Plugging Along

First, as seems to be my habit pertaining to this blog lately, I need to apologize for disappearing once again. Sometimes, once you put something down to take care of other things, it's hard to pick that thing back up and make room for it again. It doesn't bother me so much that I haven't written a post, there are so many wonderful bloggers carrying that torch, what bothers me is that I haven't been a shoulder for others.

I'm sorry.

Now for what I've been up to...that's not important. Just the usual fric and frac of life.  Somehow, some way, we ended up with three houses here in Mexico and without going into how that happened, let's just say, two of them are very nice and one of them isn't.  I rent the  two very nice houses out and this is the busy season so I've been spending my time begging people to stay in those houses and then trying to fulfill those people's every wish and command.

I am not built for the hospitality industry, I am too much of  a people pleaser.  Every time one of them complains, i.e. "The internet is slow" or "The satellite TV isn't working while I'm here on my beach getaway," I just want to throw their money back at them so they'll quit bitching.  But the cap'n won't let me.  They give me a stummy cake. (That's what I always thought people were calling abdominal pain when I was little. I couldn't quite figure out what a "stummy" was and why you'd call pain a cake.)

Anyway, a few days ago I was able to escape to my not very nice house and I couldn't wait. A short description is called for. Casa de Meliora has one main room with a bed and my most favorite piece of furniture I've ever had, a rustic, rough old cabinet with old hand-wrought hinges. It also has one bathroom with a rust stained green toilet and that lovely 60's green tile, and a black-with-corrosion-and-God knows what else shower head that is as big as a dinner plate and from which five of  its ninety holes water trickles.  We did get a hot water heater installed this year though! Then there's the kitchen that has no oven. I do all my cooking on a two burner gas thing. But it also has my second favorite piece of furniture in it, a big white-washed cupboard in which everything goes. Brownie mix, spices, olive oil, dog food, hammer, drill, birdseed, and rat poison.

As I drove through town the other day, a little fishing village called Dzilam de Bravo (I've never been able to figure out what it means, but the nearest interpretation I've come up with is "Town of the Brave), the weeds were still sprouting in the sidewalks, the same three shriveled apple doll men were inhabiting their bench in the square,  a pack of dogs was pestering an obviously in heat female, and a little kid sped toward me on his bike like he had a death wish, until he swerved and jumped off his bike, the wheels still spinning, to run into the corner tienda with some shiny coins gleaming through his clenched fingers.

I don't know where or when you grew up, but my childhood took place in a very similar place, even if it was a different world. This place always makes me feel a little like I'm a ten year old and the first day of summer vacation. I don't have to comb my hair and if I want to wear plaid shorts with my favorite smiley face shirt for ten days straight, people are just going to smile.

 As I got out of the car to open our gate, a man pulled up with his cart of cremitas, like the Good Humor Man of the Yucatan.

"Later," I said. I don't know why, I wish I would have grabbed a cup of the creamy sweet coconut and rice treat right then. There was no hurry to get inside and unpacked. It could wait. Everything can wait here.

This morning, Don Pato, the man that rakes my yard came by with a bucket of grass plugs he'd pulled from his yard.  Don Pato is 73 years old and has had a stroke and has milky cataracts in both eyes and every morning he and his wife, Clara, come sweep the leaves out of our dirt yard. We don't really need it done, but there is no social security here in Mexico.  Last year, I decided to try to plant grass in a patch of our dirt so Don Pato brought me plugs and I planted and watered. Some of them survived. Enough that my little patch looks like a fifteen year old boy trying to grow his first beard. Today, after Don Pato left, I sat down in the dirt and started to dig troughs for my new batch of grass.

"You know," the cap'n said, "We could just go get some rolls of grass in Merida and you'd have a yard by the end of the week."

But I don't want to do that. I want to plant these little plugs and sprinkle water on them every day and watch them spread and maybe next year I'll have a patch big enough that Freddy, the dog, can roll around on it.

I can wait.

So what does this long diatribe have to do with drinking? Nothing. Nothing at all.

Ain't that great?

Wino Mommy

Saw this on facebook today right next to another post about how one of my friends wishes there was a margarita truck that drove around the neighborhood every afternoon ringing its bell so she could run after it like a kid running after the ice cream man. (I'll save my comments on that for a later time.)

About the above, me thinks Mommy is trying awfully hard to convince herself that she is a wonderful person despite her burgeoning drinking problem. Poor Mommy. Poor Mommy's Husband. Poor Mommy's children.  Her next line of rhetoric will probably be that she's actually a Better Mommy because she drinks.  That's the natural progression.

I always wondered about people who could post things like this in public or laugh about how drunk they got last weekend. Are there really people out there who aren't ashamed of how much they drink?I was never that person.

There's my sign.

Shameless Self-Promotion

Hola amigos!

I've been copping out on my blog this month to write a few posts for Dryuary. org website. Here is a link to the first one.. (Yes, sorry, I'll be force-feeding you a few more.)  Please give it a click, if you feel like it, so I can brag and say, "See, look at all the gawkers I brought ya'll."

BTW, check out the song of the day, too.

Stay Thirsty

Are You Worried That You'll Drink Tonight?

I'll be hosting Abs Chat Tonight over at the MM Chatroom. No lying allowed! If you find that your will is slipping around 9:00 PM EST, stop in and say, "Hi", or you don't have to say anything at all, we'll let you sit quietly in the corner while we chew each others' ears off.

This chat is not just for people who are trying to quit completely forever, it is for anyone who is trying to quit for any amount of time, even if it's only for tonight. So if you're trying to get through the month of Dryuary but you don't know what your plans are after that, this is a great place for you. There will be no pressure. 

Here's how you get there.

Abs Chat Tonight! 

Abs Chat is focused on abstaining from alcohol—on a permanent basis,
long-term, or even for a shorter period of time (like a 30!).
Everyone is welcome to attend, and to participate, but we won't be
discussing moderation techniques or plans. For discussions of
moderate drinking, we invite you to participate in the Monday Night
Book Chat or the Tuesday Night Online Meeting.
So if you're abstaining, planning to, curious about it, wondering
whether it would be a good idea, or just want to hang out for sober
fun, stop by!
See you there! http://www.moderation.org/chat/

** PLEASE NOTE: Abs Chat will be held in the Abs Chatroom. When
logging in, use the drop-down box to select MM_Abs_Chat. If you wind
up in the wrong room, you can move between rooms by clicking on the
room list to the right of the chatroom screen. **

Killing Field

Let us pray...

Gotcha!!

I watched this movie the other night called "The Way" about a father (Martin Sheen) who walks the Camino de Santiago after his son dies when attempting it. Now I've got a hair up my you-know-what (somehow it doesn't seem appropriate to say the word "ass" here although apparently some people ride asses on the route) to walk it myself. I don't know if I ever will, but I like to think about it. And I like knowing it is possible. I have the way, the means, and the sobriety to do it.

I can dream. 

Thank you, Sobriety.

So in preparation of my trek, somewhere in the far future, I got up at six this morning to walk. My house in Mexico is on the fringe of our village and it is about a mile into the town center. I walked as far as I could on the beach but then reached the house that is falling into the sea and had to cut back into town. Along my way I passed piles of dog shit, mounds of trash that the dogs that left the dog shit had torn through, some beautiful houses and some houses that are falling to rubble but when I looked inside I could still see the inhabitants slung in their hammocks, swaying like bananas on the banana trees in the yard. "T.I.M." as we say down here. This is Mexico.

I passed one little house that used to be so picturesque with its red tiles and the bougainvillea threatening its very existence. I almost wept when the former owner had that bougainvillea cut back, it reminded me so much of Sleeping Beauty's castle and the bramble patch that grew up around it to keep anyone from saving her.

Now, the bougainvillea is winning and the red tiles are chipped or barely hanging on and she, the former owner, can no longer be saved.

Linda. That was her name. She and I moved here at the exact same time, we got drunk together the night we bought our houses. She was a nurse, just like me, but into stem cell research. She had great plans to do good, just like me, and we talked about opening a clinic here together. She was about 50, just like me. 

She was an alcoholic. Just like me. 

I watched her struggle, just like me, off and on through the years. She'd disappear for months on end and I'd ask someone where she was and they'd respond, "Up North, in rehab."  The last time I saw her she showed up at our Christmas Toy Give Away. Drunk. I didn't see her again. I finally asked someone where she was and they replied, "She died."

So I thought of her as I walked by her house today and the dreams she had and all the possibilities and all of our similarities.  

And I thought of the others. Just like me. Just like Linda.

Patty: My dear, dear friend and larger than life. She gave up drinking for 8 years. Then she drank, Then she died. Ruptured esophageal varice and she bled out. Alone.

Debbie: Came to the Bahamas to start a new life with her husband. 5'10 and that was without the "fuck me" heels she always wore. The most gorgeous long legs I ever saw, I used to accuse her of spraying Miracle Grow on them as we leaned up against the bar every Friday night at Sapodilly's. (We called it Slap Me Silly's). Last time I saw her we were both leaving the Bahamas for the last time. She was a shaking, rattling scarecrow of the girl I had met two years before. We got our plane tickets then crossed the sand road to drink at the bar. We caught the flight together to Miami and never saw each other again. She died the next year. She was 47.

Hilda: I never even knew she drank. But she knew I did. Boy, did she know I did. I remember she watched me with those sharp eyes of her one night as I drunkenly tried to make change at one of our fundraisers for the toy drive, She finally pushed me out of the chair and took over. I headed back to the states that summer and sobered up,  she took a dive off her balcony and scalped herself along with some other damage. We got to know each other better after that. She'd been sober once for 6 years she told me, but she'd never been able to stay that way that long again. She gave me her AA 90 Day Coin with the promise I'd give it back when she made 90 again. I still have it. She died three years ago, her daughter thought she had wet brain but it ended up being Stage 4 colon cancer. 

Terri: A few years ahead of me in school and married one of the neighbor boys. I worked for years with her twin sister. Died at 47 from liver failure.

My aunt, Orvella, a pale specter of my childhood. Died at 53, my age right now, from breast cancer and cirrhosis.

Did you know that female alcoholics have death rates 50-100 percent higher than those of male alcoholics?

But I'm not an alcoholic, I can hear you say.

That's what all these women said, too. Just like me. For a long time.

All of these women were just like me, middle aged women, between the ages of 47 and 60 who had drank all their lives and thought they would still get one more chance to turn it around. To quit again.

God, the universe, and nature gives us all the chances we need, and the means and the ways, to obtain our dreams.

Booze doesn't. It finally starts plowing us under.

And the sneaky son-of-a-bitch never tells us when our chances have run out..

P.S. Anyone that is attempting a Dryuary and needs some extra support, check out the  Dryuary Site hosted by Moderation Management.

Happy First Wednesday of Dryary

The above cartoon pretty much sums up how I feel about you goofballs!

In case you haven't heard it, the whole world is going Dry, as in not drinking, this month. Really? It's not? Some people are still drinking? Well, you couldn't tell it by the message boards and blogs, I would dare to say that drinkers, for once, may be the minority in these early days of January 2016. Next week may tell a different story, but let's enjoy it while it lasts.

If you've signed on to a Dryuary and your hands are getting a little sweaty and you can feel yourself losing your grip on those good intentions, I'll be hosting a Dryuary Abs Chat over at the MM Chatroom tonight. We'll keep your fingers busy on the keyboard instead of in the liquor cabinet for an hour or so.

Here's how to get there:

Abs Chat Tonight! 

Abs Chat is focused on abstaining from alcohol—on a permanent basis,
long-term, or even for a shorter period of time (like a 30!).
Everyone is welcome to attend, and to participate, but we won't be
discussing moderation techniques or plans. For discussions of
moderate drinking, we invite you to participate in the Monday Night
Book Chat or the Tuesday Night Online Meeting.
So if you're abstaining, planning to, curious about it, wondering
whether it would be a good idea, or just want to hang out for sober
fun, stop by!
See you there! http://www.moderation.org/chat/

** PLEASE NOTE: Abs Chat will be held in the Abs Chatroom. When
logging in, use the drop-down box to select MM_Abs_Chat. If you wind
up in the wrong room, you can move between rooms by clicking on the
room list to the right of the chatroom screen. **

Words

Fulfillment is a feeling of happiness and satisfaction. It's also the completion of something, like the fulfillment of a promise.

Like many of my friends in the blogging world, I took up the practice of replacing New Year's resolutions with a New Year's "Word" a few years ago.  My yearly word was supposed to replace all the guilt that is associated with the traditional unfulfilled resolutions. My New Year's word wasn't supposed to require measurements or goals, it was just supposed to guide me along through the year without any demands or expectations. Like Dumbo's feather, I thought I could just curl my trunk around a word and fly.

That's me, always scouring for the next no work or sweat required gadget on the Home Shopping Network or in the As Seen On TV aisle of my local Walgreens.

No big surprise that my "Word of the Year" offered the same astonishing results as the jars full of Belly Fat Burner and Thigh Blaster pills I have in my medicine cabinet.

Warning: Results may not be visible to the human eye!

So, I was really re-thinking this whole "Word of the Year" thing. But then I started reading all the blogs this morning and was starting to feel left out.

"Maybe I should give it one more try," I thought. "Besides, I can't think of anything else to write about on this New Year's Day and, for a sober blogger, not writing a New Year's Day blog is akin to Dick Clark not Rocking in the New Year. 

"Dick," I said, "if you can still manage to fulfill your obligations even though you've been dead for three New Year's Eves, (maybe you should have read the fine print a little closer.) I guess I should make a half-hearted but live attempt to fulfill mine."

And that's when my word of the year jumped out at me.

FULFILLMENT

I'll admit the word probably stood out because of all the unfulfilled promises I've made to myself on every other New Year's Day. I guess I thought if I made it my word, I'd be pressured into being fulfilling for at least the three week shelf-life of most New Year's resolutions. Maybe I'd be able to finish at least one unfinished task in that time.

I sat down to write a list of obligations I wanted to fulfill this year. 

Ugh, huh? 

Then I started thinking about my last post about Praying Big and I decided to make my list a list of wishes I wanted fulfilled in the next year. Things that would fulfill me and make me happy. I won't share those things with you, but I'll tell you it was a helluva lot more fun than obligations.

Then, that word "pray" jumped out at me and I started thinking about that. All of you know that I pray on a regular basis. I've tried not to be too "in your face" about it but it is right up there in the title of my blog. That three letter word, G-O-D.  I thought about my hesitancy in the beginning of this blog to include it in my title and I thought about all the other times I've wondered if prospective readers were turned off by that word in my title and maybe that was why I didn't rack up the number of followers that other blogs do. I thought about how I've considered, more than once. changing the title of my blog.

I felt a little ashamed and, rightfully, ungrateful.

See, I fully believe, without a doubt or moment of hesitation that I would not be here without God. When I thought I should give up on myself, I knew He hadn't. So, I didn't. He told me to start this blog. He did. I ignored Him for a long time but then I did what He told me.

And my life was never the same.

Thank God!

I've let Him sit back there in the background, afraid to bring Him too far out of the shadows, while I basked in the light of the fulfillment of His part of this bargain. Afraid that His presence would chase off those who don't believe in Him, those that think He's just another Dumbo's feather. 

But I believe.

Now, I think it is time to for me to fulfill my part and give Him credit and share how my belief in Him sustained me and brought me through.  It's time to concentrate on where He wants to lead me instead of where I want to take Him as long as He stays in the background.

Because I know what He has planned will be more fulfilling than anything I can conceive.

So, in fulfillment of my debt to my Co-Writer, my blog will begin to focus on my quest for a more fulfilling life, through sobriety and through Him.

I don't know what changes this will wrought.  Or if it will wrought any.I don't know if I will lose some of you as readers, I hope not, because through you I am drawn closer to Him. All I know is that since I started thinking about this new direction, I've been filled with more anticipation and excitement than I have since the early days of my sobriety. Like those early days, I can't wait to see where He will take me.  

Whether you believe in Him, or not, I like to believe that you acknowledge that in this gathering of compassionate and giving souls, here in the blogging and recovery world, there is a love and a hope and a sacredness that transcends this worldly sphere.

Happy New Year, my friends. May it be a year of Fulfillment for us all.