Therapeutic Steam

You know, there is something about cooking that straightens out my thinking.  Or maybe I just cooked so much tonight I am too tired to be very stressed out.  

What a lovely evening.  Today was another wack-a-doo day at work.  There are many of those anticipated in the future.  But I try not to write very much about work here.  I am grateful to be gainfully employed in the field I spent many years getting educated to work in (and I recently read that the rule about not ending a sentence with a preposition is silly and outdated, but it still just feels wrong to me).  

I am now on vacation.  I don't return to work until July 14.  Yippee.  I am excited about it.  

I have a huge family dinner here tomorrow.  So, tonight I made potato salad and I forced my daughter to make a key lime pie.  And after she made it, she talked to her boyfriend on the phone about how she made this pie all by herself and she will be happy to make him one... it was so cute.  

I came into the house from the back yard and saw that steam rising off my stove and all the stuff all over the counter and it made me so happy.  I am pretty compulsively neat, so I cannot possibly LEAVE stuff all over the place like that, so when I see it, I know there is something really special going on.  And there is.  

Tomorrow my brother, who lives far, far away in North Carolina, will be here.  And his wife, who has been my sister-in-law since 1965.  And their son.  And his wife, and their three children - and my niece's two children.  And my three children (adults to anyone but me).  Oh joy.  I am so excited.  My brother and his wife have never been to this house.

Tomorrow I need to get up early to get to mass before the day begins.  Then I have another pie to bake, and some last minute sprucing up to do, and more cooking.  My son will be manning the grill, which is a good thing.

This is good stuff.  Very good.

Wednesday

Did you ever know a gift shop lady volunteer at a hospital?  They are usually retired, grey haired, and kind hearted - or they wouldn't be spending their time, earning no money, working at a gift shop.  Particularly at a psych hospital.  Patients in the gift shop require a special kind of interpersonal skill I know I don't possess.  

One of my favorites died over the weekend.  Her face always lit up when I walked into the shop and she would say "Hi Mary!" as if she was waiting all day for me to come in and now that I had, her day was complete.  I am sure she treated everyone that way, but you would never know it, because you just felt so special because of the way she treated you.

I had planned to attend her funeral tomorrow.  But something else I absolutely must attend was scheduled at the same time.  So, instead of doing what I should be doing and being at my friend's funeral, I will be sitting in a stinky conference room discussing an event that I have a hard time talking about without crying, and I will sit there and calmly dissect the event like I am a robot.  I will write it up and analyze it and talk to people about what we can do better, and how we are not going to have this happen again, etc.  

Tonight I went over to my neighbor's.  I should have known not to do this.  She is moving.  It is their last night in their house.   As I left, she hugged me and thanked me for all that I have done for her (not that it was anything that wasn't a pleasure for me), and there were the waterworks again.  He husband found me a Kleenex and I got the heck out of there.  

I am sad tonight about a couple of losses. I know that tomorrow it will seem different.  But tonight, it feels so sad.

Good bye Erma.  You were a one of a kind.  They don't make 'em like you anymore.  I will miss you terribly.  

Tuesday Evening

I just got in from a lovely dinner with my nephew from Houston, his wife, my son and my daughter.  It is always a marvel to me that I get to have family who I love and who seem to love me and we actually enjoy spending time together.  How cool is that?

I stopped on my way home from work and got a pedicure and manicure which was lovely.  It gave me a good excuse to put my feet on my new jute rug and take a photo.  I think this rug is the cat's meow.  I tried not to buy one for my dining room, but bamboo is so soft, the floor was getting scuffed up from the dining room chairs.  So, now I have a lovely rug to protect my floor - and look beautiful.  It even smells good!  

I have been running since 3:30 this a.m., and I need to get up tomorrow at about that time and go all day tomorrow too.  Getting ready for vacation is really a lot of work!  But fun!

I will meet one of my sponsee's at the meeting tomorrow morning at 6:30.  It is a good thing.   Very good thing.  It is amazing to me how much love can be contained in one little room - an AA meeting.  If you don't understand - keep coming back - you will.

XXXOOOO, MC

Some photos I didn't blog about....

I am technically challenged tonight - so instead of having the caption of the photo just underneath the photo, I will bunch them up here.  

My daughter and I went out for pizza one Friday night and on the way home (one mile from my house), I looked over as I was driving and saw that elk!  I thought I was seeing things!  It was humungous!  It was gorgeous and looked like a statue.  I pulled over and started taking pictures.  After a while, I noticed that there was a whole line of cars behind us, all with arms with cell phones hanging out of the windows - taking pictures.  It was really something.  

My daughter and I (oh, it is so nice to write that phrase) were at an AA Founder's Day picnic.  It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon, but we are in a severe weather pattern and beautiful can turn strange very quickly.  Some guy was standing and said "look, there is a funnel cloud!"  I looked and didn't see it - but I looked a minute longer and saw the most amazing thing up in the sky.  That is a photo of the first one.  There were three funnel clouds in all as we stood there, getting pounded with wind and rain.  And, being a wonderful mother, setting a wonderful example for my daughter, I stood out in this crazy weather taking pictures with my cell phone, along with my daughter and a whole lot of other nutty sober drunks.  It was scary, but oddly exciting.   It was a wonderful day.

    Parenthetical:  what a miraculous thing to attend an AA picnic with my daughter.  She knew more people than I did!  And there were some people who said hello to both of us and then found out I am her mother - the shock!  and then the recognition that "Gee!  This makes sense!"  And to sit with her and her ex and eat lunch - all of us sober.  What a miracle.  I could never have anticipated 10 years ago when they first got together that I would some day relish the sober company of those two.  I truly love that guy I thought was the worst nightmare that ever darkened my door 10 short years ago!

Two roses from my garden.  In a tiny vase that was brought to me by a beau from Prague.  I love roses and I love that tiny vase.

One of my peony bushes.  I LOVE peonies.  My mother had them.  And I have them.  

And finally, the dreaded wetsuit!  I returned it this morning.  I was happy to hand it back!

So, this is just some of the stuff that has been happening while I have been writing about the past.  

I get to do stuff

My medal for completing the triathlon today.  I earned this one!
For this race, they not only marked your arms and thighs with your bib number, but they marked the back of your calf with your age.  I declined to have this done yesterday, but this morning, I thought - heck yes!  I am 57 years old and participating in a triathlon!  I am happy to claim that.  

This race was HARD.  The water was cold which necessitated the use of a wetsuit.  Swimming in a wetsuit is like swimming in a body sized girdle.  I think if you are stick thin that might feel good, but it is tricky for others.  As I was swimming, there were two separate occasions, with two separate women, where I needed to stop and stay with women who were in trouble and flag down some help.  I had to do what I learned how to do in AA - just be with someone and just let them know someone is there, and someone cares.  They both couldn't breathe because of their wetsuits.  My swim took about 15 minutes longer than it normally does, but I was grateful to be able to be there for those women who needed a hand.  

If I would have gone out there this morning just to show off my athletic prowess, the day would have to be considered a dismal failure.  But before I left the house this morning, I prayed for God to show me how I could be of service to Him and my fellows, and He did!  

It is also very nice to hang out with women my age in the transition area.  There aren't many of us at a triathlon.  It is super fun to hang out before and after the race and also as we may catch each other on the transitions.  

The other thing?  It is so nice to see women's breasts.  Most women who do triathlons wear tri suits, which are like swimming suits,  and then when we get out of the water, we just get on the bike with that and a shirt or not - I always put a skirt and a shirt over my tri suit.  Anyway, so here are all these women without their usual breast hardware, a.k.a. bras.  And do you know that real women's breasts look virtually nothing like those big round hard things that protrude just south of the collarbones of actresses, models, and other people who like to show them off?   Just an observation from a triathlon.... 

I am grateful to be a sober woman who gets to do stuff.  I get to be happy to let someone put a "57" on my leg.  As I passed another woman on the run portion, she shouted out to me "AGE ROCKS!"  and I agree!  

Life is so good.  

Back to Life

Getting ready for a triathlon tomorrow morning.  At the crack of dawn.  I need to be on the road by 4:00 a.m.  I am excited!  In the above backpack is my wetsuit and other stuff that I didn't feel like hauling out just for a photo... but I think the photo captures the mood... preparation and excitement.  

And I just threw in a rose for good measure.  I have missed 25 days worth of roses and peonies.  In fact, the peonies are already spent - but it was a banner year for them.  They were gorgeous!  

My daughter went missing for 24 or so hours.  By the time I went to church tonight, I cried through the whole thing.  I kept telling myself that she was fine and that I was wasting a lot of energy worrying.  But it is a hard thing to allow yourself to love like that and have the kind of hope that is shining bright in my heart for her.

She called tonight at about 6:30.  She and her fellow decided to spend an extra day fishing in Wyoming.  They were having such fun.  Oh, I cried with relief when I got this call.  

It is almost easier to live in despair.  But I will take the hard path if it means having hope and love in my heart.  

Wish me good luck on my first triathlon wearing a wetsuit.  Thanks!

What it was like: Year Twenty-Five

Praise God!  This is the end of this series of posts.  I have complained, but it has been very good for me.  I don't sit around thinking about my early sobriety or my later years, and I certainly don't sit around thinking - Gosh, I have come a long way!  

I am not done with my twenty-fifth year yet.  I have 5 weeks or so left in it.  I hope to stay sober until July 24.  If I had to bet, I would be willing to place money on the odds that I will still be sober then.  But I am keenly aware that it is one day at a time and I can get drunk just as well as anyone else.  But if I keep doing what I have been doing for the last 24.91 years, I will likely get what I have been getting for that time... that is sobriety.  Not always the prettiest picture of sobriety, but it is sober - for reals.

When I think back on this year, I think of being tired.  I haven't had a vacation for a year now.  It has been my triennial super-busy year at work.  It has been busy at home too.  

Here's the other thing I think of when I think of the past year.  My darling daughter asked me in January if she could go to the 6:30 a.m. meeting with me.  I was a little bit shocked, but acted like it was the most normal thing in the world.  I love to see God work in the life of a person making the most tentative exploration of maybe being sober... I took her to this meeting of mostly well-educated, well-to-do, middle-aged white people.  Yuppies, she would call them.  

My precious girl is covered in tattoos and has chosen a very tough life for herself.  That life is evident when you look at her.   She is very very charming (as we tend to be) and it never fails to surprise me the favorable way people react to her.  Anyway... on this morning in the middle of January, at this yuppie meeting, there was a lot of talk about prison, parole officers, probation officers, etc.  It was a perfect meeting for my daughter.  It was a weird meeting, I just sat back and got to admire the evidence of the hand of God - again.  

I have hope in my heart for her for the first time in over a decade.  She has been sober since that day in January.  Just writing that makes me feel short of breath.  So, I think I will stop.

Maybe I am too tired as I try to write this tonight.  Because, really, when I think of the past year, I think of being really tired.  I have a triathlon on Sunday and I needed to be rested before then....

I am grateful to be a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am grateful for the way my life has changed.  I am grateful for so many people I love.  Life is good.  Incredibly good.