Labor Day Monday

[This looked like a serious conversation...a melding of minds...] lol


The long weekend is over. Grandson back home and today in school. Sister and husband back on their way to Florida. Husband back to work. Me...breathing a sigh of relief at having my quiet home back. I have a few errands to run today and am thinking i should get them done this morning so I can sit back and enjoy the rest of the day. Patrick had 4 days off in a row....yikes. lol It was all good though.

I tried blogging here last night after I got home from the meeting, but the power went out and I lost the satellite signal. Never mind. I just turned it off and went to bed, where I proceeded to sleep soundly for about 7 and a half hours. And this morning I am refreshed and ready for a new day. I have juice to make and bread to bake, and a tiny bit of straightening to do around my house.

I feel so blessed these days. As my friend Mary said so succinctly, "Abundance is everywhere..." If I can shift my paradigms even the tiniest bit, I can find prosperity in everything I see. If I can move from the errant ideas that wealth is in bank accounts and new things and more, more, more. If I can open my heart to abundance instead of always looking thorough my eyes. When I can do this, I see a world full to the brim. The value of a simply lived life is astronomical for me. The lack of stress, the absence of constant competition, the loss of those feelings of never having enough. Because that's what they are--just feelings. Not facts. The facts are made plain by the removal of lots of extraneous clutter, whether it's in my life reality or in my mind. I am not hungry, like 2/3 of the world. I am not homeless, like so many are. I am not alone. I have an excess of clothing, baubles, books and pets. (lol) I may not have much deniros in the bank, but my needs are met. I have lived a lot of my life wallowing in excess...so I do know this terrain. I have also been blessed to have lived in some times of scarcity, so I know that terrain as well. Today I am somewhere in the middle. Poor by some standards, wealthy by others. Resting here, in the middle.

I am blessed to have been given the chance to live a sober life. Many never get this chance. Some days I wish I didn't get so much of the experience, but mostly I am blessed beyond measure. I witnessed a man about my age last night who got sober the same year as I did, but drank again after 7 years and has been coming in and out of sobriety ever since. Cannot find his way back to stay...just getting little snatches of peace every now and again, only to fall back off the path and be lost...again and again. It shook me. He looked so lost and so miserable. I remember being told in my early days that it wasn't rocket science...I just needed one thing. To want to be sober more than I wanted to be drunk. That it wasn't enough just try--I had to DO. It wasn't hard to stop, they told me--staying stopped was the tricky part. That I had to build a sober life that was better than anything I had ever known drunk. And I started out on that road of discovery, love and service back in the early 90's and haven't had to drink since. I feel relatively secure in sobriety today, even when I watch people with some time drink again. I'm not stupid about it though. I still do almost all the things they told me back then. And mostly, I NEVER forget what it used to be like, what happened and what it's like now. And I dig in, and I put my hand out one more time, no matter how tiresome it gets sometimes. And no matter how many times I watch them stumble back out there, I know that I stayed sober through it, and that's enough. I don't have to analyze, rationalize or justify my life today. I just have to live it. Fully.

For these things, I feel especially blessed.


Namaste.

What's in a Monday?

The storms have passed for today, I think. Leaving a trail of destruction, the whipping winds knocked limbs and branches off trees and scattered things around the yard. I was lucky to finish filling the 50+ gallons of spring water and pulling in the driveway this afternoon just as it was starting. My son was here earlier and said it is supposed to rain the next 4 days. wowsa.

• The world always feels so clean and fresh after the storms. I love that.
• Fred the dog has a new home. (See my other blog, akannie@wordpress) Yippee. Spread the love!
• Tomorrow I am lunching with my baby sister and then hitting a potluck for supper. WooHoo!! No cooking all day!!!!
• I am having a time with something, and a drink hasn't even entered my mind.
• I have been weepy all day, and the tears feel cleansing.
• I'm glad I know that This too Shall Pass.
• I'm grateful to have friends I can lean on sometimes.
• I'm blessed to be a pretty healthy old girl.
• Other people are living life on life's terms, and showing me how it's done.
• I'm obsessing over a follower on this blog who has removed their name. Can't figure out who it is...or why. lol
• I have NEVER been good at MYOB.
• My sister is coming in a couple of weeks. I haven't seen her in a while.
• I have a niece who is drinking like crazy, and I want to hit her upside the head.
• I haven't done it.
• But I want to.
• I read about a wonderful place near where I used to live in California. I want to go there.
  
• Just for today, I'm not running away.
• Just for today, it isn't necessary for me to drink away my problems.
• I'm especially blessed....and I need to remember that.

Namaste.

Sunday Funday

Ahhhhhhhh.......another weekend over and done. Home late (like 11:30PM) from a particularly good birthday meeting where my sponsee with 6 months didn't show (fell asleep and didn't wake up until half an hour before the meeting was over) and my dear friend celebrated 10 years. There was cake and tears and lots and lots of love. My friend's sponsor died about a year ago of brain cancer, and one guy there tonight gave him the 10 year coin that his deceased sponsor had given HIM...another (one of his sponsees) gave him an AA ring that belonged to the deceased sponsor. It was a beautiful thing to behold...

Funny how I have about a gazillion pictures on my computer and I'm recycling them already. And somehow I KNOW I haven't posted a gazillion times...lol

I'm feeling very grateful tonight. One of my ex-sponsees who left me for another (lol) and then relapsed is back with 30 days (thru her church, but "somehting is missing") and sent a message to me tonight thru another woman that she loves me and misses me and wants to come see me. I am so glad to hear that she is back....I'll call her tomorrow. Looks like we're having a 4th of July BBQ for all the homeless and wayward alcoholics who have no where else to go and think that I operate a summer camp for them ...LMAO....And you know how much I hate a good party....Seriously, it will be a blast and I've already informed them that I'll provide the place and they all have to provide the food. They're all jumping up and down and hollering "YIPPEE!!!!!!!!!!"

I'm so grateful that when I was new, there were people around who took us newcomers by the hand and said ...Come on--here's how you have fun without drinking! We had spaghetti dinners and bbq's and bonfires at the beach and sock hops, for crying out loud. We had walks in the woods and weenie roasts. We learned to take other new people by the hand and say Hey! Here's how WE have fun without drinking!!

I can't tell you the warm and fuzzy feelings I get when I overhear a newcomer saying, "Wow, we went to Annie and Pat's for a cookout, and it was SOOOooooooo great!!!!!" When I look around the living room or the backyard and I watch people learning to talk to each other and smiling and not wanting to go home. It's such a blessing...to be able to live like this and do these things and mean them and be happy about being able to do them.

God's got a deal for drunks that don't drink....


Namaste.

Thursday in mid May

**I put this in the draft box last night becasue I was so sleepy I couldn't finish it.**

It's been a great couple of days for me out here on the Prairie. Had some good one on one time with a sponsee and watched a tornado pass us by (tore up the town 12 miles NE of us though). Planted 2 kinds of squash seedlings in the garden. Went to a couple of wonderful meetings, including my beloved womens group. Had 3 new women in attendance. It was really a good night.

Planning a Saturday (the 23rd) of grilled hamburgers and game night with some folks in the program. Several new people, to show them that you can have fun sober. lol
I'm blessed to be sober and to have new people around me to remind me just how precious this program is.

I'm blessed that people took me by the hand when I was new and said, Come on-let's go ride the roller coaster and have some fun!
That they said, Come on, lets have a picnic!
That they said, Come on...just COME ON !!!!!!

And that I did. I got swept away in a flurry of fun activities that helped me learn how to be social, even in those trembling twitchy days of early sobriety. From greeting people at the door, to washing coffee cups at that big sink with another newcomer next to me drying, I have learned how to be a functioning member of society again. I have learned that you can have fun, no matter what.

Ah...blessings, plain and elegant.


Namaste.

A melding of days...

[The stove and coffeepot in Dr. Bob's Kitchen~~ Akron, Ohio.]

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Trying to stay really really grateful this morning...could barely walk by yesterday evening. Couldn't get in to see the chiropractor until tomorrow morning...and I couldn't sittin the chair to type by about 10. SO, off to bed I went...heating pad in hand, Tylenol PM in me and fitfully slept through the night. I was out and about yesterday for the first time in a couple of weeks and was really tired by the time the sun went down. I'm sure that didn't help. Not feeling too much better today,I'm afraid. Though at around 10 I can put some lidocaine pain patches on and that will take the edge off it so that I can at least function and get things donme I need to do. Tonight at the women's meeting one of my sponsees is getting her 4 year coin. So, I have a cake to bake and a card to make as well. Then on Friday I am picking up grandson from school and he will spend the night. So it will be a fun weekend (I hope). I haven't hurt this bad for this long in awhile.

The weather has hit a warming streak, and I am sure grateful for that. It was 40 yesterday. It's supposed to 46 today. But then it's taking a wintertime dive again, back down to the high 20's. But honestly, that even feels warm compared to those zero temps we had!

I am grateful to be able to look at the brighter side of things. When I drank, I was such a pessissimist (on the inside). I worked in restraunts much of my life, and when you work in the hospitality business, you are expected to act "AS IF" all the time. Because nobody cares about how YOU feel. They only care that their dining experience is a good one and it's your job to make sure of it. When I came into the rooms of AA, and heard people talking about "acting as if" I knew exactly what they were talking about. That part was easy for me, lol. But on the inside, more often than not, I was boiling with negativity. I don't know when I started always seeing the glass as half empty...early on I don't think it was like that. But events and situations that I got myself into, bad choices and mistakes I made, these things twisted and perverted my personality into what I became by the end of my drinking career. And I do know, I never want to live with that girl again...

I wanted to write a little since I missed last night. And I will be back again tonight, probably...full of the hope and pleasure and joy of watching someone pick up a coin for staying sober, one day at a time, no matter what.

Life is good.

Namaste.