Not Good, Dr. Pizza Boy

Bad:  Not good, not as it should be; defective in quality; below standard, lacking in worth; inadequate.

I believe that the topic at the meeting I attended this morning - an 11th Step meditation meeting - was death; or suicide, I'm not sure which.  I figure in 25 years that I've been to 6000 meetings and I'm being conservative with that estimate, and I've never been to a meeting with Death as the topic.  It was an interesting choice by the chairman, a man I've heard talk several times without being able to shake the feeling that he's an idiot. No word on what he thinks of me. Needless to say, I thought the meeting sucked.

If you've never been to a bad meeting you don't go to enough meetings.

I knew a chiropractor in The Old City whose license was revoked because of his drinking.  He needed to pay his bills so he took a number of jobs that didn't require any special training or schooling, one of which was delivering pizzas.  He showed up at a company one day with a large order for a party or celebration of some kind.  The receptionist picked up her phone, switched on the intercom function, and broadcast this message to the entire facility: "Attention, everyone.  The pizza boy is here."

My friend leaned over the counter and said: "That's Doctor Pizza Boy."

True story.

Very, Very Nice

Nice:  Agreeable; pleasant; delightful; kind; thoughtful; considerate.

The New City is a very nice city.  People are very nice here.  They're so nice that it makes me sick sometimes.  I want to throw up they're so nice.  The Old City had more of an edge to it.  You had to watch your step because what you said or did could easily annoy someone and provoke an angry reaction.  I've found it easier to be nice here myself because people are so eager to be nice in return.  It's a nice fest or a nice-off.  That being said I miss the dry sense of humor that I could trot out before - it's fun to act like a jerk on purpose from time to time.

Sarcasm:  Hate with a smile.

Anyway, before I totally lose my train of thought - and it's a slim thread I hang onto in the best of times - the point is, if I recall it correctly and I'm not sure that I do, is that it's so productive just to be nice to people.  There - I said it.  I have very little idea why this is such a surprising concept to me.  I like it when people are nice to me.  I've always liked it when people are nice to me, and I rarely enjoy running into the occasional ass, although it doesn't bother me as much as it used to, and I can often learn a little something from the encounter.

I have a friend in town who's single.  He's a very nice man and is working very hard on his recovery.  There's a woman at his job who he thinks is flirting with him a little bit.  It seems obvious to me that she is doing just that but I tried to keep my mouth shut as he talked to me about this, agonizing over what to do and how to interpret things and all the possible bear traps he could step into or the land minds he could detonate.  I'm sympathetic - it's hard being a teenager in a man's body.

It made me think about how I deal with people today that I don't know, especially women.  When I started to frequent my current coffee shop I made a big effort to ask the names of the staff members that I saw regularly.  Then, when I show up, I greet them by name.  I know the guys' names and the gals' names, although it's a little harder for me to talk to the women, partly because they're young and I don't want to come off any creepier than I do normally and partly because women can make me nervous.  It's amazing what happens when you walk into a place and greet someone by name.  The relationships warm up - all of them do - and some of them become a lot more personal.  

I'm so busy trying to get out in the future and find out what the end game is that I don't do the simple things that work so well.

Workin' For a A Livin'

Work:  To move, proceed, etc. slowly and with or as with difficulty.

I'm going to meet this weekend with the guy from the transitional meeting who doesn't have a Ferrari.  He says he wants to work The Steps.  He says he does.  I think most people believe that working The Steps doesn't actually involve any work.  I think this because when I suggest work that they can do they almost never do it.  It's a rarity, an oddity.  Usually I don't even get a phone call after I pass out a work assignment.  When I was getting sober and people gave me work to do that I said I was going to do but knew I wasn't going to think about doing, I didn't call back, either.

I thought that working The Steps was going to be some kind of visitation or haunting or possession.  Nobody told me it was going to involve reading and writing and going to meetings which frankly sounded like a lot of work that I didn't want to do.

So, Mr. No Ferrari calls.  He did the work.  I think I like this guy.

An Ancient Riff

And since I'm riffing on expectations . . . 

There is no better way to see how twisted my expectations are than to examine my relationships with other people.  The book uses phrases like "total inability to form a healthy relationship with another person" and suggests that my relationships with other people cause me practically all of the problems that there are.  I'm paraphrasing here but you get the point: we SUCK at relationships.  We take and we don't give.  We show no understanding for the defects of others while expecting that they bend over backwards to forgive us when we make a mistake.  We think they should read our minds but we can't be bothered to consider their circumstances at all.

Man, I'm difficult.

I received a message yesterday from a woman I knew from The Old City.  She's a difficult person, too, and this isn't just my opinion.  But that's OK, I like difficult people, generally - they're more interesting than bland, white bread people.  God knows I'm difficult and god also knows I married someone who can be difficult.  (See how I popped in the qualifier "can be?"  It allowed me to soften the insult - that's a hallmark of a difficult person: seeming to be nice while simultaneously being bitchy.)  

Anyway, it was a shitty message.  I'm not sure if she was trying to be funny and it came out wrong or if she was really irritated with me and spoke without applying any kind of filter, which is not uncommon for her.  Normally, I would just laugh this off.  As I've made abundantly clear I don't get too caught up in what other people think of me.  But I read this note late last night and it really frosted my ass.  I did the electronic version of taking a pair of scissors and cutting out her face from all of my pictures.  This may seem childish, probably because it isn't mature.  I considered several responses on the very difficult side but decided to cease communication.  It's not like we ever communicate so this isn't that big a deal.  I think part of the reason is that we never communicate which made a shitty message really pop.  No "Hey, how's it going?" as a prelim.

Pie Man

Pie:  (slang) something extremely good or easy.

Yeah, well, what's on my mind right now is how much I can take out of the world today.  That's my goal - to get as much of the pie as I can get.  Given the slightest opening I'll eat the entire pie.  I'd live in a pie shop if I could, eating nothing but pie, and I don't even really like pie all that much.  I prefer cake but the only slogan that comes to mind is "that really takes the cake," and I'm not clear as to what that really means.  The point is this: if someone doesn't give me some pie right now I may have to buy a weapon and go rob a pie store.

I have to laugh at how much I expect to get out of life.  It's so implausible it's ridiculous.  When I'm unhappy it's almost always because my expectations are completely out of whack.  I think I deserve the entire pie.  I look down at my one or two or three measly pieces of pie and it feels like I've been screwed.

Who expects to be happy all of the time?  Who expects their spouse to fall in line, their children to toe the line, and their work life to be one big yuck? I do! I do!

It Is What It Is

Contented:  Not desiring something more or different, satisfied.

The whole thing with contentment and discontentment and where I am on the continuum, I don't really fight it that much anymore.  That I'm prone to being discontent is kind of status quo for me, to be honest about it.  It's like the fact that I have legs - it's how it is.  I don't try to not have legs even if they're hurting me or are tired.  They're there and I gotta deal with it.

I believe that some of this can be attributed to my alcoholism - we don't seem to be a very satisfied group of people as a general rule.  My upbringing is surely involved.  And some I assume is hard-wired into my DNA.  Some of us humans have a huge GO button installed.  I have a prominent ON button located on my control panel - I can never find the OFF button; I look and look until I get so frustrated I smash the $#!! thing against the wall.

These tendencies make me conscientious and ethical.  They aren't bad as in scaaaaaaaary bad.  They are what they are.  I think I would have been one of those idiots on the Oregon Trail with my Conestoga wagon and butter churn, lighting out for the territory ahead and whatever adventures lay there.  Probably the Santa Fe trail, come to think of it.  I'd rather die of thirst than freeze to death.

I try not to fight this stuff today.  I try not to fight it all the time, anyway.

23

Today I celebrate 23 years of marriage, an accomplishment which dwarfs, which obliterates 25 years of sobriety in its impressiveness.

One thing I pray for every morning in my Quiet Time is to be the best husband, brother, and son that I can be and you can trust me here: there's a lot of room to grow in all three categories. These are the relationships  that are the most important to me and the ones that can be the most troublesome at times.  Worth every penny despite stepping on the occasional land mind.

I also pray that I may be of maximum service in my dealings with other people.  I have myself convinced that I want this to actually happen.  I believe that I have some room to grow here, too.  When I say "maximum service" I envision certain favorable situations, lacking in any pain or discomfort.  For instance, I hope that I meet someone in The Program who owns a Ferrari or any other Italian supercar and urges me to use it while he's on a lengthy foreign assignment.  "Drive me to the airport and we'll call it even," he'd say.  "Put as many miles on it as you want- it seems silly to have it just sitting there while I'm gone."

Instead, what plops in my lap is this: I give my phone number to a rough looking character from my downtown transients' meeting, secure in the knowledge that he almost certainly won't call - very few drunks ever do - only to have my phone ring.  This big dude wants to go to the meeting.  And work The Steps.  So I pick him up at the group home where he currently lives - not in a Ferrari - and drive him to my home group.  He has over two years of sobriety already, a fact I found encouraging until I discovered that he got most of it while he was serving time in prison.  For assault.  

He's actually a nice man but I don't think he has a Ferrari.