Made It
2006-12-27, 12:24 a.m.

Day 856 Made It

It�s been a while. Not for lack of interesting goings on, more a lack of quality private time. See, I usually type up these little missives in the privacy of my cubicle at work while I eat lunch. Makes for some very reflective lunches. Occasionally, that pesky work thing will interfere, and I�ll email a partial entry home and try to finish it there, but that is often less than successful.

Anyhow.

Another Christmas has come and gone. Things here were uneventful, peaceful, damn near enjoyable. A certain someone behaved in an entirely predictable way in the days leading up to Christmas, but being predictable makes it somewhat easier to prepare for. At least the day my brothers families came over for our holiday gift exchange, that certain someone was actually sober and reasonably well behaved. That would have been Saturday, the 23rd.

Sunday, not so good. It was unseasonably warm here, with temps up in the 40�s. Being of hardy northern stock, and certifiably loony, I talked the boys into heading out for a quick round of golf. Well, 45 and calm in the burbs translates to upper 30�s and breezy out on the golf course. But, working the certifiably loony part to it�s fullest extent, we persevered and managed to get in a legitimate 9 holes of golf on Christmas Eve, right here in beautiful upstate NY.

Unfortunately, our favorite alcohol rationing challenged individual, who encouraged us to soothe our golf jonesing, took full advantage of our absence and soothed her own cravings. Sadly, upon our return, the boys and I were reduced to taking bets on when she�d pass out. (We were ALL wrong by the way).

Went and picked up the Bob. He had gone down to his son�s for a few days prior to Christmas to spend time with the clan down there. The boys and I met my BIL near half way between our houses for the hostage exchange. (There is still a grave misunderstanding going on between Cindy and her brother. He considers her a persona non grata and will not speak word one with her, but he�ll shoot the breeze with me just like old times. If it weren�t for needing to keep lines of communication open with him so we can make decisions regarding Bob, I�d just as soon forget about him, but I have those commitments to Bob to consider . . .)

So. Christmas day. It�s great having older kids. Cindy & I were the first ones up, at the crack of 7:30. Got coffee going, stuffed stockings, read the paper, finally saw another face around 8pm. Bob had decided to join us for the coffee and paper morning ritual. Finally saw kids around 8:30.

Both boys made out pretty well. Cindy & I made out pretty well too and Bob finally has a CD player for all the CD�s he�s managed to hold onto. Only two things need to be returned/exchanged, which isn�t bad considering the amount of clothes that were involved.

I see Circe got her emergency shipment of chocolate/raspberry/oatmeal cookie bars thanks to a mail carrier that went the extra mile. Didn�t even send those till the morning of the 22nd and they made it there Christmas day. Pretty incredible.

Had an interesting non-event happen this evening. Boys pitched in and got me a gift card for Gander Mountain (hunting/fishing store). Got Cindy a gift card for Christopher Banks (women�s clothing, for the �perfessional� lady). That was over a week ago. Tonight, while making salad for dinner, I got to thinking about that gift card � since it had been resting on the counter right next to where I was slicing & dicing the salad veggies. Was just about to start julienning a carrot (match sticks, right? Got the toy for that.) when it REALLY started bugging me. Got it in my head to find that gift card. Asked Cindy if she had seen it. Checked hutch drawers, cabinet drawers, dresser drawers, waste paper baskets. Nothing. Cindy was certain she hadn�t tossed it. She asked me to check my wallet. I pooh-poohed that thought. Checked the kitchen trash. Nothing. Checked a small bag of mail that we�d sorted through & tossed. Nothing. In desperation, I started checking through the last couple of trash bags we�d taken out to the garage. Eric came out and suggested I check my wallet. Again, I maintained that I KNEW it wasn�t in there. So, after picking through the second bag of coffee grinds, old bananas, sopping wet junk mail and old cottage cheese containers, I checked my wallet. There in the center section, under my Supercuts discount card, right next to my Hollywood Video card, was the Gander Mountain card. Oops. I wanted SO BADLY for it to be in the trash so I could use that as an excuse to jump down Cindy�s throat � to launch into a diatribe shredding her to ribbons for drinking � for losing my card while she was drunk, or hungover, or being mad at me because I let her get drunk or what ever aand SHE LOST MY CARD.

I wanted so badly for that silly card to be in the trash, I missed the whole point. If it was in the trash, it was my fault. If the card was missing, it was my fault. My card, my responsibility. Not an excuse to belittle someone battling (or not) a disease.

So I apologized. Badly, but an apology just the same. Finished the salad, had dinner, then scampered off to this weeks Al Anon meeting. Didn�t mention I was going, exactly. Now there�s another apology owed. But, I really need to put on the big boy pants and own up to my last couple of mistakes. They weren�t big as far as mistakes go, but they were awful close together and neither was very respectful of Cindy. That means I owe her an honest, sincere apology for both of my boneheaded moves today. Maybe it�s the things like that that will finally convince her that this program stuff is working and might be a benefit to her. Might not happen tomorrow or next week, but if I can keep at it, maybe she�ll see that it�s benefiting at least one, if not both of us and get started on her own.

That book I ordered Eric for his trip to Ukraine? Made it on time. So did my Xmas present to me, �Meditation for Dummies�, complete with a demo CD of conducted meditations. Cool. Read a bit of it, but need more of that �quality private time� to make more headway.

Killer workout this morning. Started to stretch out my run times. Went 40 minutes today, at a slightly slower pace than the 30 minute runs. Felt kinda weird, watching the 30:00 come and go on the monitor, with me still plodding along. Was going to try for 45 minutes, but my legs were pretty well done in as it was. So of course, I headed over and got in a really nice weight session focusing on legs too. Tomorrow I might give the stationary bike a whirl, then go beat up my upper body on the weights again. Anything to burn up more calories.

Ended up winning my fantasy football league. I didn�t do too badly these last two weeks, scored fairly well, but my opponents ran into horrible luck and just never scored well at all. For what ever reason, their guys just didn�t score like they usually did and my guys scored really well. Now I can use these winnings to buy some new bowling shoes. The shoes I have now are 20+ years old and are showing every game.

Weatherman keeps promising snow, but so far? Nothing. Lovely green Christmas. Well, green, gray & mud. But no snow. Weird. We�re going to get our 100 inches all in January & February I bet. Better go change the oil in the snow blower while I�m not working this week, huh? May as well do the van & car too. Hmmm � could make a list of shit to get to this week. Repair chairs, change oil, read meditation book, compose sincere apologies . . . man � getting long!

Well, that�s it from the green state of NY. Hope everyone had a peaceful Christmas. Start working on this years resolution list, OK? Think I�ll review hw I did on last years list. Could be revealing.

Go run or something, would ya?

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