continually work on improving myself. Settling would allow me to lower my standard of living until I settle into taking a drink again.

This is the hard part, not settling into the “I quit“. I can complain and stomp my feet and make threats but that doesn’t lead to being happy. Every time I make a mistake I learn something new not to do. I can get lost in the mistakes or I can move on to learning something new, no matter the raw, excruciating comfort level.

It's the first line in the AA 12x12, and if there is a line I can quote by heart, it would be this one. Who cares to admit complete defeat? Drugs and alcohol kicked my ass once, and I'm grateful that today I have a reprieve from these addictions.

Sometimes, when I read our literature I replace the word "drinking" with "thinking" and find that even though the substance is gone, I'm left to deal with the inner most problem of my life. I still find the solution to my thinking problem, real or imagined, with someone else and through the help of a God in my life, I do trudge on.

Not perfect. Not always having the answers. Feeling defeated. Still, attempting to move forward. Not even thinking that taking a drink, smoking a joint, snorting a line, mainlining liquid courage would solve all my problems, not even going there, there is something that is right in my life today.

So, here’s another day, and I’ll get another opportunity to try again.

Every day matters.

Weathering the Envious Storm

2011-08-04T09:20:00.000-07:00

It starts to grow in the corner of my heart, like dark putrid spots of mold in the dank corners of my bathroom. If I don’t catch it in the beginning it may take over space and grow into a place that I don’t want to be. Envy. The Big Book mentions it only one time, on page 145:

The greatest enemies of us alcoholics are resentment, jealousy, envy, frustration, and fear.

Envy, according to Webster, is not jealousy, and nor is it mentioned as the same in the quote above. Jealousy is the green-eyed monster that targets other people. Envy is begrudging what other people possess. Envy is a sign of low self-esteem.

My AA girlfriend at work is now dating tall-dark-handsome guy. You may remember me mentioning him as someone I had some interest in a time ago.

And when I honestly took a look at why I envy her, I found it’s not that she “possessed” him, but that she possesses this innate warmth and openness that invites relationships into her life. It worked on me, that’s why I like her.

Now, I hate her.

Well, hate is a very strong word. I don’t really hate her. A wall of detachment, the wrong kind, takes over my connection making it difficult for me to look her in the eye. I want to run behind the brick wall of avoidance. I’m trying to cut her out of my life.

Yet that is not what I really want. What I really want is to take a look at this emotion of envy to see what I need to do to take care of myself. What do I do about this feeling that makes me feel separate from someone I still want to consider a friend? She didn’t do anything intentionally to hurt me.

Being a person who is drawn to lists, I found for me the perfect article on the internet: 8 Ways to Overcome Envy. I read it and took some of the advice to heart.

Compliment her.

She just happened to call me that morning, that morning when I woke up thinking about how much I wished I was more like her. I complimented her on her ability to be open, warm, and friendly. She gave me some great unasked for advise: “I treat people the way I want to be treated.”

Put the ladle (and the running shoes) away.

Her success does not take away from my success. Hanging around people who have success in a particular area of their lives can teach me a thing or two about my own growth. If they have what I want then they become the perfect friend. When I read those who are better writers than me I observe what it is they are writing about, or how they form sentences, or analyze the flow of their words to see how I can learn to write better.

Learn from her.

“He’s concerned about what you think about our dating because he knows you are my only friend here.” She confided to me. I guess it makes sense that not only do we want to be accepted by our loved one, but we also want to be a part of their community. Since I have tall-dark-handsome guy’s phone number I sent him a text telling him that I care about them both and wish them the best of happiness. He returned my text saying this is the happiest he’s been in years.

If there was an elephant in the room then this communication addressed that. If nothing else it gave me the archway to go through to put away any inhibitions I had in acknowledging the truth. Now, when I see them giving each other a hug in the break room, I go up to him afterward and tell him he owes me a hug too. Then I whisper to my girlfriend, jokingly chiding her, that I’ve hugged her boyfriend. We laugh about it.

Go to the core.

I am where I am and my friend gets to be where she is, and neither of us is in a bad place. While there are times when I feel like having a man in my life for companionship would be nice, I more often feel like I am complete without it. I have a life that I enjoy very much. I have my own hobbies, my own agenda, my own direction, and although at times I feel like it‘s a very selfish life, I do pray for the opportunity to be of service more.

And if one day the right person should come along I believe there will be nothing I can to do stop it. Just like there’s nothing I can do to make it happen either.

Find yourself.

Interesting in how God works, an old boyfriend called me that same day, one who has moved away to another state. He informed me of how many casinos there are where he lives and asked me to come visit. We talked about what a great time we had when we were traveling around Arizona together, and all the wonderful things we enjoy doing together. I told him I would think about it, but honestly, I’m not interested in pursuing this.

It’s not the direction I see myself going toward. I don’t want to move to Iowa.

The bottom line is THIS: I came to believe in a Power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity.

When I think about my faults that keeps me closed off, or unattached, or non-accessible, I think that I can act my way to better living, but the core of who I am has to be changed by God. I read the section of the Big Book that talks about wanting to be the director in the play and acting a certain way that makes other people fall into line of what I want. That doesn’t work.

Real change for me comes from turning it over, and letting it go, and being the best me with the attributes that I have right now, today.

In following some of what this article suggested I was able to truly turn my feelings of envy over, wipe away the spots of mildew, clean my heart of any ill feelings. Because I can turn my will and my life over to the care of God, I know I am exactly where I am suppose to be in singleness and purpose.

I am back to loving my friend, feeling open and apart of her life and adventures in wherever she is going with him or on her own. I am back in the sunlight of my loving God who has a plan for me. Like the Arizona monsoon, raining one minute, the sun shining the next, everything feels clean again.

Every day matters.

A Glimpse Into My World

2011-07-31T14:32:00.000-07:00

Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
~ BB; pg 84

Every day, and every night, matters.

Who Is Jeanne Louise Calment?

2011-07-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

Jeanne Louise Calment (February 21, 1875 – August 4, 1997) had the longest confirmed human life span in history. Born in Arles, France to dying there at the age of 122 years, 164 days, she lived a total of 44724 days.

In 1985, Jeanne Louise moved into a nursing home, having lived on her own until age 110. Her international fame escalated in 1988, when the centenary of Vincent van Gogh's visit to Arles provided an occasion for her to meet reporters. She said at the time that she had met Van Gogh 100 years before, in 1888, as a thirteen-year-old girl in her uncle's fabric shop, where van Gogh wanted to buy some canvas. Jeanne Louise described him as "dirty, badly dressed and disagreeable", and "very ugly, ungracious, impolite, sick". Jeanne Louise recalled selling colored pencils to Van Gogh, and seeing the Eiffel Tower being built. At the age of 114, she appeared briefly in the 1990 film Vincent and Me as herself, making her the oldest person ever to appear in a motion picture.

A documentary film was made about her life, entitled Beyond 120 Years with Jeanne Calment, in 1995. In 1996, Time's Mistress, a four-track CD of Jeanne Louise speaking over a background of rap, was released.

Jeanne Louise's remarkable health presaged her later record. At age 85, she took up fencing, and continued to ride her bicycle up until her 100th birthday. She was reportedly neither athletic, nor fanatical about her health. Jeanne Louise smoked from the age of 21 (1896), until the age of 117, only five years before her death, though according to an unspecified source, she smoked no more than two cigarettes per day.

She ascribed her longevity and relatively youthful appearance for her age to olive oil, which she said she poured on all her food and rubbed onto her skin, as well as a diet of port wine, and ate nearly one kilo of chocolate every week. ~ From Wikipedia.

While there are some things that I consider too personal to announce about myself over the world wide web, there isn’t much. As you may be able to tell by what I write about here, my topics of interest are just about whatever is happening at the time.

Today I called my very opinionated girlfriend, the one who has, in my opinion, some very extreme points of view, and the woman I may consider to be one of my closest friends. I shared with her my foray to the plastic surgeon’s office yesterday.

This is the same girlfriend, close to my same age, who has been participating with me over the course of the last couple months in a great discourse on the topic of aging.

Let’s face it. Aging for us women can be very difficult. It’s become a necessary and interesting, comical and even painful life course to discuss. But I think I need to talk about it.

I’m fifty three years old. There--I said it.

I still feel like I’m fifteen, and probably still think like one at times. Yet looking in the mirror I’m reminded how very far I’ve traveled over the course of the last thirty-eight years. How did my life go by so fast?

My girlfriend went into a lengthy discourse on her naturalistic, homeopathic, it’s an inside job lecture. Yes, I think it was a lecture, as she admitted later in the conversation that it was, and she apologized, which I appreciated.

I answered her that we would have to agree to disagree. At this point I have my own ideas and struggles about aging. Not that what she said was not understandable. I get it. There is a lot to accepting the inevitability of growing older that can’t be changed by altering outside wrinkles and dropping skin tones.

Recently I went on the internet investigating literature that might help me to understand what I have to look forward to in my immediate and distant future. Information may be a key to help me understand what’s in store for me in the next fifty years.

“A Yale University professor found that people who think positively about aging tend to live almost eight years longer than those who think negatively. In fact, thinking positively is a more significant life-extender than low blood pressure, low cholesterol, exercising regularly, or not smoking.”
~ The Next Fifty Years; A Guide for Women at Midlife and Beyond by Pamela D. Blair, Ph.D.

My path may not be the same as my friend’s path, but because of a program that teaches me how to be teachable, to listen, to learn, there is a lot for me to look forward to in listening to what other women around me are saying.

I did consult with the plastic surgeon, and I was told that the bags under my eyes are not easily repairable by using Restylane Injections (much like the old collagen but a new chemical compound). My orbital eye features, although muscularly deteriorating as normal aging sets in, are hereditary and can only be fixed by surgery.

I did agree to have my number two facial complaint addressed, the deep laugh lines around my mouth and had a little of the upper lip bumped up with the Restylane. I had a childhood scar on the side of my mouth looked at which is also becoming more pronounced. It required a few shots for numbing, as uncomfortable as that was, and afterward I experienced some swelling and a small amount of bruising, but with a little make-up I went to work that night feeling like a million bucks.

It’s only life, I said to my friend. We agreed at the end of our conflicting conversation we each have the right to experiment and experience whatever our myriad of options are on our way to finding out who we are and what we want. I may be wrong, or I may have hit on something that works for me.

Thank you Jeanne Louise for leaving us hope in a legacy to independence and lifestyle that teaches us about growing older. I will begin to ask my own questions, seek my own direction, find the inheritance I want to leave to my daughter in learning to be fifty, and sixty, and seventy years old.

Okay, Jeanne Louise, the port wine is out, but I do keep olive oil on my kitchen counter, and you know, if one kilo of chocolate works, two kilos may be better.

Every day matters.

Progress--Not Perfection

2011-07-26T13:48:00.000-07:00

Don't you draw the queen of diamonds, boy -- She'll beat you if she's able.
You know the queen of hearts is always your best bet.
~ Desperado; The Eagles

It’s my “Friday”, even though to you it may be Tuesday. Tonight I work my last shift for the week and then enjoy two days off. I’m so looking forward to my “weekend”. I’m remembering now how physically and emotional draining dealing cards full time, five days a week, can be.

It’s my opinion that it’s been a successful week. I worked eight hours every night, except for one when I was sent home an hour early. I did not complain at all. In fact, the break was rather a relief.

This week I concentrated on getting on a poker game in the pit where I’ve decided to avert my concentration. This game, I am told by other poker dealers, will teach me quickly how to identify poker hands. It’s not a poker game, like Texas Hold’em, that’s played in the poker room upstairs. It’s a poker game like Texas Hold’em that was designed to be played on a blackjack style table.

I’m hoping that the skills I acquire from learning this game will lead me upstairs to dealing the real game of poker. But not really. The more I get into this dealing poker thing, the more resistance I am feeling toward really wanting to go there.

But I’m walking through all this anyway.

All the same, it’s a new endeavor for me, and like all things learned new I am experiencing uncomfortable feelings. I’m not good enough. I’m embarrassed that I’m often wrong. The surveillance camera people phone down to my boss often tattling on my mistakes. These are all situations that an “I’m always in control“, “I‘m an experienced veteran“, “I never make mistakes” kind-a girl, who has preposterous perceptions about herself, does not like.

But I’m walking through all this anyway.

Last night everyone was assigned a game, leaving me the pit poker game the only place to go. I looked at my boss we some trepidation saying “Are you sure?”. Then her boss, (my bigger boss) also standing in the pit at the time, looked at me and asked, “Can’t you deal that game?”

“Of course I can.”

And so I did. Continuing on my journey of learning something new, I began to arrive at that place of understanding and becoming comfortable. Throughout the night I was sent to this table again and again. Repetition and slowing allowing new nuances of the game to infiltrate my ability, I was getting it, and I was starting to have fun.

By the end of the evening a new feeling, one of personal accomplishment, replaced that dread in the pit of my stomach.

Practice. Practice. Practice.

So it is with learning how to live clean and sober.

One step at a time. One lesson at a time. One situation at a time. One day at a time.

Every day matters.

Queen of Hearts artwork by Abigail Kamelhair here.

Double-Winner

2011-07-25T15:19:00.000-07:00

What does an alcoholic take on a first date? -- A moving van.

Many of my girlfriends are in one stage or another of a relationship with the opposite sex. Listening to their need to talk about these romantic things has brought me a new awareness: I am grateful I am not in one.

One long-term Narcotics Anonymous friend in particular called because she met a newcomer at a meeting, fell madly in love with him quickly, moved him to her place of residence (not particularly to mean in her house), and now finds that he is having a problem staying clean and sober.

She confides that her other program friends are telling her to leave the guy, cut him off, let him go. But as he enters rehab for his second or third time, I don't really know, she says leaving him is not what she wants to do.

So I say to her, what a great opportunity to grow.

What else can I say? I don’t know what her answers are.

I’ve seen this type of romantic thing work out in so many different ways.

A thirty year friendship with an AA friend has taught me a lesson or two when she met her husband while they were in rehab together. Newcomers! Today their relationship is as strong and vibrant and secure as I have ever seen a sane and safe relationship to be.

I personally relinquished nine years clean and sober with a guy who was using drugs because I thought I could change him, (I thought I was strong enough), but the truth is I allowed myself to be swayed toward his side of the not-so-sober line of life. That was an “if you can’t beat them, join them” disaster.

In going to a lot of Al-Anon meetings over the past five years, I have heard participants of couple-hood speak of how they learned to stay, or leave, or amicably allow the relationship to fall away in all kinds of different relational situations. They all sound like success stories to me when in the end we are standing in our own reality.

So the best I could do for my friend was introduce her to my experiences in Al-Anon by sharing what I’ve learned from my own innate reactions to the people I choose.

There is always my attraction to people who are like me. Alcoholics and addicts are pretty much the only people I know because this is where I feel comfortable, un-emotional, un-attached, un-judged, accepted, apart of. These people are my long line of lineage, my mother, my father, my friends, my lovers, my community. They have been in my life my whole life.

In picking a mate subconsciously, I am sure, I want to recreate that parental love/hate relationship that I grew up with and fix it. I have an underlining pull toward correcting my past by trying to repair the broken alcoholic/addict of today.

I shared with my friend, one who I love dearly, and told her this may be her opportunity to enter into what I call Recovery 102. Even though in Al-Anon meetings we do not talk about our affiliations with other programs, (so to keep the message of recovery from co-dependence pure), I know a lot of people sitting around me are also participants in AA or NA. We are also recovering from our own substance addictions.

I have a “pure” Al-Anon sponsor, and she says often: “I have the disease of Alcoholism, I just never used drinking as a way to escape.”

In Al-Anon How It Works it states: “…the effects of alcoholism--obsession, anxiety, anger, denial, and feelings of guilt--tend to persist until we seek recovery for ourselves.”

Many, many of us, not all but the majority, are clearly on track with our disease. I am sixth generation addict/alcoholic in my family and I believe I learned about the family disease of alcoholism from my parents, the same things that their parents taught them.

So Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous (I go wherever I hear the message of recovery) helps me learn to live within my own skin when I’m not drinking and using. Believe me, these are hard lessons but it has saved my life over and over again because how else will I know? Slowly but surely, after the tumultuous emotional roller coaster ride of first getting clean, I have settled into a way of living comfortably (most of the time) in my daily sober life.

Growing up in the family disease of alcoholism did not make me an alcoholic. If what they say is true, that this disease could be hereditary, I was born with this affliction. But once I arrest the symptoms of the disease for myself, what do I do with all that I reactively learned from the affects of other people’s sickness?

Being a “double-winner” gives me the distinct advantage of working a program on all fronts. My recovery benefits because searching for answers from the inside to the outside, and back again, has given me the tools I need to surrender, to change, act differently, understand, trust God.

More will be revealed, and I learn that everyday. So, I hope, will my friend as she acquiesced to the idea of trying an Al-Anon meeting for herself.

“I don’t feel comfortable talking about what I’m going through with my boyfriend in the meetings I am going to now.” She said to me.

“Try four to six meetings of Al-Anon and see if you can find your voice there.” I encouraged her.

I heard a man in Al-Anon once share that he thought the suggestion was to try 46 meetings, so he did. And he’s still coming back.

Every day matters.

The Grand Scheme of Alcoholism: MORE

2011-07-24T13:22:00.000-07:00

When visiting the casinos in Laughlin, Nevada, I walked around the table games department (otherwise known as The Pit) and watched dealers hand pitch blackjack games, spin the wheel on roulette, and navigate dice with a stick on a loud and boisterous craps game. I thought to myself: I’ve lost the skills I learned in working in Nevada-style gaming.

Today I deal blackjack out of a shoe, which feels like to me a huge step backwards as a career move.

Different States have different gaming laws, and what I deal now is the best that Arizona has to offer.

My disease, I lament, robbed me of so much more advancement I could have attained in my life. I lost financial security, time wasted, education and employment opportunities.

So I talked to my sponsor about this, this feeling of loss for what could have been. Her words of wisdom were so articulate and to the point:

“That’s bullshit,” she said. “We have the disease of MORE.”

I’m not thinking about what it took to save my life by getting clean and sober.

I’m not thinking about a new life with more peace and serenity.

I’m not thinking about the sweet, little, beautiful town I now live in on the side of a mountain in the largest pinion pine forest in the world.

I’m not thinking about how my world has opened up to more genuine relationships and people I’ve learned to trust.

I’m not even considering the economic status of gaming in Nevada right now, and even though I am dealing blackjack out of a shoe, I am making more money than most dealers in Vegas now. (I know because one of my co-workers just moved here from there.)

How easily my mind goes to the place of “I Have Not”.

To counteract my disease the solution is gratitude.

Grateful for where I am, be it a good time or a difficult situation I am working through, God is giving me everything in my life that I need--right now--to learn how to live.

Actually, my life is very good--right now. I can’t think of one more thing that I need that would make it any better.

Giving up the drugs and alcohol was really the easy part. Changing thought patterns, old coping mechanisms, doing differently the things that used to comfort me but no longer work, is the hard part.

Thank God I am not alone. I don’t have a time table that says when I should “arrive” at my recovered perceptions, and I have the opportunity to explore and discover life from a new perspective on a daily basis.

Some days it’s about learning something old all over again.

“Then, too, we may see the problems in our lives and yet fail to recognize alcoholism at the source. Perhaps we attribute these problems to finances or employment, or blame lack of time, education, or opportunity for your troubles. We may consider them merely the vicissitudes of life, struggles that everyone has to deal with. Because we have already attributed our problems to one source or another, we fail to notice that each one fits neatly into the grand scheme of alcoholism, the family disease.”
~ How Al-Anon Works; pg. 21 (1st Ed.)

Every day matters.

The Road of Happy Destiny

2011-07-21T19:50:00.000-07:00

I snapped this pic five years ago on the I-40, my first trip to Prescott,
taken on the opposite side of the freeway from Seligman.

There was going to be a part three to my traveling to Laughlin, Nevada story, but then there wasn’t. The trip ended rather anti-climatically with a short visit with my friend from California. I had to return home by the next morning so I decided to pack my things and I left after we had dinner that night.

Halfway home, while passing through a little town called Seligman in Arizona, most famous for being on the highway of Route 66, but now a deserted ghost town made up of a hand full of residences who really want to live in the middle of nowhere, I thought of a case I worked on for the indigent burial program.

An older gentleman, traveling from Florida to California found this spot on the side of the 40 freeway. It was the place where he looked out over a vast horizon, seeing the lonely beauty in a vista that goes on seemingly forever. Here he took his pistol and shot himself in the head.

Driving through this area in the darkness I sought out where he’d done it, and when I came to a place where I suspected it might have been a song came on the radio:

Oh I believe there are angels among us
Sent down to us from somewhere up above
They come to you and me in our darkest hours
To show us how to live
To teach us how to give
To guide us with a light of love.
~ Angels Among Us, Alabama

A vision came to me that this man did not die alone. He was surrounded, lovingly laid to rest, and now was at peace in the presence of angels. A feeling came over me that said everything was alright for him.

Driving in the middle of the night, my favorite time to travel, went quickly and quietly. I felt like I was surrounded by angels too. Why not? If he was granted this company from God, why should I not also be given their presence?

My sister woke up in the middle of the night, when we were children and we shared a bedroom, witnessing an angel standing by my bed. To this day she still declares this is true. Considering the alcohol and the drugs I would ingest in the years to come, it only makes sense that I only made it through by the grace of God.

Well, since I’ve been home I’ve kind of been in a funk. Indescribable, really, incapable of putting a finger on what I think it could be or what could fix it, why or how or what to do about it, I’ve pretty much decided to just ride it out.

Talking to my friends about it hasn’t seemed to help even though it‘s always good to talk to someone. Talking about it has only pinpointed the fact that I can’t isolate a specific reason as to what might be making me feel this way. Except that perhaps traveling to the past, and coming home to the future, I realized on my drive back that I may not be living here much longer. I'm still considering my next move: to the Virgin Islands. I have this somber feeling, grievous of all things lost, life keeps moving on.

Everything is transitional. Life is always changing. Feelings are not facts, just merely a course to be traveled through, like the road before me. Something is always left behind when we move on to something new.

So it is in all that I’ve left behind. So it is in all the new places I am going.

The man on the side of the road made his choice. I make my choice quite differently than he. Albeit uncomfortable at times, joyful and exciting at others, mixed in with a lot of peace and serenity, I want to be on this side of the veil--no matter what--until God deems something different. That’s the choice I made when I got clean and sober.

Sitting with my feelings, I'm finding that after being home I am slowly coming back to myself again. We don't call it "trudging" the road OF (not to) happy destiny for nothing. Today it's about just letting myself be, and that's okay with me.

I want to live. And so I do.

Every day matters.

Three Days Ago: Part Two

2011-07-16T16:39:00.000-07:00

It doesn’t matter how much a gambler losses, it’s the “almost win” that brings them back.

As I’m staying in a hotel/casino at the moment, I have to be very aware of this factor for me also.

I started gambling as we all do, as a novice. Growing up in a military family we spent hours whiling away the hours playing card games, so cards are not a stranger to me.

I picked up on blackjack right away.

Starting years ago, every September my sober girlfriend and I would take a little vacation to Laughlin, Nevada. She would play poker. I would play at the table games.

One day she and a poker dealer that she met while playing planned a date. In order to give me something to do they set me up on a blind date with another poker dealer. That is when it all began.

My initial reaction to meeting him was ambivilance. He really didn’t seem like my type, but I agreed to go out with him nonetheless. When I saw him coming down the stairs after his shift in a baby blue denim shirt, with his dark hair and blue eyes I was smitten. It was on after that.

Our long distance phone bills were outrageous, but we didn’t care then. We began a monthly trek to see each other every month. While visiting at his home I took up the entertainment of gambling while waiting for him to get off work in the poker room.

One day he said to me, and this is how co-dependent I am, if we could only work out a system we could “take this joint”. Always trying to get past the “almost win”, he was good at devising a misshaped plan to come out ahead. I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.

So I read what I could on how to play blackjack. I got a computer program that beeped me when I made the wrong move. I practiced for three months straight before I ever played again and then when I did play I followed the plan perfectly.

I turned $200 into $2000.

It was probably the worse thing that ever happened to me. Now I was ready to quit my day job to become a professional blackjack player. What a disaster that would end up to be.

To make a long story short, gambling like this required the discipline that I just could not keep up. The casinos know how to eat that away at a steady pace, and so in the end I wrote out a vow to never gamble again. I put it on paper as a contract to myself.

Being in the business I’ve seen all sides of this entertainment industry. It’s like drinking. Most people can take it or leave it. The most I see on a continuing daily basis are those who cannot leave it alone. And then I have those “friends” who have banned themselves from casinos because they know they have a problem.

If I see you at the casino everyday, I think you have a problem too, but who am I to say.

I spent all day waiting for my friend to come in from California with nothing much to do, but I know I don’t have any money that I want to lose. So I check out the pit area and watch hand pitched blackjack, listen to the roar coming from the craps game, ask the roulette dealer about a new design on the layout. I go to the poker room and ask the dealers there about poker classes, and ask some personal questions about how they got into the industry.

I sit at a poker video machine and put in $20. It’s not my game but I enjoy it and I figure, this may be some justification, that I’m going to practice recognizing poker hands as more training for my learning how to deal poker. I would be considered what we call in the industry a nit player. I’m playing one quarter at a time.

It’s hours of mindless entertainment as I sit next to the bar drinking 7-up, and I’m winning 25 cents at a time. Obviously some of my poker training is paying off for me because I am making good choices on the cards I am holding. I think when I lose I will walk away to do something, but I’m not losing so I up the anti to playing five quarters at a time.

I’m either going to win big or be done.

Finally after hours of trying to play out my $20 I get bored and cash out to the tune of $67.25. I’ve won enough money to pay for the gas I purchased to come out here. That’s a deal.

And so I’m done gambling.

This morning I wake up to phone calls from friends in the program, some here, one from the Virgin Islands. I’m getting dressed to go meet with my friends. The rest of my visit will be to spend time with the people I came to see.

Every day matters.

Three Days Ago: Part One

2011-07-15T00:55:00.000-07:00

Looking at Arizona from the Nevada side of the Colorado River

Driving through the Mohave Desert into an almost full moon gave me a lot to think about. I’m going backwards, back in time, back to the place where I relapsed to drink and abuse drugs, back, back, back this time to visit a girlfriend coming in from California who I met in Narcotics Anonymous twenty years ago.

Carol and I had reconnected when I got clean and sober again. She sent me an email a couple of days ago stating she is going to the Tri-State (California/Arizona/Nevada) Narcotic’s Anonymous Convention held in Laughlin, Nevada and wanted to know if I was going.

I work on the weekend, but I told her if she could come on Thursday I would meet her there.

Freedom. I feel like I’ve found it. Freedom to participate in a life I want when I gave up two jobs for one. I need to reconnect--with people. I’m making a mini-vacation of it.

Funny, going back, how nobody that I used to drink or use with is on my list of people I desire to reconnect with.

This morning I ate breakfast on the beach, looking out over the river I could see on the other side the house where my old connection lives. Those are the “friendships” that never last.

Still, ever diligent, always vigilant, I know I am about to tread on dangerous grounds. A police officer gave me a warning ticket on my way home from work as I was speeding down the hill from the casino. I was in a hurry to get home so I could pack. His ticket reminded me of the important legal documentation I need to carry in my car.

I told him I was grateful that he caused me to pause. I went home to scavenge through a box of papers needing to be filed for proof of insurance to put in the glove box of my car before I left.

Also I was reminded during last night’s short work shift when a fellow AA member showed up on my gaming table, obnoxious, demeaning, drinking. While he was calling me the “AA Nazi” I avoided conversation or even eye contact, pleasantly encouraged him to have a good time, and wished him luck when I was tapped off this game.

He is me and I know it could be me again. I’ve lived his disaster, and I prayed for him sometime during the three hour drive through the moonlit smoky mountains. My hope is that when he sobers up he might come back to the rooms to get sober.

Driving down the deserted freeway in the middle of the night, alone with the drone of tires on asphalt and my own thoughts going through my head, I thoroughly searched my heart and found to my surprise I have no regrets.

Not the relapse. Not the best and the worse of the broken heart boyfriend. Not the personal humiliation I put myself through. Not all the money I lost, dignity forsaken, opportunities passed by. Not one regret.

Five years later and it’s so hard to believe that from the pit of my seemingly most incomprehensible demoralization today I feel it has all worked out for the best.

I’m praying for my friend drinking at work last night. He will have his own story to tell someday too. I hope it turns out to be one he finds as much meaning from as I have from mine.

Every day matters.

Judgment Blocks the Light

2011-07-12T12:52:00.000-07:00

I have a tendency to be very judgmental, interestingly enough to people I’ve only just met and only have contact with for a few minutes. Most of the time I find out how wrong I am. If only I could initially be more compassionate.

This is my defect that highlights my awareness at the moment.

The good news is it is getting better. The bad news is I still have those moments in my working night when feelings of conquer and destroy come over me.

I never really know if it hurts them or not. I always know how much it hurts me.

Maybe this comes from my competitive instincts. Certainly I carry this residual need to control. Perhaps there is something in the personality sitting before me that elicits some kind of cataclysmic emotional reaction that draws me into a battle of turmoil.

I just know this: Whenever I make a harsh pre-judgment about someone I will find out by the end of the night that I was wrong--most of the time.

Even if I am not wrong, and my instincts tell me I am right, I have to ask myself:

Do I want to be right or do I want to be happy?

Withholding judgment is a powerful wand, because often people show us what we invite them to show us. If I respond to your guilt, you will tend to show me the more of it. If I approach you with a critical attitude, then I’m more likely to get a response from you that seems to prove my point. Yet if I respond to your innocence, you’ll tend to show me that, as well. Our focus on the good in someone else, regardless of whether or not our ego thinks they “deserve” it, cast a mystical light on any relationship.
~ Everyday Grace; Marianne Williamson.

I never wake up in the morning wishing that I had the opportunity to display more of my power to somebody else.

Power is an illusion. Especially in the fate driven game of Blackjack, which I‘ve often compared to life. “It’s not what you get that matters; it’s what you do with what you get.”

I can''t make past wrongs disappear, but I can take actions that will help me to let them go. When I make amends, I do what I can to correct the situation. Then I can put the past in it's rightful place and leave it there.
~ Courage to Change; July 14.

Every day matters.

Don't Go There

2011-07-10T12:38:00.001-07:00

Charlene’s ex-room mate, the man who helped me take her to the hospital, has been coming over, knocking on my door, and asking for a few minutes just to talk. It sounds innocent enough, and I get it, I think he is lonely. I see him standing in the quad in long conversations with the mailman, walking alone through town, and I’ve learned from him and through Charlene the events of his life that I feel are painful.

His brother was an addict that soaked his family dry of finances and emotions. He died in his disease and there was nothing anybody could do for him, try as hard as they may.

But I’m not comfortable with Ex-roommate guy’s attention by the feelings I get when my personal space is invaded by his reaching out to touch the side of my body, or his attempts at trying to kiss me.

I didn’t say anything when this initially happened because I was caught off guard as I pushed him out the door.

I guess I could have, should have said something sooner, but I didn’t see it coming. It started out innocuously through our shared experience of helping his friend.

It was a touch on my arm, a kiss on the cheek. Allowing that to happen opened the door to the next move.

In the program I’ve learned why it’s important that women help and women and men help men. It’s so that misunderstandings like this don‘t happen, yet sometimes in the real world I run into the opposite sex who I can also be of service with, and I have to be careful that that doesn’t back fire.

Ex-roommate guy told me every relationship he’s ever been in has been with an alcoholic, yet at his late stage in life he doesn’t think that he needs anything like I suggested--Al-Anon. So I let that conversation drop knowing I did all that I could just in telling him it’s a way of life that is bringing me peace from all my past experiences.

After that I decided he’s not someone I want to bring into my inner circle, or even to have rotating in the outer circle of my relationship orbit, to be honest, and I guess that’s okay because it’s not my job to be a friend to the world. The more emotional sobriety I slowly attain, the more picky I become in who I will allow in my radar range.

So, as suggested to me by a friend, and through conversations I’ve had with others, I would like to find a way to let him know I’m not that “into” him.

“Please don’t come over anymore because I’m not comfortable being around you,” seems harsh and cold.

My options also include not answering the door when I know it’s him or telling him I’m too busy to talk, over and over until he gets the message. This is what I prefer, which I have to admit, seems pretty passive.

Wanting to be compassionate and kind has always been a pitfall for me. Taking people’s feelings as my personal responsibility has cost me the invasion of my boundaries and put me in a position of emotional flux and angst. Resentment builds from my thinking they did something to put me in this position, when what I really need to do it take responsibility for my own peace of mind.

Men! I tell ya! A woman has to be careful. Sometimes just smiling at them from across the room will make them think we have the white hots for them and want to jump into bed. I’m just smiling, okay.

Today, I will remember that honesty and directness will increase my self-esteem. God, help me let go of my fear about owning my power to take care of myself in all relationships.
~ The Language of Letting Go; Melody Beattie.

Everyday something happens that propels me further into working a program.

Every day matters.

World Peace and a Big Ol' Tiara

2011-07-08T14:49:00.000-07:00

A call came in yesterday from my friend, the AA casino co-worker, concerned about how to handle the delicate situation of her birthday.

“My ex never celebrated any holidays, including my birthday, and I would either handle it by over-reacting, or under reacting. This year I would like to do things different.”

“Gee,” I said. “That’s a hard one. What would handling it in the middle of those two scenarios look like?” I asked her back.

“I guess I could ask the current boyfriend if he would like to take me to lunch for an intimate celebration.”

I thought that sounded perfect.

Today while shopping for groceries I decided to stop by the greeting card isle to look for a birthday card for my friend. This one caught my eye:

“Wishing you world peace and a big ol’ tiara.”

The “World Peace” would be a lot to give even if I could, but I do have a tiara on the top shelf of my closet.

Amazing how inspiration hits us.

I have the casino’s pit boss personal home phone number in my cell phone. No need in having an idea if I can’t follow through, and considering how strict dress code is adhered to in a black jack pit, I decided I would give him a call while I was standing in line waiting for the groceries to be check out.

“Yeah, no problem.” He answered my request. “I guess we can let her wear a tiara on the job tonight.”

I’m having so much fun with my friend’s special day.

Happy Birthday to my daughter also. She’s a young 23 years old today and has been the one of the greatest gifts to my life.

Every day matters.

Changing Season of Heart and Sky

2011-07-07T19:18:00.001-07:00

The monsoon season is upon us.

With only the intermittent sound of occasional thunder, today is overcast and quiet and somewhat boring, if you ask me.

Is this boredom, or is this really serenity?

It’s a good day to stay home, snuggle in, watch TV and do the laundry. Thanks to my crazy new schedule at the casino, Wednesday and Thursday is my new "weekend". I did go out this morning to have a weekly meeting with my Al-Anon sponsor, drinking coffee and tea at a nearby coffee shop.

There wasn’t much to report. It doesn’t seem like there is anything on the horizon, other than a couple of ongoing issues, that I needed to report. Figuring that we’d chat for a while then part ways early, I couldn’t anticipate what the topic of today’s discussion would be. It was a good day to listen to what is going on in her life. It’s another great way for me to witness how other people handle their own life situations.

“We are all spiritually connected.” she said to me. This is probably the one thing that she said that keeps swirling around my head. “What happens to you, happens to me.” Which explains why tears formed in her eyes when I nonchalantly told her I entered one of my photographs in a contest.

“This is you putting yourself out there despite the reprisal of other people’s judgment. This is recovery.”

It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me, but she seemed deeply touched with the notion. Somehow she felt connected to my soul doing something that raises myself up.

When I think about it, all the alcoholism, addiction, selfish, self centered human catastrophes that I’ve witnessed in my life and judged, I consider all those same character defects that live inside of me. Those traits that I have not conquered or overcome. I share that with everybody that struggles with our humanness.

When the goodness of mankind manifests itself in all the acts of kindness that we as humans bestow upon one another, my spirit rises in joy to that triumph also.

Thinking about the week that has just passed, looking over the situations where working a fourth and fifth step has helped me, and other dilemmas where I still need to find compassion, I’m accepting how spiritually we are all connected.

Looking into the eyes of another human being, no matter what emotion they display toward me, I think to myself: “God lives in there.”

It makes dealing with others a whole lot easier.

It’s a slow, boring, serene day which I could change if I really wanted to, but I understand that some days are meant to be quiet and reflective, restful and full of gratitude.

My life is not perfect by any means, but it’s the best life I’ve ever had.

Every day matters.

Winners of the 2011 Whiskey Row Photo Contest.

Looking Myself In The Eye

2011-07-05T13:44:00.001-07:00

This weekend was hard and heavy with the casino filled every night, late every night, and I labored like I have not worked in a long time. For an “on-call” dealer, given hours as needed, I am very appreciative. Tonight is the last night in my five day work week. I don’t think the business will warrant my being their long tonight. I may be appreciative of that too.

I’m staying home today. I’m going to rest and take care of myself.

There are heavy bags under my eyes. Not all of a sudden, but when I look in the mirror, even after a fitful night’s rest, it’s the bags under my eyes that draw my attention over anything else that I see. Other’s may not recognize it as much as I do, but I sure see it.

So today I called a plastic surgeon.

It really was a difficult phone call to make.

My sponsor says when I make a decision to do better it might frighten me because then I’m required me wake up and take responsibility. Not attempting to look at and work on my character defects is easy.

Perhaps this is true for making physical changes, which also requires me to pay attention and be present. Watching what I eat, coloring my hair, going to the doctor, getting my eyes checked, staying sober, going to meetings. All of it has to be persistently followed up with maintenance by keeping up with the work.

The rewards are that I feel good, look the best I can, stay healthy, see things clearly, and live, truly live a better life style.

My therapist girlfriend called me today and we talked about my plastic surgeon appointment and why I am having feelings of reluctance. It’s not because I don’t want it, because I do. It’s not because I’m afraid, because I’m not. It’s not because I can’t afford it--I can. The bottom line is I don’t think I deserve good things for myself.

Not something as seemingly trivial as this.

After extensively researching my options between surgery and filler injections, finding the best doctor in town (not settling for a skin care clinic that can give shots), knowing what the pros and cons are and what some of the side effects may or may not be, not jumping into this decision to please a man, or rushing into a procedure that I can’t afford, I’ve made an appointment in three weeks for the least invasive procedure I can have.

Life’s options, when clear minded and sober to make them, can be exciting.

It’s rather nice today that my problems are high maintenance and there’s no real drama going on.

Every day matters.

Where Would Junior Bonner Go?

2011-07-03T12:28:00.000-07:00

Actually, Junior went to The Palace. The Palace on Whiskey Row, whose doors first opened in September 1877, is the oldest frontier bar in Arizona and the most well-known and historic restaurant and saloon in the state. Not only is The Place where Doc Holliday played poker back in 1880, but Junior Bonnor was filmed here in 1971, and is still talked about today as a picture show that depicts the authentic nature of our town.

The Palace on Whiskey Row

Men went to the bars on Whiskey Row over a century ago not just to drink whiskey, but to also check for notices of work available. It was an election central for several area political races and cattle spreads; and mineral claims were bought and sold over the bar.

Doc Holliday's picture taken in Prescott, 1880

Whiskey Row is still a place to “party” today, yet whatever anybody else is doing on Whiskey Row, I have my own agenda. Where most people are attracted to The Palace Bar, Hooligan's Pub, Jersey Lily's, or Matt's Saloon, I am more of a Hotel St. Michael‘s fan. I love their Bistro.

Hotel St. Michael on the distant corner.

Their Baja Fresh Fish is to die for.

When my sister was visiting I took her to the Bistro for dinner. It was great ambiance to the small western town that this place rightfully claims to their fame. And with Rodeo Days and the Fourth of July celebrated in unison, the ol' rid’em cowboys seem to be flourishing everywhere.

After eating we crossed the street to the Courthouse Square to watch a special outdoor performance of the Lynx Creek Cloggers.

It was all very sweet.

In conjunction with the festivities, the local newspaper is hosting the “2011 Whiskey Row Photo Contest.”

I submitted this picture.

The prizes are from local vendors, and I don’t even anticipate that I’ll place, but the idea of just participating rather excited me. I live here. I take a lot of pictures. I can put myself out there to at least be a part of the fun. Competition is stiff as this is a very artistic community. For those of you who would like to check out the other entries: click here.

Yippee ki yeah, everybody.

Every day matters.

This IS My First Rodeo

2011-07-01T14:07:00.000-07:00

Action speaks for itself--press the arrow to play. (Yes, I recorded this.)

A complete change takes place in our approach to life. Where we used to run from responsibility, we find ourselves accepting it with gratitude that we can successfully shoulder it. Instead of wanting to escape some perplexing problem, we experience the thrill of challenge in the opportunity it affords for another application of A.A. techniques, and we find ourselves tackling it with surprising vigor. ~ Big Book; pg. 276.

A text came over my cell phone from Shari: “I’m buying tickets to the Rodeo. Do you want to go?”

My first response was Nawwww, not me. I’m not a rodeo cowgirl. I’m really not. Yet bells and whistles went off in the back of my head that caused me to ask myself: “What else are you going to do on a Thursday night?”

It was a chance to get together with four other women from the program to do something unusually different. This time I could step out of my box of comfortable isolation to check out something I’ve never seen before. Besides, it would be a great photo opportunity.

“When in Rome…” I thought. “Go to a Rodeo.”

The flag of the Great State of Arizona

Thankfully, a local girl who knows about rodeos went with us and I learned about a lot of rodeo things. Not to mention how nice the “scenery” was--Cowboys everywhere. I think I’d look good in a hat like that. And I got some great advise on purchasing the boots.

I had no idea as to what makes a bull buck, how much talent these athletes possess, or how much I could be entertained by the thrill of it all. So when the invitation came over the loud speaker to join the rodeo’s Cowboy Church on Sunday I told the girls, I think I ought-a go.

Jokingly (or maybe not) a friend asked me to check my motives.

“It’s a program of attraction, right?”

It was a small step to say “yes”, hugely rewarded by bonding friendships measured by meters in seconds shared in laughter.

Now there is a sense of belonging, of being wanted and needed and loved. In returned for a bottle and a hangover, we have been given the Keys of the Kingdom. ~ Big Book; pg. 276

Every day matters.

No Regrets

2011-06-30T11:42:00.000-07:00

I love the life I live now.

To live without regrets requires the discipline of awareness, the compassion to forgive and the courage to change. I am aware of my true nature--that I am a spiritual being, loved and guided by the Divine Infinite. Anytime I feel I have failed to be my best self, I remember that I am learning to live and love at the highest level of my soul's wisdom.

Knowing I am doing my best, I have compassion for myself. As I learn to forgive myself, I find it easier to forgive others. I am at peace with the path that has brought me to this place of understanding. I have no regrets, and I love the life I live now.

~ Today's Daily Meditation from my church.

Every day matters.