I’m trying not to panic now that I’m realizing that I’m already behind before I’ve even gotten started. I have one student friend who regularly takes 17 hours and who I believe is a straight A student with a job (she’s a non-traditional student but still younger than me by at least 15 years!). I’m pretty sure she plans ahead for her classes and structures her days accordingly.

So how do we keep from continue to stumble when the race has already begun and we find ourselves way behind the pack? Like any good training program that teaches us how to plan what you want to do and do what you plan, school is no different. Almost the minute I got into class, I began meeting other students to gather email addresses, during the break I asked the instructor for homework assignments and during the break between classes I downloaded the syllabus from the site he sent me to since he doesn’t used the usual school based system (yes, I had emailed him previously to let him know that I was missing the first class).

For the homework assignment that is due on Wednesday, I have begun what I can during this break between classes and will complete the assignment tomorrow during my day at home. On Wednesday, I plan to make both my lunch and dinner (I’m in a special food program with a required food plan) and leave for school early so that I can meet with my math professor well before class starts (and find a good parking space!). I also plan to talk with my friend Julie (hi Julie!) about looking over my math homework to see if I’m on the right track as well as to meet with the professors TA.

I don’t know why after all these many years I still sometimes don’t see the freight train headed for me until I’m on the track, but now that I can see the chunk of time that it will take to get a good grade in these two classes, I’m going to resign from two of my volunteer committees that I’ve been on for awhile now and let someone else step up to the plate. I want to have time to do well in school, do a good job with my work, continue my commitment to people and programs that I’m in and have time to enjoy my husband and friends. Sometimes it is hard for me to remember all the things that I have been doing that take up my time until a good expanse of time is swallowed up and then I can really feel the edges of the balloon seams!

It’s right at this place that I am now that in my past, if I had even gotten here, I would have either run screaming into the night and totally dropped the ball on many people, places and things or I would have been overcome with anxiety and not had a clue how to move through the mire of my own making. What I’m grateful for is the capability of being able to stop and breathe and assess what is going down so that I can then plan my course of action.

I’m sure for some people, this may seem really simple. God bless you!! For me, I’m still a work in progress so I want to share this in progress work with you in case it may help a few of you out there who can recognize yourself in here somewhere. Plus, just having to admit this to y’all is a great way for me to stay accountable!

Thanks for being out there. Share any experience, strength and hope you may have!

I’ve got a very colorful past in my drinking career that I can dust off and shake out to share some experience, strength and hope of my journey so that others can see what may be possible for them. If I was full of fear or regret of my past and wished I could shut the door on it then I really couldn’t be of much service to others who may be coming up the road behind or beside me. This promise has let me know that if I do the work required to clean up my side of the street and focus on how I do my best in living then I will learn how to accept my past and use it as a tool to be of service to others.

Don’t get me wrong, there are still times that I look at all the years I wasted when I was totally drinking and smoking and not paying attention to anything but what was the next thing that I could do, get, say or be that would help me feel better. It’s that illusive thing again that always crops its head up in my life that says, “right over here…just right over here…is much better than where you are now….”

Over the years I’ve been blessed to experience the connectedness and love that comes from being honest about who I am now and who I’ve been in my past. Turns out, there’s a whole lot of people out there who can relate to my history if not by the specifics, then with how I have felt. One of the sayings that you’ll hear a lot in recovery rooms is “we’re only as sick as our secrets.”

If you are new to sobriety or even right on the precipice of deciding that drinking has hurt you more than helped you, then what I would want you to take from this blog tonight is that you are not alone. There are so many people that have been on this path before you and are on it right now who are there for you. In fact, giving someone who is sober the opportunity to share their history with you actually helps to keep that person sober believe it or not. Ask as many questions as you want, listen to as many stories as you can, read all the literature you can get your hands on and know that you are embarking on a very special journey that you will never regret.

We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it because when you can look at your life through the eyes of something or someone bigger than yourself (I call this my Higher Power) then you will know that every blade of your life, every breath you have taken has a purpose and meaning. You really are an extraordinary and beautiful gift from the divine.

We stumbled upon the section of the store that had purses and looked at a few varieties but my MIL saw the “one” that she knew I would like, which I surely did, and insisted on buying it for me. Almost as soon as I got the purse home I realized that it was almost exactly what I had been wanting in the way of a purse for a long time. Now, this may not seem like a huge deal to you but when something that I’ve been wanting (and pretty much not voicing) falls into my lap as effortlessly as this one did, I realize that I really don’t have a clue how this manifesting business works.

In my head, manifesting takes great energy, effort and focus. You’re supposed to write what you want to manifest down in a specific way. You’re supposed to say out loud what you want. You’re supposed to feel the feelings of having what you want in your life…right? But, for this purse and me I pretty much did none of that. I did, however, really, really want it. I also really want a Mazda RX8!! I’m thinking if I can manifest the purse of my dreams, then maybe I can manifest the car of my dreams as well…right? Only trouble is when I visualize the Mazda RX8 it shows up in Eggplant purple and I’m unable to visualize it in the color I want (blue)!

So what is this manifesting thing all about? And if we really can manifest things into our lives that we want, where does prayer enter into the equation? Can we manifest things for other people through prayer or is manifesting only for one’s self and prayer only for others and never the two shall meet? These are the things that keep me awake at night or at least keep me from putting too much effort into either. Prayer and manifesting are good things for one to contemplate.

Now I’m going to go snuggle up with my honey (who is a manifestation from my prayers) and watch some funny shows he downloaded on his IPAD (which he manifested from work through his hard efforts) along with our two dogs (who someone else manifested but then took to the pound so that then we would find them as an answer to our prayers).

I don’t know about you but when it comes to being around family, especially family that I’m not around very often, I can get a bit tense about things and my need to do everything perfectly can raise her ugly head. Most of the time; however, I can take a quick inventory of what is going on with me and what I need to figure out what I need to do to stop myself before I go over the edge.

Tonight I’m thinking that feeling grateful feels like love. I think that gratitude and love are interchangeable. When I’m feeling grateful my heart expands just a bit to accept love that I may have otherwise overlooked and when I’m feeling loved or loving, I am grateful that I am able to feel it. I’ve often wondered if anyone else–especially people that I respect–have ever had the experience of going from 0 to 60 in 2 seconds flat with a vicious inner dialogue about someone that you love but for whatever reason are completely miffed about at the moment. It’s such a gross feeling when I feel that way, like I’m sliming all over the inside of myself. And when I get down to it, I’ve got to say that the over-arching feeling at that time is the feeling of being constricted by fear. It’s a tight feeling that squeezes even tighter with each negative thought or scenario so that I can really get worked up into a really good frenzy about the person, bless their heart.

The moral of the story? I like the way I feel when I’m grateful because my heart feels expansive and I’m able to let more love in and give more love out. What’s not to love about that?!

Feel grateful, it’ll do your heart good

Right now two of my nieces are creating Avatars for their SIMS games. They’ve spent about an hour and a half doing everything from creating their faces (heard a lot of comments about how nice Daniela’s “mom’s nose looked) and now they’re figuring out where their families will live. Every once in a while I hear some Japanese words spoken by the characters when they meet up and I can understand maybe one in twenty words (aso deska). I have no idea how the games are played but they do sound like fun from what my nieces have tried to tell me about them.

My little brother and sis-in-law came by to meet the girls tonight upon our return back from the beach and I was immediately aware of how my (considerably younger than me) SIL is so good at interacting with kids. She’s fun!! And has great energy to boot. I never stop to think about not having kids around all the time until the girls come to visit and then I realize what we don’t have. It’s nice to have them hanging around (except for when they’re fighting, then not so much). It’s also interesting to observe my brother’s kids’ behavior and my brother-in-law’s kids’ behavior…very different yet the same in many instances. One set have always had a mom and dad who love and respect each other and the other set have two homes with parents who love them very much but not each other. My hat is off to my brother-in-law who has made it a point to be very active in his girls’ lives and just bought a new home about five minutes away from them.

When I was little, I was infatuated with the idea of having six children, like my friend Jeanette from sixth grade who came from a large Catholic family. Then I grew up and didn’t get married until later in life which may be one of the reasons that the window for creating offspring shut fairly quickly (that and all the repercussions from my rather rambunctious youth!). I’m not sure what kind of a mom I would have made to humans (I seem to do quite well with the four-legged variety) but I’m starting to see that being a mother would be another awareness and acceptance of who I am. Sometimes I’m crazy fun and can stay in the ocean for literally hours and hours boogie boarding and other times I can sit quietly reading and just hanging.

What I know for sure (thanks O) is that I do not want to grow old and stiff in my ways and thinking. I hope that I can always be a fun aunt and also an aunt that my nieces and nephew know they can come to with various questions which I will definitely listen to intently while helping them to sort things out.

As Joni Mitchell sings, “we’re all just aging children”.

It is so nice to be at the beach and to be sober if for no other reason than to not feel sick. But the allure of alcohol is everywhere seducing us from billboards to outdoor cafes to radio ads with the come hither viewpoint of a cold one that will hit our spot just right. I gotta confess that even after these many years of so many miracles and gifts in my life from not drinking, every once in a while I can find that addict part of my brain pining for what never was. Like tonight in a little Italian restaurant we went to off of a side street in the older section of Galveston, the glasses of red wine were calling me name and then the bread drizzled with butter and garlic added in its melody and there was a veritable symphony happening right in my own head. And then spirit decided to send one of those red wine drinkers to the bathroom just as I was finishing up washing my hands and I got to hear her talking a little bit too loudly as she jostled the door handle a couple of times. On my way out, she acknowledges me with that false intimacy that sometimes comes along (at least it always did with me) after two or more glasses of vino. No thank you.

And not that there is anything the matter with drinking for those people who can drink and be normal like I have never been able to do. In fact some of my best friends are scuba diving party people in the most fun way and I’m right along with them getting silly on my sparkling water. I just recognize myself in those people like the woman outside the Ladies Room tonight and it makes me glad that I don’t have to live like that anymore.

So, yeah, it is possible to actually enjoy the beach without a beer or margarita to help smooth out the time. I’m not even doing caffeine right now so there is pretty much nothing between my experiences and me. I have noticed that by gum those negative ions pouring off of the waves from the ocean have mellowed me out considerably and the chatter in my brain has smoothed out to the sound of the surf flowing in and out. Maybe some of the time I’m not the party animal that I was in the past but I was able to stay out in the ocean for a heck of a long time with my niece as we patiently tried to catch a wave on our boogie boards.

For those of you who do drink, enjoy a cold one for me and for those of you who don’t, yes, it is very possible to have a really enjoyable time at the beach and be as sober as the day you were born.

You know that I was in dog heaven with all these guys running around ready to play and so well trained. I’m just ignorant enough about what makes an Australian Shepherd champion that these guys reminded me of P-Paul a lot! All of this made me think of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, “Outliers” about what enables some people to be such winners. In Gladwell’s synopsis, sometimes it really does boil down to the luck of the draw and being born into the right place at the right time. Of course I realize that with dogs it boils down to genetics but I also believe being born into the right environment or at least raised there can make a difference.

Even though I certainly don’t have a champion Aussie at home, I do have a guy with important qualities that I enjoy like paying attention, alertness, great temperament and the love of fun. I saw those same qualities exhibited in Bailey, Trig and Storm. Just gives me a little bit more to ponder in regards to the importance of what we bring to the table as humans and how we make the most out of what we have.

I wonder what Bill Gates or Steven Jobs are like when they are allowed to just run free at the sea shore. And how many people are out there with their same qualities but haven’t found their niche yet in which to express it?

Be willing to jump for the twirling Frisbee no matter how many twists it takes….

Take the Hamsa, “Hand of Fatima”, an amulet that defends a home against the evil eye. Several of our Israeli relatives have sent various versions of the Hamsa to us with a blessing for our home and, of course, they are so beautiful that I love hanging them up but I’ve often wondered that if you weren’t me or my husband, (which you wouldn’t be because I am me, he is he and you are you….) then I’m not quite sure how our home would look through your eyes to see Hamsas adorning at least one wall of each room, if not two or three. Still, it seems like you can never really have too many Hamsas because is there ever such a thing as receiving too many blessings or warding-off of the evil eye?

The hands must be doing something because we lived in our home for almost 15 years come this December, which is the longest I’ve ever lived in any place in my entire life. After a weekend of enjoying my side of the family, now we’ll be enjoying David’s side of the family for a few days before we all jump back into school and life. David and his brother already had a truly obscure Austin scenario while driving down Slaughter Lane they spied a huge fish, like the kind you would eat, laying on the side of the road. It seemed like it had been alive at one time (meaning it didn’t look fake or like someone’s abandoned art project). Now what, you begin asking yourself, could have possibly happened that caused this fish to be on the side of the road? My brother-in-law said, “oh you know, it’s from road rage, you know when people get road rage and they begin flinging fish at each other….”. I explained to them that it is for times like these that those handy cameras on the cell phones are truly meant to be used. To memorialize the impossible, digitally. Otherwise, it just becomes a really big fish story…a good one no doubt, but still a story….

It feels good to have family sound asleep in almost every room in our house tonight. Sometimes I really do feel like I could live in a commune quite well, as long as everyone picked up after themselves and, of course, as long as we could hang as many Hamsas as we desired.

May the force be with you…

Then after many years of deep belly button searching and spiritual exploration, I began to know more and more about myself. And what I began to know and, most of the time accept, was that in some groups I had a very, very different way of thinking and feeling about ideas, people, places and things. In looking back on my life, I can see that I’ve always been this way but I just hadn’t realized it. Maybe most of us are this way but often times we just don’t talk about it.

For me, I can see now that when I was in the process of coming around to what I believed and thought that because it was so different, I judged it that I must be wrong. I mean, if people who I respected in my life believed in ways of being that were so different from me, then I must not have a brain in my head. The problem must have been with me, right? Of course I see now that this was a pretty hard way to look at myself. Either- or, black or white, good or bad I could only see things in two ways. In some cases, there are only two ways to see something, I grant you that.

I feel grateful tonight because it feels like my family accepting my wish not to attend an event that they are all enjoying right now is a breakthrough for me and for them. It’s okay that they’ve gone on and that I’m sitting here back in my hotel room catching up on work and touching base with you guys. I enjoyed today very much hanging out with my brothers, etc. and I don’t feel like I have a big ole head of purple hair (not that there’s anything the matter with that if you do).

Acting as if we have a brain in our heads means investigating the meaning of truth for ourselves, accepting who we are and allowing others to be who they are so that maybe just maybe we can all learn how to get along with each other in our own special way.

One thing that I’m learning from this weekend already is that no matter what my opinions may be about “the” war or war in general, as my brother “Howdy” says, “it doesn’t matter what cause you pick to get behind to support the troops and their families (because there are many)….get behind something”. More to follow on this I’m sure as I wish that mankind could learn to get along with each other well enough that we didn’t have to blow each other up in various ways to prove who is the most right and/or to protect our freedoms.

It was interesting to hear my brother talking about the impetus of the Army guys to stay in the war and enlist for more tours was to help out their fellows and then to hear my Dad ask him to consider what special motivation had to come from pilots such as himself when they were flying alone into the war torn skies. What got them to get back into their planes and head up into the special hell that RF-4′s met. Makes me grateful to be too old to enlist and especially appreciate the comfort of my bed at night.

Meanwhile, on a completely different note I get to celebrate my nieces and nephews in all their differences and similarities. Whereas my brother’s kids have been home-schooled in a Christian environment, my brother-in-law’s kids attend public schools and are raised in a Jewish household. Still, all the same anxt that hits kids at various times in their growing years happens to all parties. It is interesting to see how each handles their particular situation.

Sometimes, I wish we could all live in a big family compound and share the wealth of experience, strength and hope that all have to contribute to the group but then again, it’s nice to have a quiet household now and again. I’m grateful for the life I have today and that because of the devotion, dedication and courageousness of some people I will never meet, I can feel confident in the privilege of having the freedom to possess different opinions.

Thank you to all the men and women who give of themselves so that others may enjoy the lives of their dreams.