Jeni: Good News! Your school is outstanding! Currant juice sounds fine to me.

Saskia: Thanks for the virtual hug, it lifted my spirits

Emily: I hope eventually the pain leaves entirely, you are so right, even when things are better, then tend to worry about something else or bigger. I would love to take a holiday from worry, sans alcohol, of course.
:)
Bloss

Hey Mayans, quick post to say hello and hugs to you all. I am way late.
Love to you all, and know whatever we are going through, we will make it through together.

HRB: take care, you are right together we all will make it
Bloss

Good Thursday evening, my beautiful boaters! I was able to sneak out of work a little early today and enjoy a full 45 minutes of daylight before the sun went down. Made me happier and more relaxed. Relaxier? ;)

Bloss: Big Mammoth cyber hugs to you, my friend, and yes, everything will be alright. Crossing my fingers (paws) that Blossom will not need surgery. I laughed when you wrote that “She… does not like the eye drops.” I'm sure Mama Bloss would rather not have to administer them, either. Thank you for all of your wonderful messages of love and encouragement to our classmates. Hoping you’ll get a good night’s sleep.

You-Rock: Digging your new orchid avatar. Thank you for the hugs, and right back at you, good buddy. I’m with Bloss on needing a bunch, lately. Terrific that we were able to celebrate 12-12-12 together in sobriety, you are so right! The best date with the best SR friends. Go easy on yourself at work. Thinking of you.

Teacher Jeni: Woo, hoo! A+ for your school! That’s great news, girlfriend. They surely could never have accomplished that accolade without you. And you made it through stressful times with grace and steady resolve. Good deal on turning down the after-school celebration, too. Sleep well tonight.

Sassy: Glad you’re rolling through the ‘hood in style, East Coast G-ma. Wait ‘til you see the DPP cruise ship for our sober Mayan vacay. Nice to hear that you’re “…happily plugging along…” and doing well in the gym. That FitBit tool sounds really cool. How’s it going so far with your 30 days goal by 2013?

Emily: Congrats on your 144/4 double-quit! Wonderful resolve. Nice to hear that your leg pain is easing up today, and hoping you can find a doctor to provide you with proper relief. Loved your personal advice to Tanja on sharing at meetings. Thank you for your thoughtful posts to our boaters. Now I’m hungry and I’ve got curry on my brain.

OneLess: Huge hugs to you for making it through the wine gifts surprise. I admire you for posting about it right away for support and advice in your time of indecision. I knew you’d be okay, strong sober mate. Awesome and wonderfully wise advice to Jeni, too. How are your house projects coming along?

Tanja: Reading your heartfelt and thoughtful posts to our boaters always feels like being wrapped in a warm and loving hug. “I would definitely reward yourself (warm bath, good book, chocolate, massage, new outfit, etc.) for going through this stressful time.” Love this! Yes to all of it, please. Big hugs to you for feeling more confident overall in your driving abilities. You’re sounding very strong in your sobriety, girlfriend, and it looks so good on ya.

Dee: Thank you for your timely encouragement and spot-on advice to our May mates. Love to you!

Lilac: Big hugs to you, girlfriend. Super and thorough advice on dealing with insomnia, thanks! I do hope you get paid soon and I admire your calm practicality in planning for tough times. Going over potential worst-case scenarios and outlining what to do just in case does much in preventing and alleviating stress… at least for me. Seeing as you’re a cold-weather fan, may I send my winter season your way? I’m ready for our Mayan sober backpacking trip starting in Miami. How are you doing in your sobriety?

KittyCat: Always lovely to read your posts, sober kitten. Thank you for your kind wishes on my 7 months. Hugs to tea monger Crispin and Willa. I’ve had an elephant fidgeting in the queue for your 60 days milestone, girlfriend. May I? ;)

Bionic Lee: Where did you go, sober mate? Feels like there’s a void in the thread until you christen it with your presence. Hope all is well.

Dweller? 2Mags? WeHav? Uninvited? Pink in a poke buddy? Soleil? Super-Crew? Luling? Flicked? GingerBeer? Payton? Seahorse? Thursday? Harpo? SubtleKnife? TedPlante? Iwant2? IllNeverTell? Auden? Candi? Easyrider? We are missing you, May mates! Please send us a post when you can. :)

Looking forward to a few days off around Christmas. Half of the family is still firmly entrenched in their grudges, unfortunately. That would be the half with young children, so the other half (including me) will not be allowed to enjoy their company. Awful that the kids are denied family time due to adults’ anger/control issues. Sigh. Time may lessen some of this and the children will get old enough to understand eventually.

Other than that, Bubba and his steer say "Howdy" and "No taking swigs from the rotgut homebrew in the trunk." Wishing everyone a peaceful night in sobriety and a restful night’s sleep. Love and hugs to all. :)

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Hi all,

I'm plugging away on my 30-day goal...you'd know if I slipped:-). One way or another I'm going to make it! Working out is making a huge difference in my mood and sobriety!

I love cruises!

FP, Sorry to hear about the family issues. One of the benefits of age is that we have no next gen children and mostly all of the adults are housebroken! I love your posts and always miss them when you are otherwise occupied!

Good night all!

Ss

It's FRIDAY!!!!!

So relieved to have made it through the most stressful work week since I got sober. Thank God or whoever it is that guides me through another day. I'm not a religious person but I do have a faith even though it doesn't 'fit' with any I know. It's just personal thing, and I'm so thankful that I have it.

It's my work Christmas party tonight. No temptation to drink. I'm driving and coming home after the meal. Quite looking forward to it even though I'm really really tired.

I will catch up with your posts over the weekend. You are all such lovely strong people and I just love you all so much xxxx

FP I'm glad to hear you got to enjoy some sunshine and that it helped a bit. Big hugs to you.
Saskia I'm excited to celebrate your 30! It will be a great jumping point for the new year!
Jeni great job on the inspection. Enjoy your party tonight and know that we are just a click away.
Bloss big hugs to you.
Emily did you watch anything fun or cook anything yummy? I'm debating in making cookies this weekend and next for all our holiday events.
HRB hope you had a good night at work.
Yay Friday! Yesterday at work was crap. Hoping for a better end to the week. Lots of plans this weekend. First weekend without coffee. We'll see how it goes. I really hope it helps. Have a good day everyone!

Good morning, Mayans!

Happy to note that my "weekend" has started! Lots of cleaning and organizing to do. My kitty is going through her morning routine -- after I get up she talks (meouw's ) constantly for 10-20 minutes. It sounds like she is scolding me :-)

Jeni, congratulations on the school stuff! With you involved so much I'm not surprised at the outcome :-). I'm in a similar place with faith rather than religion. My mother was very religious and I grew up with that but have gone my own way since then. I hope you have a restful and relaxing weekend!

OLL, I hope you have a better day at work today! And let us know how it goes without caffeine this weekend. I have usually had headaches for a couple of days after cutting down/cutting out coffee but it has been well worth it.

Tanja, I love FP's description of your posts as feeling "like being wrapped in a warm and loving hug"! You have wonderful qualities, sister!

Bloss, sending another (((hug)) your way! In these dark and gloomy winter days I think we need all the hugs we can get :-)

Em, thank you for your wonderful posts! I look forward to them every day. I feel like I know you and you are a good friend. You have a way with words and your ending messages always make me think. You sound like a very kind and gentle woman. Congratulations on 144/4 days!

Rock, I'm thinking of you! You are a constant and very kind friend and deserve all the best in your life!

Lilac, you sound strong and so thoughtful. I admire the way you work your head around difficult situations and figure out good solutions.

Kittycat, you are a great example for me! You had difficulties with sobriety awhile back and are doing so well now. I'm inspired and you have helped me to feel I can do it.

FP, what can I say - you are amazing and help to keep this thread moving. Your obvious dedication to our sober band is awesome and your messages and Mammoth pics are an inspiration.

Dee, thank you for all you do to help us keep on track!

AFM: still listening to my kitty scold me. I think she wants more attention! I'm feeling good which is especially amazing at this time of year. One more week of work and then a break until after the new year or possibly a bit longer. I'm looking forward to that. I'll be away for Christmas visiting relatives in what I suspect is FP's home state. Life is good!

(((Hugs))) to all of our Mayans!

well it's day 145/5 and it's the 5 that feels like the harder of the two. i need to remember that as long as i keep moving, my leg won't get too bad, and that while a day of rest may feel good, ultimately it's not such a good thing perhaps?
i also need to remember that just because my leg isn't too bad isn't a reason to act as if everything's fine, because it will come back to bite me. so yes, take it easy, but not too easy.
had a good meeting with my sponsor this morning, and i'm starting with step one, so yes, reading, writing... mainly reading.
tomorrow... tomorrow is the game with ophelia in it. sometimes i wish i wasn't a gamer, or a(n aspiring) writer. why? because when i read through some of the stuff i wrote, there's an honesty there, a lot of internal dialogue and i worry that if i can write like that about stuff that isn't real, how do i know how i actually feel? have i spent too much time in my characters' heads to understand mine? or do they help me to know myself? i don't know.
i know people whose characters have been totally... off the scale in terms of their behaviour, but in real life are perfectly normal. then again, it's easy to portray the 'hollywood' version of illness - i would imagine - because the models are there to look at. whether it's easy to portray someone who's well when you aren't... i don't know. looking back, i suspect it isn't, any more than it's easy to portray somebody whose intelligence is much higher than ours.
i suspect, though i can't be certain, that what we can't do - at least not easily - is have our characters deal with things that happen in games in a massively different way to how we would in real life, except in broad brush strokes, or by borrowing from films/books/telly. if we're the sort to make intricate plans
in real life, we're not likely to improvise in character, and vice versa. i suppose in some ways, it can bring out our defects, because while there may be repercussions, which may be very serious in game, there aren't any in reality. of course, sometimes it's just fun to say "kill 'em all," and laugh like a maniac.
i've whittered on a bit, and i apologise. part of it was that when i told my sponsor about my writing, she mentioned it might come up in step 4. understandable, i guess, since i said how... painful i found reading some of it.

fp - glad you got a bit of daylight after work. and thanks for all your kind and wise posts to all of us. i know they brighten my day.
as for families, i haven't seen my dad's family since we went to scatter his ashes, and even then, not all of them. i haven't seen my mum's family since his funeral either, and again, not all of them were there. before that, we hadn't seen them for years. indeed, it's partially because they've started visiting mum, [but mainly because it's really unpleasant] that i've stayed away [oh yes, and awkward and expensive]. i trust me not to say anything stupid. i don't trust them to do the same.

saskia - glad the gym's working out for you. i won't have 30 days before the end of the year, but i will get 30 days. right now is the hardest time for me, when the av thinks she has a way in. all i know is if i don't quit the codeine, i'll find myself having to quit something else, something even harder to quit.

jeni - well done on making it through the week. hopefully the weekend will give you chance to recharge your batteries.

onelesslonely - good luck getting through the weekend, and sorry that yesterday was so fraught.

as for me, yesterday was cottage pie day, although i don't think it normally includes quite so many chillis. or chilli puree. still, that's how we like it, so... why not? as for watching stuff, i got the box set of Father Ted on monday, so we started on series two yesterday. in some ways it takes me back, and in others... it's just a really good programme.

have a good day folks, what's left of it. be gentle with yourselves. and remember, it can be nice to have something to look forward to, but not so that you forget what's good about the present.

love and hugs to you all.

Round my alcoholic friends getting ready to go out. Not fretting about drinking at all tonight....wow how far have we all come my friends?!

You are all coming with me in my back pocket of course. Hope it won't be a tight squeeze for you all in there...!!xxx

We'll all fit, Jeni! :-)

I love my friend, she's warm and caring. She would usually be drunk by now but instead she's drinking tea and doing my make-up for me!
I wonder if this is the start of a new phase in our friendship? Sober friends...I would so love that.

Jeni, I hope for you that your friend follows your outstanding example! Hope you have a relaxing weekend.

I'm home. Had a lovely meal, everyone else went on to a club at which point I made my excuses and left.
Very tired after an exhausting week. Pleased to be home in the warm.
No problems tonight. Sober and strong xxx

Jeni -I am so happy to hear that you a good week. You aced your inspection. Congratulations - I didn't have a doubt that you would! I am so proud that you were able to attend a Christmas party and enjoy it. I hope you have a wonderful week-end.

FP - I always love your posts. It is a shame that adults can act like children. I think you have a great attitude. This too shall pass. I love your new saying "I love me computer because my friends live on it". How very true. Just reading that cheered me:)

Sas - I am so glad that only have one more week of work before you get a long vacation. You are sounding so happy and positive. 30 days will be here before you know it:)

My speaker meeting last night had a gentlemen speak that really awed me. He had been drinking and doing crack cocaine for 30 years. Twenty-two rehabs and in and out of AA. He had been shot, stabbed and lived underneath a bridge. He now has almost 3 years of sobriety. He treasures his sobriety. It was just such an inpiring tale.

Hope everyone has a very good night.

Hello Mayans,
I too have a holiday work party to attend. It should be pretty fun. There are a few that are not drinking and many others who will be drinking too heavily. Thank goodness I don't need to worry about what I'm gonna do or embarrass myself while drunk. I never attended one in the past because I knew I would either drink way too much or have no fun because I was not. This time those options are off the table so looking forward to it.:)

I will check in later tonight.

Hey everyone,
I'm here! This week was just crazy with school ending. Now I can chill and relax for Winter break.....the sobering news of the shootings in Connecticut have my mind a bit addled....makes you realize how precious life is....
65 days sober!!!
Talk soon,
Lee

Happy Friday, my beloved boaters! Lovin’ the weekend ahead to rest up. Frost on the ground this morning. I am so not ready. Glad to have a warm house and snuggy bed to sleep in, though.

Bionic Lee: Yay! Great to see your post. Congrats on the 65 awesome days! Stayin’ alive at 65, sober mate. And, yeah, I’ve been hearing about that Connecticut elementary school tragedy since this morning, and wow, does that hit hard. Bear hugs to you, er, more like Mammoth hugs. :)

Sassy: Excellent that you’re hanging tough in sobriety! You are going all the way this time, sober sister. At least two elephants are in your near future. Nice that your gym exercise is keeping you so upbeat. Gotta start getting back to the gym myself. Big hugs to you and your chatty kitty, Lucy.

Teacher Jeni: “You are all coming with me in my back pocket…” I knew you were strong, but it sounds like you worked English marm magic in packing and lugging May mates plus an elephant. Awesome job on the sober strength at your party! What a lovely surprise that your friend is joining you in sobriety. See? Your shining example is rubbing off on others already. Love to you.

OneLess: “Yesterday at work was crap.” Honestly, girlfriend, you need to stop being so coy and start telling us how you really feel. ;) Hoping you have an awesome weekend to recoup. Good for you on cutting out the caffeine. I had headaches in the beginning and was ultra cranky and impatient. But, I started feeling more energy longer and later in the day instead of crashing from fatigue. And then, the day after returning home from surgery, first thing I perked up was a huge mug of high octane and haven't looked back. Making more cookies? Gimme!!! Love to you.

Dee: Meant to say that I am a huge Steely Dan fan, and recognized lines from “Do it Again” in your new signature. Great choice! I will admit that I had no idea what a “handle” was until I joined SR. Education everywhere I go. Big hugs to you.

Emily: Wonderful post, and your stream-of-consciousness style of writing is beautiful. Sas is right in that you have a way of making people feel that you’re talking one-on-one with them in a cozy conversation. Thank you for sharing your own family troubles. It’s always something, you know? Hoping gentle, regular exercise will help your leg pain. Hugs to you.

Tanja: Thank you for your kind words to our boaters and to me. What an incredible story that gentleman speaker has in going from violent, bare subsistence to sober success. Absolutely terrific that he’s helping others by talking about his life. How are your furry babies doing? Hugs to you.

You-Rock: Have a fantastic time at your work party! I know you’ll be just fine and I hear the admirable conviction through your post. Looking forward to the details when you get a chance. Such freedom in solid sobriety and knowing that our SR friends will help us to stay that way. Love to you.

So I received an offer from a fellow Pach musician to play my French horn with a local group in a holiday concert next week. Very cool. And it will be very cool for this Polar Pach, because it’s an outdoor nighttime concert, brrrrr. I need to look over the score’s level of difficulty before confirming, but if it’s do-able, I’m there.

Wishing everyone a pleasant rest of our Friday and a good night’s sleep. Love and hugs to all. :)

Attachment 17723

I changed my sig before - sorry FP :)

I think the handle in the Dan song is a poker machine handle...but yeah it works both ways for us guys here :)

D

Hey Mayans,
Wow, having fun, but need a break. It's not like I want a drink... I don't. But time to get out and take a walk. I will go back in but need a few minutes to gather more energy. Just wanted to say hi and let you all know you give me such strength.