The eye wall
2004-09-23, 2:54 p.m.

Day 32 Calm after the storm (or are we just inside the eye wall?)

Well, that last one was a doozy, wasn't it? We've entered an undeclared truce it seems. So be it. This has been a repeating cycle. At least the whiskey supply hasn't been restored, yet. Today is payday, so we'll have to wait & see. Plus, there's only two partial bottles of wine left (left over from cooking actually), and only a few beers. One of them is a Natural Light from a 12 pack that my FIL bought over the summer. That is some nasty shit. We used two for stuffing chickens while we smoked them (I'll explain that one later), I had one while one of the chickens was smoking, the wiff has had 8, leaving that one lonely Nasty Light in the fridge. The wiff will drink it when she's desperate (like when the wine and Labatts are gone).

Still resisting any & all urges to smoke - and there have been a few more urges in the last couple of days. Sticking with what has worked all along - just get past this one. All urges will pass if you wait them out.

Don't know that I ever really detailed why now was (is) the time to quit. Of course my doctor & dentist have been advising me to quit forever. My kids have been pestering me since they were old enough to know smoking was bad (was it when they were 2 or 3? Wow.) The wiff had been bugging me to quit with her numerous times, although many times her desires to quit were alcohol fueled and short lived. In those attempts, I caved in after less than 2 days. That's when the wiff said "I could quit no problem, but your smoking is keeping me from doing it". Hah.

I mentioned before about the class my employer sponsored for smoking cessation. A homework exercise assigned to us after that first class was to keep a diary, tracking all cigarettes smoked between the first two classes. We were to track when, where, with whom, feelings at the time and crave level for that cigarette.

Well. Over the next 2 days, I probably smoked 30 - 40 cigarettes. Well over half of them I smoked alone. Maybe 25% of them were smoked at home, either out on the patio (evenings) or in the garage (mornings). A whole lot of them were smoked while I was driving, and quite a few were smoked while I was at home, having a cocktail, pretty much being bored (ie chatting with the wiff about the mundane details of her job). The urge to smoke in almost all cases was low - with the exception of those first couple of butts in the morning.

Re-reading and making sense of that diary was a real eye opener. It showed me I didn't have any real strong urges to smoke, I mostly did it out of boredom and habit (driving, drinking {but not at the same time, please}, waking up, etc) That's when I made up my mind to set my quit date to the Sunday before the 3rd class. Part of the class involved support phone calls. I figured with the classes and support calls, I had direct supervision for the first 5 days of quitting. It was sheer genius!! How could I fail? Well, so far it has worked out pretty darned good. Closing in on 32 complete days without a smoke (except for the occasional piece of meat or pepper).

Bowling tonight. I wonder what body part I can disable this time. Lets do an inventory of things hurt in the last two bowling sessions:

right wrist - back to normal.
Hips feel fine this week.
Back? - no problems there.
Legs - doing everything I ask them so far.

Problem with the back & legs were more a case of tiring them out. They hadn't had to work that intensely for that period of time in quite a while. I have no real clue what caused my hip problem last week. The wrist is more an overuse thing - especially what with the bowling grip and trying to get really far under the ball and all. (that has the potential to sound very bad, and not in a good way) Tonight's strategy: More actual muscle stretching (hello legs, hips & back), a little less throwing of the ball in warm ups. I gots to save what little juice I have for the real thing. Also - throw the ball slower. Much slower, much more consistently. Gotta make my nephew D proud. He's only 12 and he sees that I throw the ball too hard.

Wish me luck.

32 days down, one bowling strategy to test out.

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