H.E.P.A.

I took my car into The Dealer to have the oil changed the other day.  As a general rule I don't trust people who work on my car because I don't know anything about cars.  I believe I could find the area of the car where the engine thing is located but that's about it.  So the car guys can say whatever they want: "Mr. Seaweed, your Johnson Rod is in terrible shape."  

What am I going to say: "I don't think so - I inspected all four of the Johnson Rods just last week and they were in fine working mettle."

I tend to do what car people say should be done because the car is a pretty expensive item.  As a general rule I don't trust people who work on my body, either, because they can scare the shit out of me and I don't know enough about the body to mount a rigorous defense.  So what am I going to say when the medical guy who makes a lot of money and has gone to school forever says: "Mr. Seaweed, your Johnson Valve - it connects the stomach to the duodenum - is falling apart and we need to operate."

Generally, I take a walk when the car people are in action.  I don't even want to be in the same building when those people start poking around the car's moving parts.  I got a phone call during my walk telling me that the engine filter and the cabin filter were very, very dirty.  I did not return this call, preferring the "if I don't answer the phone I can't get any bad news" defense.  I decided, in my mind, to pass on replacing these filters.  Unfortunately, when I got back to The Dealer they had already replaced them at the cost of $130.  These must have been some pretty important filters.  I told them to take them right on back off.  I noticed up on the Pricing Board that one of the filters was called a Hepa Cabin Filter and it cost $80.  I didn't research the engine filter - I'm pretty good at math and could come up with a ballpark figure on that dude.

I asked my service gal, Bell, what she thought I was doing in the cabin itself?  Running a Class IV Clean Room so that I could polish semiconductor wafers?  Conducting emergency surgery on some poor sot's Johnson Valve?  HEPA, in case you're wondering, stands for High Efficiency Particulate Air.  I asked Bell if maybe they had a more moderately priced filter, perhaps a JAEPA - a Just Average Efficiency Particulate Air.  She said they did not.

There was another woman in the waiting room who needed a HEPA filter, too, AND some new windshield wipers.

"The car is only a year old," she said.  "And it hasn't rained since I bought it."  It's the desert here, basically - it doesn't rain too often.  The woman wondered why these wipers wore out.  She wasn't too happy with old Bell.

Do you think either of us will go back to that dealer?

Parable of the Goatskin

Parable:  A short narrative illustrating a lesson (usually religious/ moral) by comparison or analogy.  

The philosophical question today is this: Do I have to be nice all of the time?  The premise is this: if most people are being nice to this or that particular individual then what difference does it make if I'm nice?  The overwhelming preponderance of people being nice should outweigh my grumbling.  And why should I recycle or vote?

I'm reminded of the great Biblical story of the wine goatskin at the wedding.  I've heard this story a million times but I could never get past the wine in a goatskin part to the moral of the story part.  That sounds like a horrible way to store wine.

Anyway, the tradition was for each guest to bring a small goatskin of wine to the wedding and pour it into the large, main goatskin.  This particular guest thought this: Why not bring a goatskin of water and pour it into the main goatskin.  Nobody will know because there's going to be so much wine in there already.  He was cheap.  He wanted to drink wine but not pay his fair share.

When the host poured or drained or decanted or whatever you do to get wine out of a goatskin filled the first goblet he was shocked to find out it was nothing but a glass of water.  All of the guests tried to pull the old switcheroo.

Isn't that a great parable?

The Pool. Again.

How about a pool story?  I haven't had a good pool story to pass along in a while.  I seem to misbehave in the pool just about more than anywhere else, which is odd when you think about it seeing as pools are usually associated with relaxation and fun.  I can ruin just about anything.

The pool that I use has an exercise class where a bunch of actually pretty large older women slosh around to a deafening disco-like soundtrack, under the sway of a shouting, yelling, gesticulating instructor who is no tiny little thing herself.  The class is held four times a week at 9AM.  If I choose to swim on a day when the class is being held then I rather obviously have to get there an hour early - which is a little too early - or after the class ends - which is a little too late.  This is typical of me, always trying to manipulate things so that they happen exactly the way I want them to happen.  

I want to swim at 9AM!

Greatly put out and horribly persecuted, under attack from people who don't know how important and fragile that I am, I set up my swimming schedule on non-class days.

Without warning! the classmates and the instructor with her venomous boom box begin showing up on two of the three days when the pool is calm and empty.  The crisis is not severe - they only use two of the four lanes, keeping the remaining ones open for lap swimming.  Frankly, it isn't all that great because 20 actually pretty large older women sloshing around in a small pool create a hell of a lot of waves.  It would be easier swimming in rough surf off the Cape of Horn during a windstorm that trying to make it up and down the length of the pool through all of that sloshing water.

This schedule lasted a few weeks.  Without warning! one day the instructor told me that the class was going to use the whole pool and I'd have to make other swimming arrangements.  This was irritating but fair enough.  I started my swim only to realize that she meant today, that the new schedule was starting today.  She was starting to remove the last lane divider separating me from the sloshing Mongol Horde.

I stopped and shouted something the length of the pool along the lines of: "You have to give me a little notice - I'm going to finish my swim today and if you have a problem with that you can go get a manager and I'll take it up with him."  I may even have been smiling although it's hard to tell with aqua goggles on.  The instructor relented.  I'm sure that a fairly large man in a fairly small bathing suit, begoggled, yelling down the length of the pool wasn't on her list of Good Things That Might Happen To Me Today list.

I think I spoke with reasonable restraint but I'm never sure when I'm pissed off.  I'd like to see a tape of the incident - I bet I don't come off as well as I think I do.

Frank of Assisi

Today I have been pondering the famous Saint Francis of Assisi and his famous prayer, much beloved by The Fellowship, if by "pondering" you mean "thinking about it fleetingly and in passing while doing eight other things."  The part I like most describes the power and beauty of loving rather than being loved, understanding instead of being understood, and doing something else instead of having that thing happen to you.  I can't remember the third thing.  I usually can't remember the second thing, either, and it's not at all unusual to totally forget the whole topic.

For my trip home I've apparently found it productive or pleasurable or a combination of the two to think about all of the ways in which my family has mistreated me and to not think about all of the wonderful things they've done for me in the past.  This is kind of my M.O.: concentrate on the negative while ignoring the positive.  Old Francis was on the right track - I'm never going to get it all going in the right direction as long as I'm focusing on what other people have done or have not done to me instead of the other way around.  

I'm looking at the behavior of the wrong person when I'm not looking at my own behavior.

I've also been pondering how a good day is made up of a lot of good little actions.  Sometimes I'll walk up to someone - a clerk or an assistant or a member of The Program and think: "I'm not in that good of a mood so why the hell should I be nice to this person?"  It seems like my world will be exactly the same whether or not I act like a dick every now and then, and it sure is a lot easier and a lot more fun to act like a dick.

That's not how it works.

Selfish

Selfish:  Holding one's self-interest as the standard for decision making; having regard for oneself above others' well-being. 

The cat has got my tongue.

I have booked a ticket on a jet airplane to return to The Old City.  I should look up all of the crap I wrote the last time I went home and simply cut-and-paste it into this space.  I don't think I'm making too much progress in this arena - I don't think I'm behaving too badly, either, but I haven't moved past all of the petty gripes and grievances and bitchings that plague my thinking. I'm in about the same spot.  As a general rule I like to be moving forward - maybe not all at once but so that the general trend is onward and upward and not down, down, down, into the Ring of Fire.

I don't really want to go back.  I like where I am very much.  I'm very comfortable here.  I don't really miss my family too terribly and I don't think they miss me.  I know they say they miss me when they try to get me to come back but I don't trust their motives.  I don't think they even know what their motives are, to be honest about it.

They're very comfortable spending my money for me.  They seem vexed if I bring up the topic of how much of my money I'm spending, preferring to concentrate on the amount of my money I spend on things other than going someplace I don't want to go.  I've been coached to look closely at my behavior when someone else's opinion vexes me and, frankly, I can see where they're coming from.  I'm much more comfortable spending my money on me than on someone else - which I believe is the definition of selfish - but I can also see that they spend plenty of money on themselves while offering not one red cent to help me get home.  Of course, I don't even need the money to get home but the vexing point is I don't want to spend it anyhow.

Can you see the seeds of A Resentment being sown?  Can you see me watering and fertilizing it with loving care, nurturing it into full flower?

I'm analyzing what The Right Action is.  I believe it is to make this trip home otherwise why would I have booked a ticket?  I don't know.

The Mouse Does Not Exist

At our meeting yesterday - a meditation meeting that happened to fall on Father's Day, almost -  the first person who shared brought up the whole Father's Day thing.  I'm not a big fan of this type of personalization of a good Program topic as a general rule, and not because I'm anti-father, but because it was a meditation meeting, not a Father's Day meeting.  I know that sounds crabby but . . . you know there was a "but" coming, didn't you? - I'm not thrilled when we deviate from a general principle into a specific concept.  I think if you talk about kids or work or houses then you risk excluding those of us who don't have one of those things.  I've always been a big fan of taking something specific - like a problem with a father - and trying to apply a principle to it.  If you're mad at your father then acceptance or tolerance or restraint of tongue and pen might work for everyone and if your dad is peachy as hell then perhaps we can talk about gratitude or patience.

That being said I heard some good stuff once I got off my throne and tried to get into the flow of the meeting.  It made me think about my dad and what he did well and it made me ponder the reasons behind the things that he struggled with, at least in my opinion.  It's a tough life out there from time to time and not just for me.

Just about me.  Just about me.  Just about me.

The mouse does not exist.  The mouse does not exist.

Grateful? Grateful!!

Gratitude:  Showing appreciation; being thankful.

In my weak-ass morning meditation I try to be grateful.  I'm so bad at this that I've had to actually write down the things in my life that are true blessings and I have to open up my little notebook and read them every day.  How pathetic is that?  I can barely stand to be grateful all on my own.  I need a Grateful Coach with Grateful Cheerleaders to show up every morning and rouse me with some inspiring cheers, lest I sink into the glumness that is my preferred state of being.

As if I have anything to be grateful for.

Pshaw.

Sears

I REALLY DID SEND THIS LETTER TO SEARS.  I REALLY AM NOT ANGRY AT SEARS. THE WRITING REALLY DID DEFLATE THE CONSIDERABLE ANGER I FELT BEFORE DOING THE WRITING.


Hello, there . . . 

In 1979 I purchased a Diehard battery - Sears' Finest!  Around 1979, anyway - I'm getting old and I have trouble remembering my dates.  1979 is pretty close.  It's in the ballpark.  Nobody can say: "1979!  Get the hell out of here!"

Over the course of the next year it failed twice.  Sears stood by its warranty and replaced the battery twice - but did not reimburse me for getting my car jumped, and each replacement battery was prorated, of course, so I had to ante up twice more.   Piqued, I sent a letter detailing my grievance to Sear's Customer Service where it vanished into a great Dome of Silence.

"I will never shop at Sears again," quoth I.

Until June 4, 2014, a day that will live in infamy.  I purchased a bistro patio set and two side chairs at the Pacific View Mall which is nowhere near the Pacific Ocean.  Just to be clear - I realize this is not your fault and I hold you in no way accountable.  The kid that helped me was great.  I returned a few days later and picked up my purchase.  My wife and I - well, my wife mostly - tried to put the bistro table together but were unsuccessful, mainly due to some comically mis-drilled bolt holes.  There was no way that table was going to stand up on its own. Those bolt holes were messed up.

We loaded the entire, partially assembled, completely unpackaged bistro set back into our car and returned it to the store.  The guy at Customer Pick-up was great.  We were directed back to the patio section for the financial part where a very nice young man credited our account and reordered a replacement set.  His manager drifted in and out, swiping his manager's card glumly, with a look of glummy boredom on his glum face.   It would have really, really been nice if he had acknowledged our plight and tried to make it better.

How about:  "We're very sorry for the problem here - could we offer you free delivery and set-up?"  Something, anything.  Look at me and smile - that would have been a big improvement.

A few days later we were notified that our replacement set had arrived.  Back we went to pick up Set Number Two which had a slightly different set of comically mis-drilled holes, a fact we discovered upon returning home.  We did manage to get the table together but the four legs were not striking the same surface at the same time, a very important part of the table function. We had wised up a little and put the table together first - leaving all the other parts in the carton - so it was a lot easier to load up our car and return all of the crap to Sears.  If we were really wise we would have put the table together in the fucking parking lot instead of driving it all the way home again.  At this point we also returned the side chairs - we had no faith in the products that Sears was selling.  We had developed a terrific allergy to Sears' products.

The same guy at Customer Pick-up was great again, maybe even a little sheepish - he really seemed to be on our side, unlike store management.  Again, we had to go upstairs for the financial part.  A somewhat less nice young man had all kinds of problems this time.  First, the bistro part had been coded somewhere, by someone, in some dark hole, as a cash return even though we had paid with a credit card.  The somewhat less nice man couldn't refund our credit card because of this mis-coding and he didn't have enough money in his cash drawer so he had to call someone somewhere who didn't seem to want to stop by.

So we waited.

Fortunately, during the wait we could also attend to the return of the two side chairs.  Since this was the first return for this particular item we foresaw sunny skies and smooth sailing.  Funny, that - the return came up as a Sears' gift card, which you might imagine we had absolutely no interest in touching with the ten-foot pole you probably sell in your tool department.  I have to tell you that if I had needed a ten-foot pole at that point I wouldn't have bought one at your store even though I had taken the trouble to drive back and forth and back and forth until I was frankly getting a little dizzy.  The increasingly less nice young man couldn't process this and had to alert a manager who seemed to have about as much interest in stopping by as the people with my $270, who had not yet arrived.

We waited some more.  

During the wait the slightly nicer young man - he seemed to be rallying!  Maybe he saw the end in sight! - let us know that they had to go through all kinds of drillings and hammerings to get the display bistro sets cobbled together in the store.  This was not information that we could find in any of Sears' promotional material nor was it passed on to us word-of-mouth, off-the-record, before we bought the first of our two identical bistro sets.  It wasn't the kind of information we enjoyed hearing, particularly.  We might have reconsidered our purchase decision had this information seen the light of day.

Both the money lady and the manager showed up simultaneously which made us suspect some shadowy collusion.

"How ya doin'?" the manager said.  He was much less glum than the first manager but also expressed approximately zero interest in our plight.  Again, we would have kept everything if someone had offered free deliver and set-up.

So we got our money back.  So we lost a day of our time what with all of the driving back and forth and back and forth and cursing and fumbling with tools to put together some shoddy merchandise.

I assume that you understand that it will be about another 35 years before I shop at Sears?  At which point I will be about 95 years old and probably not the demographic that you will be most interested in attracting.

Sorry for the length of the letter - I'm posting it on my blog site and wanted to provide as much detail as possible for my readers.

With much sincerity and no hard feelings but with a lot of anti-Sears intransigence.

Fondly.
Little Stevie Seaweed

Seaweed: Advisor

Advise: To give advice to; to offer an opinion, as worthy or expedient to be followed; to counsel; to warn.   

Upon reflection I believe that I've uncovered one instance in my life where I was given unsolicited advice that I found so helpful I was compelled to follow it.   This may be a high estimate.

I can probably come up with 4 or 5 instances of receiving actively solicited advice that I've found so helpful that I was compelled to follow it.  Probably not that many but I'm pretty embarrassed about the low total in the unsolicited advice category so I'm going to exaggerate my worth here.  Lie a bit, in other words.

Here's the disconnect: I'm under the illusion that the entire world - my wife, my family, my friends, my work colleagues, the government, the cops, the clerk at the 7 Eleven - is dying to hear my opinions on how they should live, act, function, behave, and throw down.  

"Please, please, Mr. Seaweed, tell us what to do, in minute detail, using an arrogant and disapproving tone," they say.

I really don't have a clue.

Great Truths and Deep Thoughts

Great Truths.

Truth:  That which is real, in a deeper sense; spiritual or 'genuine' reality; conformity to fact or reality.

I wish I had a bunch of new Great Truths but I do not.  That's probably a good thing because I do much better when I have to remember to do a few simple things - avoiding a long list of many complicated things - which is probably one of my Great Truths, just not the one I want to talk about this morning.

Today's Great Truth, oft repeated and rarely pursued, is this: I don't know what's best for me.  I do know that I don't like pain and I do like pleasure.  The crucial counterbalance to this fairly immature attitude is that I definitely know what actions are good for me and which ones aren't, and that if I do the good actions and avoid the bad ones then the outcomes are good.  Not necessarily pain-free and pleasure-engorged, but good, in the long run.

I think life is a like a tetanus shot.  On the surface I see that I don't have tetanus and don't plan on getting it; I don't know anyone else that has tetanus; and that a tetanus shot sort of hurts.  So, I think, fuck the tetanus shot and bring on the chocolate chip ice cream instead.  Continuing this line of thinking I say: "Let me get this straight: I'm going to drive to a doctor's office so that someone can jab a needle in my arm and then I'm going to give them money for this?  Right."

Reminiscing

I was talking on social media to an old friend from The Old City last night, a guy who got sober about the same time I did.  Like most of my friends who live far away I don't talk to him frequently but we stay in touch.  Like most of my old friends who got sober at about the same time I did we share a unique bond - we can pick up on a conversation as if no time has passed, with a tone and an ease that I find remarkable.  There truly is a sense that I'm chatting with someone who was there with me in the same sinking, bullet-riddle lifeboat lo these many years ago.

When I logged off I reminisced a bit about a couple of New Year's Eves that the two of us and our spouses spent together many years ago.  We've both stayed sober and are still married to the same person that we married in sobriety.  That's a terrible sentence.  We're not married to the same person, of course, because bigamy or whatever the hell that would be called is illegal everywhere but Florida.  We married different people - to the best of my knowledge - and each of us is still married to the person that we individually yet differently married.

Sigh.  I've totally forgotten what I was trying to say.

The point is: we've come a long way, baby.  We've been able to sustain important relationships and hold onto nice possessions and stay out of jail, and he's raised two fine sons.  This was not going to be our fate had we continued to drink.

I have always been jealous of one of his Here's-Why-I-Came-To-The-Fellowship stories, though. To the best of my recollection: "I stopped by a restaurant to pick up some food while thoroughly, absolutely, and completely drunk.  There was a policeman there who made a comment that it would be very, very bad to get behind the wheel of a car if I had been drinking.  With a straight face I said "I'll be alright" before getting back in my car and attempting to drive away.  I made it approximately 25 yards before the lights came on and I was arrested for a DUI."

And we thought the cops weren't trying to help us out.

Sigh

More alcoholism . . . 

I have stayed in touch with a handful of people from The New City - not a million people, but enough people.  I hadn't been there long enough to develop the relationships I had in The Old City but I did have some good friends.  One of these was a guy who had recently been released from prison where he had served a 6 year sentence.  He was a nice man - he did something when he was drunk that the legal system chose to construe in the worst possible light.  He decided to contest this charge -  because he thought it had been blown out of proportion - instead of taking a plea bargain.  The good news is that you may not go to prison at all - the bad news is that if you're convicted you're $#!!ed.

He got some bad news.  

I believed his version of events.  They may not have been true - I've been bamboozled by drunks before - but I think they were.

He had stayed sober in prison and was active in The Fellowship upon his release, surprising me by calling regularly after I had moved.  I thought this showed a real commitment to recovery.  At first the calls were weekly, then they started to drop off.  I didn't hear from him when we were traveling even though my phone plan permitted international calls - I rang him up once and he texted a reply, never a good sign in my book.  I knew he was busy and the time difference was a pain but then again, excuses are a dime a dozen.

I called him a few days ago.

"Well," he said.  "I've got some good new and some bad news.  The good news is that I celebrated 7 years when you were gone - the bad news is that I relapsed."

Very bad news indeed.

I'm a pretty good guy to call if you've relapsed: I'm not big on guilt - we feel bad enough as it is -  but I don't give anyone a pass, either.  I say things like "Welcome back" and "Thanks for telling me" and "What happened?"  I don't tell people that it's okay because it's not okay - it's dangerous as hell.  My friend is on parole.  I can't imagine that someone on parole is permitted to drink, if that was indeed what he did.  If he used drugs I know that's a no-no.

He was vague about where he was in the recovery process.  I hung up believing that he hadn't stopped relapsing which is the most important part of the relapsing process.

This text showed up yesterday: "I've burned everything down and I accept it all."  I sent along an encouraging note but I'm not going to call him until things turn around.  I'm active in The Fellowship; it's what I do.  I'm not saying you have to do it, too, but it's what I do.  It's my belief that contacting someone who continues to drink has never been helpful to me or to that person.

It has been a couple of days of stark reminders.

The Best Man

Some more reflections on the travails of my lawyer friend . . .

We had been out of touch for several years when I ran into him in The Old City.  I was reasonably new to recovery at that point and I was thrilled to hear that he had parlayed a DUI into a trial run at The Fellowship.  Alas, like many of us, he couldn't abide the work and the discipline that our way of life entails.   Drunks don't like to be told what to do and some of us draw a line in the sand.  While we take great pains to allow our members to find their own path to recovery there is, after all, a general framework.  We don't propose that this framework is for everyone - if you can sober up somewhere else by all means do it - but it's kind of what you need to do if you want any success in The Fellowship.

It would like going to yoga class to get in shape and bitching a blue streak about having to do yoga.

He invited me over to his apartment for an evening.  I don't remember too much about that night - unusual for a guy who can recall past events in great detail - but I have no recollection that it was fun or pleasant.  I was with a guy who was adamantly anti-Fellowship and I hadn't been sober long enough to withstand his withering assaults with any equanimity.

He floored me by asking me to be the Best Man at his wedding.  I hadn't yet developed the sense of self that I would have needed to politely decline - the ability to say No is one of the most important skills I've learned in Recovery.  I didn't want to do it, I'll tell you that much.  In retrospect I have to assume that he didn't have anyone else to ask - we burn through our friends when we're drinking.  

As you might imagine the wedding was a slow-motion train wreck.  I knew his parents and siblings reasonably well from our high school days, and they were barely civil.  Clearly furious about something they all stormed out very publicly shortly after the reception began.  As the best man I had to give a toast.  As I walked up to the microphone I had to fend off glasses of champagne and then glasses of sparkling something or the other, ending up with a goblet of water - I didn't want anything alcoholic or pretend-alcoholic in my hand.  I said some things that were probably inappropriate - I hadn't seen the guy in 10 years and anything I could say about his past was not for general consumption, especially with children present.  I don't know a lot about toasts but I don't think you're supposed to curse.

When I was done, sweat pouring off of my face, I glanced over at the band, and saw that the bass player was a friend of mine from The Program.  He smiled and nodded and I was never so glad to get a smile and a nod.  It helped ground me for the rest of the torture-fest.

I say this again: I get comfortable in my recovery sometimes and forget that the disease can take people down.

The Agony

Agony:  Pain so extreme as to cause writhing or contortions of the body . . .; extreme pain of mind or body; anguish; paroxysm of grief. 

I went to my regular men's meeting last night.  This group is a joy - good sobriety and a bunch of guys that I connect with on a personal level.  When I'm in such an environment I can forget what I'm dealing with, exactly.

I was involved in an email string with a group of friends from high school when the name of a classmate came up.  This was a guy that I had spent a lot of time with when I was running and gunning.  While it's up to each individual to decide if they are an alcoholic or not I'll say this: I didn't meet too many people who could keep up with me in the Budweiser department but this guy matched me drink for drink.

He is a lawyer who has had his license suspended for embezzling money from his firm.  Apparently he had also accepted money from clients to represent them in cases that had no legal merit - in effect lying about what their chances for a favorable verdict.

I looked him up on the web.  There was a picture of him taken when he was arrested.  He did not look good.  In fact, he was barely recognizable as the good-looking kid I ran around with.  He had The Look that alcoholics are so familiar with: the bloated, pallid face of someone who has a liver that's doing a lousy job of removing the poison alcohol from the bloodstream.

There was also a link from just a few day ago showing a hearing in front of the State Supreme  Court to determine if he should lose his law license forever.  My friend's lawyer was not in a strong position.  He kept saying things like " while we admit that the facts in this case are without dispute."  He was not trying to get my friend's license reinstated - he was just trying to prevent it from being revoked forever.  And while I'm not a lawyer it seemed to me that the prosecuting attorney was scoring from everywhere on the court: he was hitting threes, posting down low, jamming on big break-outs.

When the choice is between disbarment and indefinite suspension . . . well, those are two pretty crappy choices.  What would you do if you won?  Slap high fives and say: "Yoo hoo - indefinite suspension possibly leading to permanent disbarment in the future?  In your FACE."  I can't imagine sitting in front of a group of my colleagues who had attained the pinnacle of success in my profession, listening to someone explain in excruciating detail how I had committed a series of felonies.  I cannot imagine it.

I couldn't watch the 35 minute video straight through the first time - I kept fast-forwarding, each time ending up at another painful interlude.  It was one of the most upsetting things I had seen in a good little while.