Well, today is eleven weeks. I'd like to say that I feel much better and that my head is clear and I'm getting sooooo much more done, but none of that is true. Okay, I have gotten a few things done...I read a good book (Bossypants, by Tina Fey) and have managed to paint my dining room and most of my living room. Oh, and I planted basil and it hasn't died yet.
That's about it.

Checking in...

I have been sober for over eight weeks. I don’t remember a conscious decision to stop drinking, though I’d been thinking about it for a long time. It just happened.

I’d been feeling like shit for a while, had gained a lot of weight, and was having some problems with my health, but kept telling myself that I just needed to slow down, not stop. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I think you’ve gathered that alcohol is a large part of the culture at the café, it’s not a good thing, but that’s the way it’s been for a long time. I’ve made half-hearted attempts to change that, but never had much follow through, being as bad as, or worse than, everyone else.

Then, one Wednesday, I didn’t drink. That turned into a couple of days, I made it through the anger and agitation which had attended the first few days of sobriety each time I had tried in the past few years, and I just kept going. I knew that if I had a drink, it would turn into two, then three, then a six pack and a couple of shots, so I held off. I haven’t avoided being around alcohol, I will still go next door to the bar with the crew from time to time and have a limeade while they have a beer or shot, and I still go to the pseudo-Irish pub in town to see my friends, I just drink tea. There was a period, about a month in, where I was pissed off about the whole thing, wanted to drink, was tired about the “still on the wagon?” question, or worse, the “why?” but I got through it and around week six my mood improved and I started hitting the gym with a bit of regularity.

I had beer in the fridge for about the first month, then I poured them out. There is still a bottle of nice bourbon and a good bottle of wine in the cabinet, but I feel no desire to drink them. I think that if I got rid of those I would get mad again, better to just leave them where they are, let myself think that I might be able to enjoy them some day.

This morning I was at work, we were getting ready to open, when a friend of mine came in with news that the guy who worked the produce department at the market I frequent had died of a heart attack. I barely knew Terry, I know that he was from New Jersey, that he smoked a lot, and that he could be counted on to round up some extra mushrooms or lettuce for the cafe if I hadn't ordered properly. He and the elderly cashier, Harold, would often trade good natured verbal jabs about who worked harder. His mother has cancer. He was around fifty. That's it, that's all I know.
I'm always taken aback at how unreal it is to get news like that, how I had just seen him a day or two before, or how she had posted on Facebook this morning, or how I didn't even know he was sick. I was thinking on this, how fast life can be lost, when I read the news of the school shooting at Sandy Hook. I am so sick and hurt right now, I cannot believe how man can be so evil, so cruel. I also cannot believe how many people posted on Facebook things along the line of, "So thankful that God was there to protect and comfort the survivors" or "Now is not the time to be talking about gun control."
Well, where was god while all the children and adults who didn't survive were being murdered? When is a good time to talk about gun control? An acquaintance posted a charming (sarcasm) little tale about how she grew up around guns and how it was disrespectful to be talking about changing gun laws as these victims hadn't even been buried yet. I wrote a comment stating that neither had the victims of the Oregon mall shooting on Tuesday, and the seven year old boy accidentally killed in front of a gun store last week likely hadn't been either. Should we wait until we had a fucking week without a gun-related tragedy to have this debate, or should we just squeeze it in between mass shootings. I argued that it was disrespectful to the victims to NOT be having a debate over gun laws right now, that perhaps if we had had this debate after Columbine, or Aurora, or any other number of mass shootings in this country, we might have avoided the one today. Then I deleted all I had written and logged out.
Later, I logged in again and read several posts along the same lines and wrote that I was deactivating my account as I was going to snap if I read one more post praising a Stone Age desert god that doesn't even bother to protect the most vulnerable of society's members or the need to maintain an 18th Century view on firearm ownership. I then deleted that one as well and logged back out.
I really do believe that social media has been at great force over the last few years, it has given so many people a voice who had never had one before, I just don't want to listen to those voices any longer.

Sometimes you see something and you think of those who would enjoy it and immediately want to share it with them. So, Maria and John...

and...

Hi, Folks...

To answer your question, John, I am doing pretty well, thank you. I've got a fairly severe case of end-of-summer burnout, but that should pass. Labor Day is upon us, we'll get our asses kicked for the next three and a half days, and then things should be a little more manageable. We've been working seriously short-handed for about a month now and we're all ready to blow. Well, I know I am.
Being short has actually been a bit of a blessing the last two weeks, instead of scheduling extra days for coverage, and working 70 hour weeks myself, I've just closed the past couple of Tuesdays and Wednesdays...and it has been glorious. I've been able to mow my yard, to my neighbors' delight, I've cleaned my room (though I'm really not sure how it got messy) and I've been up to the big city to visit the kids and spoil them with Indian food and trips to Hastings.
My love life is still non-existent, but I'm pretty sure that in at least a couple alternate universes I'm having one hell of a smoking hot affair with one of my waitresses (you've seen a picture of her, John). She is waaaaaayyyyyy too young and pretty for an old fat man like me, but as we used to say back in Oklahoma, she makes my chiggers itch. In at least one alternate reality, America is being ran by jack-booted thugs (okay, that's not much of a stretch) and she and I go on a multi-state crime spree to help raise money for the resistance. I die in a hail of gunfire buying time for her to escape an ambush, and she later becomes the leader of those fighting alongside the kangaroo people to overthrow our corporate overlords.
Yes, I know that's Tank Girl, I never said I was original.
Maria, I promise you a rant soon...I probably could have written it today, but I already vocalized it on one of my poor vendors...I'm not sure of the actual count, but I think I said "fuck" seven times in five seconds.

Paper Man...great movie.

The blank page, or screen, truly is one daunting son of a bitch. I've been sitting here for quite a while now trying to think of what to write and nothing really comes to mind. Things continue as before...work, home, work, home, work, and so on with no real distractions, the days and weeks and months just sliding by until I look back and see all that has happened around me while I've been been working, or sleeping, or drunk.

Well, this is in danger of slipping into a rant, and that's not what I want to do. Been doing too much of that lately, but it has helped me to see that maybe I don't need to stay in this little mountain town for the next five years (that's when the cafe is paid off), maybe I can do two more and then sell, make enough to move and start again somewhere else. Then again, I should probably just push through and get the damned thing done. I've already got two could-have-been-retired dates behind me, and another coming up. I think I'll stick this one out and see what happens.

I know that I need to find something outside of work that inspires me, because work no longer does, the restaurant is like an infant that will never learn to wipe its own ass, or an extremely high maintenance spouse, and I'm just fucking tired of it all...the constant repairs, scheduling headaches, financial juggling, employees who don't give a shit, and don't even get me started on the customers. There I go on the rant again.

On the upside, I am sitting in bed typing this stone sober. No, I haven't quit, but this is the first night in quite a while that I'll be falling asleep as opposed to passing out, and that's a start.