Cool Prayer

More about prayer, my new favorite thing to do, even though I am far too cool to pray, being more of a very cool Eastern philosophy meditation guy, which I can't do worth a shit . . . 

The problem with my praying pre-Program was that I prayed at things; I was a Prayer On Demand kind of guy.  I knew what I needed to be happy and I asked to get these things post-haste or, better yet,  to have impediments to my happiness removed.  Generally speaking I'm more interested in avoiding pain than obtaining pleasure, although it's a close call.  The Book addresses this deficiency: it says that we may ask for anything whatsoever as long as we add the qualifier: Thy Will Be Done.  Or: Your Will Be Done.  Or: Dude, Whatever seems cool to you.  There's also the suggestion that we can pray for whatever we want as long as what we get is in some way a help to others; this seems like a total waste of time to me, seeing as I'm pretty detached from the well-being of others, worried that it may take some of the pie off of my plate.

My uncool mother, who I've never seen meditate but who prays a lot, says that it's OK to ask for whatever I want.  She thinks my god or higher power isn't too worried about my selfishness.  She doesn't think I'm going to pull the wool over god's eyes.  The praying is for me - it's not for god.  That made me mad until I tried it and found it worked just fine.  I do believe that if I add the They Will Be Done to the end of whatever outrageous crap I'm coming up with I have my bases covered.  That phrase is kind of like Liability Insurance - it covers all ills.

Now, how can I make praying cool?

A Logical Linkage

Our Steps suggest that it is quite helpful to pray and meditate, and also to engage in self-examination.  There's a sentence in the 11th Step - I confess to being unable to locate it with a lazy and cursory search so I'm forced to paraphrase - that says that although all three of these practices are wonderfully helpful the real power is when they're logically interlinked.

I do the self-examination thing on a daily basis.  You're reading my self-examination at the moment.  It's very revealing.  I do it because it's hard for me to bullshit myself when I'm writing.  I can do it when I'm talking and trying to impress someone but frankly I don't see the point when I'm all by myself writing.  I also try to meditate although this usually evolves into a nap or a wild sexual fantasy or a careful, detailed accounting of some terrible vengeance I'm going to wreak on someone who definitely deserves it.  Meditating is cool - it's done by cool people who study Eastern philosophies and travel to Bhutan to do it.   Praying is not cool - it's done by nice people who dress up once a week and all go to church together.  As a cool guy I've been working hard on my meditating and slacking on the praying, with predictable results.

My head is usually full of crap.  There are a lot of people yelling and screaming and generally causing a lot of mayhem.  When I meditate I try to slow down and ignore the mongol horde.  Praying is more like trying to talk over the gibberish, like when my sister was pissing me off when we were kids, and I would stick my fingers in my ears and make a lot of squeaking noises.

I did some praying over the last few days..  Helped me out.

Wait:  To be, remain, or delay in expectation or anticipation of; await.

I have been grooving big time on the Crisis List.  I should have done this years ago and not simply told other people to do it and then not do it myself.  I write down the date and then I write down what's bothering me.  Some days I'm clean - nothing to List.  Some days I have quite a List that I have to clean up.  I find that about half the time - and I'm totally making up this percentage - the item listed requires some kind of concrete action on my part and about half the time - this percentage is completely accurate - I have to Wait.

If I wake up and my tooth is killing me then I need to call the dentist.  That's the action that's required on my part.  Of course, I don't have to do this or I can delay the action because I'm afraid.  I do both of these things from time to time.  That's why items keep reappearing on my List.  Frankly, if I don't take the action then it's my own damn fault.  My dudes don't give me much support when I'm not doing something I should do.  That's on me.  "You're bitching about that again?" they say.  "Weren't you supposed to do something about that?"

If I call the dentist and the earliest he can see me is late afternoon, then I have to Wait.  I've taken the action and now I have to be patient.  It's funny how things that require patient waiting often change a lot and often they just self-correct.  That's why I wait, even though I don't want to.  I'm much more into quick, rash action.

Interesting how I came up with the dentist as an example.  That guy hasn't been on the list like 25 times in the last 27 days.

Anxiety:  A state of being uneasy, apprehensive, or worried about what may happen; misgiving.

I don't think there is a concept more fascinating to me than anxiety.  I've looked up the definition of anxiety more than any other word in the last several years, and I've looked up a LOT of words.  The big qualifier in that definition is may.  May implies a possibility of indeterminate likelihood.  There is not the slightest assurance that a thing is going to come about, making the worry a big #$!! waste of time.

Fear I get.  Fear is primal and it is helpful.  Fear is looking in a dark cave and hearing an angry growling sound, and not going in.  Fear is seeing my fellow caveman assure me he can fly and ending up smashed up on the rocks below, deader than a doorknob.   Fear keeps me alive - anxiety makes me miserable.

I've been enjoying my Crisis List.  Nothing has come of anything on that list and some of the stuff is ridiculous in retrospect.  Some of it is patently ridiculous when I write it down.

"Really?" I say to myself as I project some ridiculous, implausible outcome.  "This is how you're going to spend your time this morning?  Worrying about this?"

Alcoholics.  There isn't a bright, sunny day that I can't ruin with my anxiety.  I can worry about anything.

Go ahead.  Give me a try.

Little Johnny

I marvel at how solving problems makes such a big difference in my life.  I still laugh at my  belief that I might be able to get out of things without experiencing any problems.  Getting through challenging things has done so much more to shape my character than getting what I want.  

My friend, Little Westside Johnny, is coming for a visit.  Maybe my Old City sponsor is sending him out to spy on me;  given my history of lies and deception a little checking-up isn't a terrible idea.  It's more likely that no one else is thinking about me at all.  This seems about right when I consider how much time I spend thinking about myself.  It really isn't necessary for anyone else to waste any of their time pondering my circumstances.  

Little Johnny and I did some pretty extensive traveling together in the day.  We were reminiscing about a few of the more memorable trips, one being to a country in the Middle East that was a few ticks past our comfort zone - we didn't see another foreigner the entire time and the tourist infrastructure was sketchy at best.  We followed that up with a visit to a remote, remote camp in the Ecuadorean Amazon.   We were out there.  It took many hours by plane, jeep, and dugout canoes to get where we ended up.

These weren't comfortable trips in a physical sense and they were emotionally draining as well.  We both experienced anxiety attacks.  Yet both of us agree that these may be the two best vacations that we ever took.  With the stress and the overcoming of the stress came intense satisfaction.  We achieved something - we got somewhere.

Also, some of the greatest lines in my life came out of these trips.

Little Westside Johnny, bent over, gasping for air, ankle deep in mud and swamp water, gobbling Hostess cinnamon buns and pretzels in a desperate attempt to consume enough calories to keep up with all of our much younger comrades: "I'd give up my entire 401K to get airlifted out of here."

Silent Seaweed

SuperK and I are getting ready to head south for a few months this winter.  We rented a small one bedroom apartment for our trip, fairly close to some family members who seem eager to have us visit, an oddity in my family - normally they're looking askance at what I'm doing.  I've also been talking to my distant immediate family who are suggesting that they're going to come and visit.

The thing about my family is that we're not a close-knit group.  We love each other and wish each other well but we've never spent much time together outside of fairly standard holidays.   When I lived only a few miles away in The Old City I got visits every 8 or 10 months.  After much angst and self-searching and introspection I attained some acceptance about this.  I saw my part in it - I saw my major part in it.  I've mentioned that all of these folks see the world through a similar lens, and then there's me: I don't have a lens of any sort.  I don't think they find me disagreeable, just odd and confusing, and since I am odd and confusing I can't get too worked up about this.

So the point is that the chances of my elderly parents traveling by jet airplane 3000 miles to visit me is . . . ahem, remote.  I believe that they believe they're coming but it ain't happening.  My mother asked today, during a phone conversation that I was barely listening to, if they could stay with us for a couple of days when they visit.  I guess they plan on spending the rest of the trip that they're not going to take with my cousin who has a real house with extra bedrooms and who inhabits the same planet as my folks.

"Sure,"  I said.  "That'll be great.  We'll have to get a hotel room when you're here because we only have the one bedroom place."

Comments like this reinforce the opinion of many if not all people that I should simply try not to speak.  I believe my mother is irritated that I didn't spend the additional 50% that it would have cost me to rent a place with an extra bedroom or two or three in case family members who aren't coming anyhow do come and want a free place to stay.  It's not that I don't want them to stay with us - it's that there isn't any place for all of us to sleep.

This was all counterproductive.  It didn't go anywhere good.  I could hear SuperK yelling from the back room: "Say yes!  Say yes!!"  But I had already spoken, and was still speaking even though I was thinking: "Why am I speaking?"

This permitted my mother to switch into martyr mode, a many layered affair with nuance piled on top of nuance, perfected after years of practice.  This gives her an excuse not to stay with us or to cancel the trip that she isn't going to take anyhow.  What's so irritating is that my parents have plenty of money.  They never spend any of it and they're still saving for god's sake, at 85 years old.  They're probably saving up for jet skis or a snowmobile.  I don't get it.

I don't get it, alright.

Counseling

Sign on an office seen last night walking home: "Northwest Counseling: Specializing in individuals, couples, and families."

SuperK: "Glad she's got it narrowed down to everyone in the human race."

Pondering Seaweed

Ponder:  To think deeply; deliberate; meditate.

I further ponder writing . . . 

I ponder it when I'm unsure of a course of action and I ponder it when I'm upset.  When I'm mad or pissed or angry or furious or irritated or annoyed - or any of the other code words men use when they're afraid - I try not to do anything.  Same thing when I'm anxious or agitated.  I never do anything when I'm ticked or peeved or honked off.  Taking actions when my emotions are running high is a recipe for disaster.

This often entails writing - not only that, but writing when I'm in pain.  I'm impatient.  I don't like waiting and it's nearly impossible when I'm uncomfortable.  So my M.O. is to act Right Away!  Don't ponder or wait for additional information; don't ask for guidance from my friends and my higher power; just Do Something Right Now!!  I'm not Uncle Joe - I'm not moving kinda slow.

One of our Promises states that "we will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us."  In my case that was all situations that existed.  My drinking companions used to put their hands over their faces and say: "Where's Seaweed?  Where's Seaweed?"  I'd laugh delightedly when they pulled their hands down.  I really thought they had disappeared.  That's how easy it was to baffle me.

The Eleventh Step adds this assurance:  "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."  That's a powerful incentive for a dude who struggled and didn't relax or take anything easy.  That's a payoff.

By ". . . for a while" we mean more than 20 minutes.

Skinny But Tough

Solve:  To find or provide a satisfactory answer or explanation for; make clear; explain.

And there really is something to be said about solving problems, as opposed to avoiding them or masking them or burying them under an avalanche of drugs and alcohol.  I'm not suggesting that problems can't be delayed or sidestepped, only that they have to be dealt with in some fashion other than closing one's eyes and hoping they go away.

There is a sense of satisfaction with actually confronting something and coming up with a solution.  I'm not afraid of the problem anymore; been there, done that.  The older I get the less fearful I get - I've been through a lot of things once or twice and nothing has killed me yet, although a few things have inflicted grievous injury.

I'm skinny but I'm tough.

Toothsome Lass

Because I know everyone is on the absolute edge of their respective seat waiting to see how my trials and tribulations with my teeth is going to play out, I say this: I went to the dentist today and had some of the work done.  I was wavering between not doing anything when something definitely needed to be done and calling the dentist to practice my ability to deliver a venomous screed of profane rage.  Instead, I  chose something in-between.  I'm also grateful tonight: grateful for Novocaine and dental schools.  One hundred years ago my tooth would have gotten worse, growing more and more painful, until the decay would cause the thing to simply break off.  That sounds lovely.

And I'm laughing about that phone call with Willie.  When I'm IN FEAR I can't see too inches past my nose.  You could slap me around the head and shoulders with the solution and I'd miss the whole point.  God speaks to me through other people.  He doesn't speak to me directly even though I think he should.  God gives me answers in direct proportion to the amount of effort I put into finding a solution.  This is why I call people - they're not wrapped up in the fear and they can see things much more clearly.  And he doesn't give me the answers when I want them.  I spent day one praying and writing and talking to people, and I made a decision.  When I woke up on day two I was still afraid.  Damn.  I had to go to work again.  I hadn't done enough work and I hadn't made the right decision or the fear would have been gone.  I listen to the fear - it's telling me something.

Willie said, in response to my thanks: "Shit, no problem.  I wasn't upset so I could see the situation more clearly than you could.  And what do I care about your teeth anyway?"

He didn't actually say that - I said that.  But we joke all the time about the fact that if something  doesn't concern us directly, then frankly we don't really care about it.  That's an exaggeration but not as big a one as you might imagine.

Mind-Muddle

Muddle:  To confuse mentally; befuddle, as with alcoholic liquor.

Yesterday I called the dentist's office to get a more through explanation on the estimate.  They kind of cleared up the mind-muddle but not really - I was still confused.  I got up this morning and I was still upset so I knew that the action I had taken wasn't going to cut the mustard.  I didn't enjoy the first action so you can imagine I didn't fancy any additional unpleasant action.  I did some writing - still upset - and I made some phone calls.  I wasn't sure what to do, vacillating wildly between doing nothing and doing all the recommended work, between never talking to the dentist again and calling up and giving them a piece of my mind.

Willie called back, both a blessing and a curse, but mostly a curse.  He listened to me talk.  He empathized and he laughed at me and he came up with a couple of suggestions, both requiring me to call the office again and get yet more information.  I wanted the advice.  I want guys who know me to tell me what they think.  I can take the advice or I can leave it alone - it's not like anyone has a gun to my head.  My friend Loveland was in town for a day this weekend and we went to a meeting together; he told me: "I want people to take my inventory.  Tell me what you think I'm doing wrong.  I can't fix it if I've got it justified in my own head."

I called the office again and was decidedly un-upset after the call.  I'm heading in tomorrow to get some of the most pressing work done.  It took a while for me to get to that decision.  I had to hang out with the discomfort until the solution presented itself and I had to do the work to be in a position to get that solution.  I was lost on my own.  When I was drinking I would have gotten good and drunk and simply buried the whole problem deep down inside.  Worries about my teeth would have been another one of those hundreds of nagging termites ceaselessly devouring my insides.

Now, I'm not saying that I'm looking forward to the solution . . . 

More Step Work, Dammit

So I'm back at the dentist yesterday for a cleaning.  The last time I was in The Chair I had a bit of an emergency: a broken tooth.  The dentist did a stellar job fixing the problem while also spending a little of his free time looking around inside my almost 56 year old mouth for any other things that might catch his attention.  Not surprisingly, he found some!  At the top of his list were three additional teeth that needed to have crowns put on them.  Now I'm not doubting that I have some teeth that aren't in tip-top shape and I would much rather have a dentist finding a few optional problems than one missing something important, but I'm not having any symptoms and I don't have dental insurance and these procedures are #$!! expensive.

I fretted some at the time but didn't do any of the additional work, with no dire consequences.  After I had my teeth cleaned yesterday the dentist did an oral exam; he noted the same three teeth - which apparently weren't too much of a problem a year ago or they would have let me hear about it before now -  and also a shitload of other things.  He got up and told me the office manager would print out a suggested treatment plan.

It topped out at just over $12,000.

I was pretty upset on the way home.  If you want to upset me screw around with my health; money is a nice trigger as well.  And  it's not like we're talking about my car or plumbing - I may need a tune-up but I don't have any problem delaying that.  But my mouth.  I envision teeth cracking off at 3AM accompanied by a drumbeat of horrible pain.  And when I'm afraid I get pissed.  Guys get mad when they're afraid; it's a lot more manly than being a-scaired.

I wanted to call the dentist and give him a piece of my mind.  But I remembered something that vaguely sounded like "restraint of tongue and pen."  And tongue and tongue and tongue.  And tongue.  I may have read that in a book somewhere.  It may have saved my ass about a million times.

I didn't make the call.

I went to a meeting last night and chaired, selecting restraint of tongue and pen as the topic.  I didn't provide specifics about why I needed to be restrained, only that it involved someone trying to take some of my money away, trying to cheat me, to take advantage of me, to pull the wool over my eyes.  I heard good things.

I got up this morning and during my Quiet Time I sat quietly with my discomfort.  I want to act but knew that I needed to sit quietly.  Drunks don't like pain so we try to make it go away with drugs, alcohol, coffee, food, sex, work, exercise, anything but feeling the pain.  It was OK sitting with the pain.  Emotional pain is nothing but a feeling.   Feelings aren't real and they aren't going to kill me.  We don't ignore feelings in The Fellowship but we don't give them any unnecessary power, either.  My first sponsor was fond of saying: "I don't give a shit about your feelings; tell me what you're DOING."

I swam this morning - always a good stress reliever - and then called my Old City sponsor, a man who is roughly as paranoid about money as I am.  I knew I was going to be preaching to the choir but also that talking about my anger . . . er, fear . . . with another person would weaken said fear.  It helped even though mostly he laughed at me.  Prosperity problems or something like that.

Now I'm writing about it.  I've made my opinions known recently about the ferocious power of putting pen to paper.  This is really helping, too.

But I have to call the dentist.  I have to make a decision.  I don't want to do it.  I'm afraid that I'm going to hear something that I don't want to hear.

But I'm not angry.  I'm calm.  I'm thinking clearly.  I believe this is what's called Working The Steps: using the principles of The Fellowship to practical effect in my life.  Reading, writing, talking about things at meetings and on the phone, prayer and meditation.  This is why I work The Steps.  These are practical, tangible results.  This isn't theoretical stuff.  

Written Inventory

I've started to make a little crisis list at the back of my journal.  I've told other people to do this for years without bothering to do the work myself.  I'm continually amazed at the power of writing things down and not only because writing is a creative outlet for me, a pleasurable release; something really clicks into place when stuff that is in my head is looking back up at me from a piece of paper.  The same thing goes for discussing issues with other people, using words actually spoken out loud.  Thoughts can seem so terrifying and insurmountable bouncing around inside my head.  I panic.  I don't know what to do; I act rashly and make wrong decisions.  When I write them down they lose a lot of power.

"Really?" I say.  "Really?  This is what's eating you up?"

This is one of the reasons our founders have us make a written inventory.  They got it.  And lest we members of The Fellowship spend too much time patting ourselves on our collective backs about the brilliance of said Fellowship, let's remember that every spiritual, moral, and religious organization in recorded history has emphasized writing stuff down.  We know because they wrote it down.  They didn't just think about like drunks do.  A drunk figures thinking about something is as good as doing it.

For my crisis list I write down the date and then I write down what's bothering me.  Then I write down what I think the solution is.  It helps to see the game plan.  Sometimes it's clear I need to do something about what's bothering me and seeing that on the paper lets me know I can act or I can stew.  And sometimes I see the solution isn't clear or it's in the future and I have to wait.  If my car is making a weird, rattling, clunking, grinding, whirring noise I need to call my mechanic and make an appointment, and then I need to wait for the appointment.

See?  Action and waiting all wrapped up in one problem.

Our Community

OK, I'm officially sick.  I'm not sick - I'm sick.  The microorganisms have stormed the ramparts and overwhelmed the defenses and are now pillaging and looting the ruins of my castle.

I'm a sullen sick guy.  I don't complain but I want everyone to get the #$!! away from me.  SuperK, on the other hand, is a bit more dramatic.  She's sure she's dying and she's going to let you know about it.  On the few occasions when we've both been sick it has been quite the funhouse.

I digress.  I've been pondering at greater length, in my woozy narcotic-like haze, the community that I belong to and how important it is in my life.  I have a group of very close friends with whom can discuss anything - and I mean anything - that's troubling me.  Sex, money, relationships, religion, all of that stuff that was strictly off the table in my family of origin.  I'll never forget the first time that I tried to talk to my blood kin about some marital difficulties, fortified no doubt with the success that I'd had with my recovery family.  Holy shit, I might as well have rolled a live hand grenade into the room.  I never made that mistake again.  I kept my mouth shut as I was taught.

Moreover, there's another larger group of friends - not close friends but still friends - with whom I can discuss almost anything.  I'll never forget the time when SuperK and I were struggling a little with our marriage - as all couples do and if you hope to avoid this you're delusional.  We started to see a counselor who was invaluable in helping us work through our Issues.  This is going to sound ridiculous but it's the truth: SuperK was much more upset with me than I was with her, but she was the one who needed to do the changing.  I don't mean to suggest I wasn't at least half the problem but the circumstances required her to adapt more so than me.  Anyway, she was dominating the air time in the office so at one point our counselor turned to me and said: "How about you?"

I said this: "I have a big group of guys that I talk to all the time about everything.  I don't really have anything I need to get off my chest."  I was about 40 at the time.  She knew I was in The Program.

"You don't know how many men your age that come in here and don't have anyone they can do that with.  No one, not even family members," she said.

Some of the time my buddies honk me off but I've never forgotten what this woman said.  I have guys who know where my steam release valve is located.  They reach over from time to time and turn the knob and a big, angry blast of steam vents and I feel better.  That's all there is to it.

And I'm repeating myself, saying the same thing over and over, but I  love the whole community I'm part of.  I love the older folks with more sobriety who have been through a lot more than me; I love the younger people that I can boss around . . . . er, share my experience, strength, and hope with, passing along my sobriety wisdom but also my old guy knowledge; I love being around women and really rich people and guys off the street, heroin addicts and meth users and weekend drunks.  I get the feeling that a hundred years ago people had stronger faith communities and social clubs and they didn't move around so much so that these ties were easier to build. 

But they didn't have what I done got.

Old Timer

We watched a documentary last night where a filmmaker sought out very, very old people to try to find out how they made it into their 90s and beyond.  Many of the reasons were well-publicized - good diet, no drug use and moderate alcohol intake for the non-drunks among us, exercise, enough sleep, and the like.  There were a few outliers represented as well - smokers and drinkers who made it past the century mark but most of the folks lived sensible, reasonable lives.

It made me reflect on some of the benefits of The Program.  Certainly we stop drinking and drugging and many of us give up smoking; we try to eat well or at least remember to eat at all, not always a given when we were ingesting thousands of calories of processed glucose as part of our daily alcohol intake; we try to give our bodies some exercise above and beyond popping  open cans of beer or walking to the car to drive to the Kwiky Mart to buy more beer; and we get enough sleep at night and some of us get to take naps, for chrissake, as opposed to having to drink a case of wine coolers just to fall asleep.  This is not subtle stuff.  It's not surprising that people who do these things live longer, healthier lives.

Old folks usually have an active social life - they aren't sitting by themselves in front of the idiot box, drinking alone.  I never take for granted the friendships I make in my recovery - the young people I can parent and the old timers who help guide my behavior and everyone in between.  People with a lot of friends are happier and happy people live longer.  And we see a lot of tangible benefits to having a faith in some kind of a Higher Power, even if it's only the group.  It was hard trying to navigate a world that I thought was hostile and rudderless.  It was stressful.  It didn't make any sense.  And this giving back to repay a program that helped save our lives is very satisfying - it gives meaning and purpose to life.

However, the reason I heard over and over that really resonated with me was around the concept of grasping.  As my spiritual life has expanded I've learned how deeply unsatisfying it can be to try to get things and then hold on to them; this makes the most sense to me when we're talking about things I can see: cars, houses, jobs, relationships, STUFF!  But the old people talked about being happy with where they were in their lives.  They didn't mourn their lost youth or concentrate on the death  that was certainly going to come.  They weren't struggling to hold on to their life.

I spend too much time doing that.  I'm aware of some of the limitations I have today that I didn't have 10 or 20 years ago.  Too often I think: "I've got X number of good years left."  That implies that I have bad stuff to look forward to, that I've really got to be productive before the good goes away and the bad comes rushing in.  That's terrible.  That's the kind of thinking that make me focus on the negative.

Why would I want to go back to my youth?  I was miserable, I was terrified most of the time.  Why would I want to regain that?  If I'm not happy with what I got now I'm never going to be happy.  If I think I can avoid some of the bad things that are surely going to come, if I focus in on them, then I'm one hosed dude.

On Death's Doorstep

I picked up some kind of bug this week.  I didn't do it on purpose and I'm an unwilling, hostile, adversarial host to this intruder.  Strangely enough, I have to battle the urge to say: "This is a waste of my time."  I want to get out of this vale of tears without ever getting sick ever again.  I would prefer that pain and suffering be optional, and I would opt the hell out.  I can't shake the absurd feeling that I've failed somehow when I get sick, that if I had taken the right course of action I could have avoided all of the unpleasantness entirely.  I did something wrong.  I should have done something better.  I get depressed when I get sick.  Catching a cold is not a moral failure.  It is not a character defect.

Whenever several trillion of these little bastards take up residence in me they invariably ride some kind of express train to my lungs.  It may have something to do with the fact that I smoked enough weed to carpet a two lane highway from Waukesha to Menominee Falls.  For the record I have no idea how far that is - those are just funny sounding words.  So I get the death cough - a ticklish, unproductive wheezing.  The problem is that it keeps me awake.  I don't feel that bad but I cough myself awake every time I try to fall asleep.  I'm on like no sleep.  I'm a jerk when I'm well rested so you can imagine how I'm behaving right now.

When I was in college I took microbiology.  I remember almost nothing about the class except for this one experiment we did.  Everyone was given several petri dishes full of agar - a food source for microorganisms - and a packet of Q-Tips.  We walked around and touched various surfaces with a QT and then inoculated the agar with whatever crap we had picked up.  I remember swabbing door knobs and handles on drinking fountains and the like.  Holy shit, those dishes exploded with mycobacterial growth.  It was a slaughter.  I have no idea how any of us make it through any day without contracting several fatal diseases.  It must be total armageddon going on inside my body all of the time.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to die from this one.

Am I on my death bed?  No, I'm on my regular bed.

Buddies

I spent a little time talking with one of my buddies after the meeting yesterday.  He's in the same class as me -  someone who got sober at roughly the same time as I did.  I get help from old timers and from new people but I especially enjoy a nice synergy with guys who stumbled in about the same time as I did.  We go through a lot of the same things at the same time in recovery and it builds a real bond.

This guy is a friend; this means he gets to hear my opinions.  I don't tell him what to do but I tell him what I think he should do from time to time.  As we are all aware, there is nothing more precious, more cherished than unsolicited advice.  The saving grace is that I expect my friends to do the same with me.  I don't want to spend any more time listening to people tell me what I want to hear.  When I took that kind of advice I usually ended up passed out on the floor - it wasn't great advice what with the overkill and mixing of different substances and the like.  I don't always like the unsolicited advice that I get and sometimes it pisses me off but that's OK - it doesn't change the friendship.  I get over it.  When I was drinking I didn't get over anything.  If you pissed me off then you were put on The List.  Once on The List it was nearly impossible to get off The List.  The List was the Siberian Gulag of Seaweed relationships although I'm not sure that banishment to that frozen tundra was all that upsetting to very many people.

My friend was going to see a movie and then eat dinner with his son.  His son picked the movie and suggested a restaurant.  My friend told me that he was going to veto the restaurant selection seeing as he didn't get to pick the movie.  I assumed this drunken stumble bum was lucky to be spending quality time with his kid, so I said: "Go to the restaurant he picked."

I could see that he didn't care for the suggestion.  Actually, it wasn't because I was picking up any subtle clues; it was more along the lines of him telling me he didn't like the advice, tossing in a handful of very, very bad words.  He was laughing but I could tell he was pissed.  I didn't tell what he should do - I told him what I thought he should do, assuming that he would do whatever the #$!! he wanted to do anyway.

He sent me a note the next day: the movie sucked and they ate where his kid wanted to eat.  He thanked me for my advice.  I don't know that he wouldn't have done what I suggested on his own.  I certainly had no idea what he should do.

Buffing Out the Conundrums

Buff:  To clean or shine with a buff.

I'm a car guy.  I really like cars.  I've bought a few of them over the years and I've loved most of them.  I don't consider myself really all that materialistic - kind of standard greedy, a common sentiment among pretty materialistic people who are trying to convince you that they're not  - but I love the cars.  I wax them and wash them and try to park them out of harm's way.  I bought what very well may be my last new car here in The New City - that explosive grinding sound you here is SuperK laughing and cursing and choking with rage all at once - and people have beat the hell out of it.  The agony and the ecstasy of the urban lifestyle.  

I went on a long, beautiful hike in an old growth forest yesterday with SuperK and a few friends from The Program - wonderful day, wonderful people - getting back to this car late in the afternoon.  The note on the windshield, written on a min-sized paper plate, an odd selection in my opinion, was from a woman apologizing profusely for hitting the parked car some time during the day.  The damage didn't appear to be too bad but it was still a stinker of a note.  I called the woman and she called back.  She told me to have the damage buffed out and to send her the bill.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do yet.  I'm not sure I want to screw around taking the car somewhere to repair the minor damage, which pales with some of the more egregious thwacks by shadowy miscreants who did not leave notes.  

Anyway, it just made me feel good about life.  Such simple things, responsibility and honesty.  On the way home from the hike, before I was confronted with the mini paper plate,  we stopped for coffee.  While I was washing the bear repellant off of my hands SuperK ordered 3 cups of coffee, noticing after the fact that she had left her wallet in the car.  There were people in line that she didn't want to hold up but she owed the money which was not in her possession.  A conundrum.  The guy behind her said: "The coffees are on me."  She offered to fetch her purse and return the favor.

"No," he said.  "I had a great day.  I just finished a round a golf and it was a great day."

It's not that complicated.

The Man Purse

Focus:  To fix on one object; concentrate: as focus your attention on the case of cans you just picked up.

I came back home from my swim yesterday and parked The Tank in front of our apartment.  I opened the back hatch to get my gym bag and my Man Purse, which had fallen behind a 12 pack of empty pop cans that I put in the trunk, which I intend to take to the recycling center to give to the bums - we have a nickel surcharge per returnable can or bottle here in the very Green New City.  I magnanimously donate my cans to whatever guy is feeding the contents of his huge shopping cart into the can crusher - I'm a big, generous man, as you can see, handing off 60 cents to some homeless man.

Man Purse:  A bag of indeterminate size and shape that a man who has no focus begins to carry around so that he can keep all of the stuff that he normally forgets with him.

Anyway, I get inside and begin to struggle with all of my bags, trying to get my key out to unlock the door.  Finally, I give in and set down my gym bag and my Man Purse, noting the case of empty cans still in my right arm.

"What in the hell?" I mutter.

I had picked up the cans to get to my Man Purse, promptly forgot what I was doing, and carried them across the street, up the stairs, through the entryway, and down the corridor to my door, with no awareness of what I was doing.  I couldn't maintain my focus for the 15 seconds it took to retrieve the Purse and put the cans back down.  My mind was wheeling at such a high rate that I was off on some other mind trip before I knew it.  I could have climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro with those cans.

Is it any wonder that I drank?  I should be on Thorazine.