True Grit

I do not entertain hypotheticals. The world itself is vexing enough.

--Col. Stoneyhill from the movie "True Grit"

Day 35
Just a short one this morning. I know. I know. You've heard that before. This time I promise because I'm cranky. Withdrawals got me up at 3:00 am. Not alcohol withdrawals, thank my Co-writer, sugar withdrawals which, except for the absence of heart palpitations, felt a lot like alcohol withdrawals. A mild, wanna jump out of my skin restlessness and now it's gone, leaving a blonde bitch behind. I read about how horrible sugar withdrawal was before when I was on the Atkins but I never really suffered it probably because I was breaking the rules and still drinking and getting my sugar from the bottle. I did lose weight on it, though.

I'm already tired of cheese and eggs. I don't know how I did this for two years, I've tried to do the Atkin's diet again since then because it does make the pounds drop off quickly but the longest I've been able to do it is 3 weeks and then I was digging into the pasta and mashed potatoes like there was no tomorrow. I still have a lingering distaste for meat. Maybe I'll become a vegetarian.

I'm making popcorn balls today to send to the grandkids and because just like going to a bar when I'm not drinking, I like to torture the hell out of myself.

This damn disease or addiction or whatever you want to call our drinking problem is an insidious sumbitch, that's what I'm calling it this morning. I was reading about the stages of alcoholism, that worthless sumbitch, yesterday in the book, Beyond The Influence, and as best I can gauge it I'm either a high end middle stager or a low end late stager because I never had the DT's. But you know what that lying sumbitch started whispering in my ear? "You probably could have kept drinking a little longer. You know you always exaggerate. You have a little bit of the hypochondriac in you. You probably weren't as bad as you thought."

"Fill your hands you, sumbitch!" (That's my favorite line from True Grit, the original one.)

So today I'm just out there doing my best to shoot down whatever the alcoholic voices in my head try to tell me and overcome my crankiness.