Dispatch from the laundry room

Summer has been busy, finding me home with my three kids and trying to balance life while working nights in the ER. I've had this blog post bobbing around in my mind the last few weeks, like an iceberg gradually adding mass underneath the calm surface. And so today is the day I'm giving it life. Or trying to.

I remember waking up, not all that long ago, sitting on the side of my bed and wondering if I was actively dying.  Chest tight, hard to catch my breath, waves of nausea. Dry mouth and bloodshot eyes. My soul hurt. All I could think about was when it was going to be time to drink again. My future only went that far. It hurt too much to think farther than that and if I could just get that first sip, the rest would fade away. Or I hoped it would.

Now, I wake up and sit on the side of my bed in the early hours and take an inventory. Weird twinge in my back from sleeping like a rock for eight consecutive hours, slightly sore muscles from yesterday's run.  Notice my hungry belly; anticipate the first sip of dark, rich coffee. I think ahead to the next few weeks of being able to wake up lazy this way instead of to the clamoring alarm that shouts at me to get up and get going, move move move, in school-year mode.

With the end of summer looming, I have a million things I could be doing to be getting ready for back to school. Errands to run, projects around the house, weeds to pull.  Actual school supply shopping. New sneakers for feet that have undoubtedly grown but are still enjoying being barefoot and filthy. But I'm not doing any of those things.  Mostly, I'm just being a mom.  And doing a ton of laundry.

Which brings me to the haiku I composed last night at 1 am while folding another giant load as I stayed up ridiculously late watching the Olympics:

The pile grows higher
Forget, restart endlessly
Wash, fold forever.

I'm not sure if it is the fact that my kids spend a lot of time outdoors or if they are just extra grubby or can't eat a meal without half of it landing in their laps, but I have been doing a ton of laundry this summer.  And while I sit there watching it spinning in the last few minutes before I transfer it to the dryer, I appreciate the fact that I'm actually getting time to myself in the cool basement (with some kind of uncool wolf spiders but lets forget that for now) and I can take a moment to reflect on sobriety. Today marks 161 days of continuous non-drinking. Consecutive days where I have been retraining my brain to realize that just because an emotion surfaces, that's not a cue to drink.  I've done this thousands of times in the last five months.  And you know what? My slobbery brain is learning that an emotion is just that: not a ringing bell telling me to go pour a drink and numb out.  Honestly, when confronted with tough things lately, I actually think how to handle it, which is probably what people have been doing for thousands of years without having to blog about it but oh well, I'm a slow learner.  These days a drink is about 29th on my list of things that will "fix" or get me through the next few minutes, hours, days... And that is the miracle of sobriety in a nutshell. I couldn't have imagined even five seconds at the beginning where I wasn't constantly thinking about drinking.  And now some whole entire days pass where I haven't thought once about drinking. I'm busy living. And folding laundry.

But, all this laundry has me thinking about how early sobriety is a lot like a heavy duty wash cycle. You dive in, not knowing what to expect, and the water starts rising and you think "ok. I can do this. I'm a little damp but I'm floating." Then the agitating part starts; you spin and churn and can't tell what side is up and start getting water up your nose and you are being blinded by soapsuds that sting and burn and it just all feels like too much and all you can think about is just climbing the hell out of the washer and getting back to your regular dirty, smelly and worn state. It doesn't seem worth it when you keep spinning and getting pushed down over and over and you aren't sure when it will end.

Well, I can tell you that eventually it stops. The spinning dies down, the motor cools and you are lying there, wet and wrung out... but clean.  It's quiet. You made it. For me that phase was right at about 80 days without alcohol.  At that point, I thought, hmm... maybe I'm ready to try the dryer now,  (the real work of sobriety) and you begin to feel warm on the inside. You start glowing literally and metaphorically.  Your healing brain starts to smooth out the rumpled and wrinkly parts. And then, almost without realizing it, you start thinking about what it might be like to really go the distance and withstand the heat of the iron and get your soul and body in tip top shape.  And some days this seems like a lot of work and other days it comes easily. Depends on the day.

Still with me on this metaphor? Well, if you drink during the early period where you are sloshing around... It's like you open the lid on the washer mid-cycle and dump a gallon of mud in.  Add a few greasy wrenches, some musty sneakers and a bag of rocks and then close the lid and let the cycle finish.  Not only are you not clean at the end, but you are beat up and filthy and think you never want to go through that again because you feel worse than when you started. There is nothing appealing about even thinking about climbing back in for a do-over.  That was me for years.

Consecutive days.  That's the key to allowing your brain time to reset and heal.  Not three days here, eleven days there, drink and then start over.  That's just some kind of awful torture where you leave your brain more confused than when it started.  It takes full commitment to putting as much distance between the drinking and the new you. And that can be done even when you have kids climbing all over you, a job, a nutty husband and a busy life. It just means taking each decision as it comes. Being all in. Declaring deep down with complete conviction that booze just isn't an option anymore. Eventually your brain gets the message. And when it does, it's pretty great.

I had a moment at work the other week when a patient came in with a dislocated jaw.  We were kind enough to put it back and I was giving her discharge instructions and noticing how uncomfortable she was and she sadly told me she was disappointed because the next day was her birthday.  And I said "well, looks like a smoothie with a candle in it for you."  And she snorted and said through her giant ice pack: " More like a bucket of margaritas with a straw."  And BLAM. That was it, the moment I realized that I would have said the same thing five months ago and it hadn't even crossed my mind that drinking was an option in that scenario.  And I got kind of ridiculously giddy and had to share it with some sober friends.  Perhaps that's how normies feel. I will never know because I'm not one. But still, it goes to show that the brain CAN be re-wired. We can move from our obsession with booze to being at peace. And that was something I could not have even imagined when I first quit.

My early attempts at re-training my brain made me feel about as competent as the Filipino Olympic diving team.  (If you are early to sobriety and suffering from insomnia like I did, I highly recommend you google this. Just because. You're welcome)  The beginning days of sobriety where you are being forced to feel your actual feelings, sit with your unfiltered, raw thoughts is excruciating.  It's like being stuck in permanent fight or flight, jangly nerves and overload when you are forced to plug in for the first time, possibly ever.  I read a research study where subjects chose to be subjected to ten minutes of electric shocks rather than sit alone with their thoughts for ten minutes.  That's our numb-out, tune-out, check out world for you.  And for alcoholics, it's probably worse since we were the masters at not feeling anything.  But adding day after day, moment after moment, where drinking isn't an option, my synapses are stretching and re-wiring. I can sit in a feeling and then it passes.  I can examine an unpleasant memory and not fall to pieces.  And that is so encouraging.  I am finally becoming one of those people I used to look up to... the ones further up the mountains who kept shouting down through the clouds: "It gets better! Keep going! The view up here is incredible." Because it really is.

So, we have two weeks left before my minions return to school.  Everywhere I go, I get "the look" (which is half bemusement and half relief it's not them) as people survey my three spirited kids and say "I bet you are really ready for them to go back."  And I kind of smile wistfully and say "not really."  Because part of me is.  It's been a long summer of sobriety and motherhood.  Ups and downs and false starts.  But I've also been fully engaged for the first time in years and so I'm not quite ready to let go of them, and go back to only seeing them in the afternoons when they've given their best to their teacher and friends and have only dregs of crankiness and homework resistance left for me. Which is ok. I am working to accept that I wasted so many years either giving them my dregs, or wildly overcompensating.  I still have a lot of guilt about that. But, I want to squeeze out every last ounce of summer time we have... Which doesn't mean that they don't drive me absolutely nuts some days with the squabbling and messes and filthy sneakers and tween drama and ludicrous battles over Minecraft and groans of "I'm borrred."  I have had plenty of moments where all the noise is just overwhelming and I want to yell " Stop being ungrateful little jerks, I'm trying to cherish you for crying out loud!!"

Last week we got a tough diagnosis for my five year old daughter.  Life as we know it is probably going to change in ways we can't even imagine.  And it's scary and unknown and I kiss my daughter's head and thank God that I'm sober and can be there for her as we navigate this new world of tests and needles and procedures. My first thought when we got the call wasn't that I needed a drink. I cried and felt honest, real sadness. Which I let flow over me, and then I got on with formulating a plan for how we would support and hold her up and walk into this new chapter.  This would have been impossible five months ago.


So, for you newbies who are in the first days of trying sobriety on for size.  You know your time drinking needs to be done. And maybe you are having some false starts. I think we all did. But  let me be yet another voice in the invisible army that is doing this with you: Be encouraged. It does in fact get better.  So much better that I won't even spoil it for you.  Because you will get to that place and you will notice one day that your heart isn't in a crumpled ball of pain, your breath comes easy, you actually feel GOOD.  And quite possibly, nothing "tangible" will have changed.  You will still have an asshole boss, money troubles, a painful marriage, maybe health problems or a lack of support.  But everything will feel different. Because you will be different.

And so, that's all for now. I'm going to keep on plugging.

Yours with love, signing out from the top of Mount Laundry.

Ugly-Beautiful

I read a post the other day about "sobriety bloggers" and how a lot of them seem to run out of gas at the 3-4 month mark, and try to return to the nightmare of moderating or just disappear altogether from the blogosphere because they have fallen back into active drinking.

Well, I haven't done any of those things. Yesterday was four months sober.  But as I suspected it would with all of my kids being home for summer, it's been rough trying to continue my laser-like focus on sobriety. Navel gazing and quiet contemplation of my co-dependent ways have taken a back seat to the urgent needs of three small children. Which is understandable. After our vacation, my two oldest kids plunged right into a week of day camps and I spent the week driving to and from opposite sides of the county and hanging out with my five year old in between picking up and dropping off the other two and dodging severe thunderstorms. I didn't realize how much energy my first sober vacation had taken from me. Or how dependent I had become on the hour or two of quiet when they were all in school when I could write or read or go for a run.  Most nights have found me running after nine pm, when it's just me and the fireflies glinting in the trees, punctuated by me suddenly flailing to wipe a spider web from my face and praying that the spider isn't crawling somewhere on me.  The other night I almost hit a deer. I came around the corner and there he was, standing gazing at the pond. I freaked him out and he ran away, with me envious of his wild speed as I continued to trudge under moonlight. I guess I'm burning off the crazy. I'm not sure it's working. I read my support group emails in the wee hours and use my smart phone as a light to read books about recovery while my husband snores and my kids have gone to bed and I steal time from sleep to do the work. It's not ideal but it's something.

Two weekends ago was our big neighborhood party that in years past has always marked the beginning of summer. Slip and slide and pool for the kids and volleyball and yard games for the adults and booze everywhere.  I woke up the day of the party feeling low energy, and having zero desire to be around a lot of people.  I expressed this to my husband and I told him that I was going to go but that I might need to leave early.  I got the kids dressed, sunblocked and pool ready and then decided to take my time getting showered and dressed and walk to the party, which is about a mile away on roads within our neighborhood. I thought having time to think and unwind might put me in a better frame of mind.  I got there and everyone was drinking. No one was really watching the kids in the pool so my paranoid ER nurse self plunked down with my bottled water and watched about 20 kids as they were swimming. It was blazingly hot, and try as might, I just didn't want to be there. My son hit his head on the slip and slide and needed to lie quietly with his head on my lap in a shady spot with some ice and recover his dignity. He finally rallied and when we rejoined the party, all the other moms were doing shots and drinking margaritas while floating in the pool in their bikinis and I just felt like the sweaty, grumpy odd girl out.  Reaching into the cooler for water and brushing past glowing ice-cold wine bottles every time just got to be tortuous. I ended up leaving early and came home and immediately started thinking that I need to just re-vamp my entire social circle or it's going to be a lifetime of miserable parties where I feel like an awkward stick in the mud who ends up watching everyone's kids. Not helpfully, my husband who had been drinking and playing volleyball and oblivious to the fact that we had three kids at the party had the balls to tell me that I am miserable now I'm sober. Gee, thanks. Because going someplace I felt uncomfortable going in the first place and trying to have a good attitude and be in the moment as much as possible wasn't hard at all.

I sat on my bed and stared at the wall for a while and had my first fleeting thought along the lines of  "might as well drink if everyone thinks I'm boring and miserable now."  And I had an actual, physical response to that thought where I felt nauseous and said out loud. "oh, there you are, just waiting for your way back in, huh?"  And there it was, the moment when SH#T JUST GOT REAL.  The first few months were all about not drinking and triumphs like I was at the high jump and they kept raising the bar and I kept surprising myself when soaring over what seemed like impossible heights.  And then I jumped and smacked right into the bar, landing on my back and knocking the wind out of myself.  Because not drinking is just the start of it. 

I know I'm not the only alcoholic in the world who struggles with excess, boundaries, extremes, always pushing, pushing, pushing.  So it's really not a surprise that I overdid it in taking on boozy scenarios in early sobriety. Like a test. Like I could breezily say "oh, it doesn't bother me if you drink. I'm fine." Except I'm not. I hate that everyone is drinking.  I hate that there was a pool full of kids with no supervision. I hate that I was left out because I wasn't doing poolside shots. I hate that I have not one single sober friend in real life. I hate that all of my good intentions and hard work are boiled down to me just being no fun and miserable now.  I hate that my disease takes all of these feelings and tries to convince me that I should just start drinking again.


Two days after the party, my parents arrived for a week-long visit.  Because they only see us once or twice a year, there is usually immense pressure to be the perfect hostess, make lasting grandparent memories, go fun places, etc.  This year, I cleaned up within reason, planned very simple non-gourmet meals and didn't go overboard and neurotic in trying to appear perfect.  Which is a huge (HUGE) step for me.  My parents have always had standards that I could never meet and in somehow not trying to meet them, and in just being myself it ended up being a relaxed, natural and meaningful visit.  The kids enjoyed just playing games and doing puzzles and swimming in the pool and going for walks.  We didn't do any giant day trips. We ate crabs on the deck. I ended up having an opportunity to tell them that I'm an alcoholic and was met with understanding and compassion. And pride.  Which shocked me.  But if we had done our normal overscheduled, cram as many happy memories into five days routine, there wouldn't have been the quiet moment when my dad asked me "are you training to be on American Ninja or something? You look great and something has changed" which segued into a long talk about the last few years and sobriety and what I'm learning.  My parents both shared times of deep loss and depression and teared up as I told them how low I had gotten. They hugged me and told me they were proud.

So, in choosing different things, in learning to go with my gut instincts, I am navigating the real hard parts of this journey.  Because it really is no joke. The pink cloud has blown away and the voice is like a jackhammer in the background of my thoughts.  For a while it was quiet. It was peaceful. And now I am heading steeply uphill with no idea what lies at the top. But I know deep down that it's still better than the nightmare that drinking had become.  I told a friend it's like the first 100 days or so it was like being at basecamp on Everest.  I'm acclimating to low oxygen, getting my body used to a new reality which in this case isn't altitude but being alcohol free.  But now I've left the safe place behind and I'm climbing uphill, uphill, uphill and my lungs are burning and my muscles are protesting and every step I hear a voice just saying "give up.  This isn't worth it. Even your kids say you aren't fun now. You don't need to go so deep into this. You can drink again now that you know why you did. You can just change those things and manage your stress better."  And with the next trudging step forward  I say "No. I want this. I'm not going back."

Step. "Just quit". Step. "No."

So that's where I am right now. I am trying to make huge changes. In the midst of the demands of motherhood and life and having all my kids home and feeling like I'm on permanent overload. My ADHD has my brain feeling like a Labrador and someone just threw two thousand tennis balls.

But I know what I want.  I want the vista at the top of this mountain. And I'm not stopping until I get there.

What is making this possible is the new friends that I've found in this journey.  They may live hundreds of miles away, but they are in pocket, just an email or a text away.  They get it.  We can talk about all the FEEELINGS. And how we struggle with how to handle the feelings that are hard to face. The anger, the pissiness, the lack of "me" time as a mom of small kids, the straight up blah parts of this.  Giving ourselves permission to not just be shiny happy sober people all the time.  Some days totally suck.  We see things in ourselves and our children and our partners that we feel responsible for. Things we want to run from. Unweaving all of this is exhausting.  And some days we are just mad and it's not pretty and we have to reach out or drown.  But while I float up to my eyeballs in sadness and regret some days, I have other voices that are louder than the one in the background.  They tell me it's ok.  It's ok not to love every part of this.  It's ok to be mad, disappointed, petty, selfish, overwhelmed.  And it's ok to be stupidly happy over a sunset or something cute that my kids did. It's ok to be annoyed when my kids steal my La Croix water and then leave it sitting around unfinished. It's ok in that moment to be a little like Gollum hissing "my pressshusss." 

So many of us are black and white thinkers. Things are either good or bad. Sober life; life unbuffered by the numbing effects of alcohol feels wrong at first.  The rawness of opposing emotions can be overwhelming when we have spent our whole lives labeling them as "acceptable" or "not acceptable". We spend so much time trying to wrap it up in perfection that we miss the beauty in the ugliness. In not running from the ugly parts of ourselves, in just acknowledging them as just a part and not the whole, those things lose power. Yes, I have moments where I am not patient, I am monstrously selfish, I am hot-tempered and short-sighted.  But I also have moments where I am wise, loving, self-sacrificing, long-viewed.  The trick is to stop running from the moments when I'm the former.  Just allow myself to be angry or whatever.

So, that's where I am. My house is a mess. My kids are either adorable or squabbling. I run every night in the company of bats.  My marriage is still teetering on the edge of something.  My 11 year old was invited to a sleepover by her 5 year old sister with all of their American Girl dolls and I have no idea how many more years are left of that sweet connection. My son has made his first real friend and he's seven. I'm terrified that he's going to get crushed or his quirkiness will be too much.  I have a snake living in my garden that I've named Winifred.  My minivan needs new brakes and I think I need a new job. My coffee intake has risen to an alarming level.

There are seismic shifts going on under my surface that no one can see. 

And in all of it, I'm trying to embrace the German idea of " hasslich schon". Ugly beautiful.  Because that sums up life perfectly right now.

Snake oil and hardboiled dreams

We are limping down the homestretch.

There are exactly four and a half days of school before we officially enter what I like to call the Season of Yes.

Yes, you can swim in the pool until the last bit of pink sunset fades and we have bats swooping over head and we can only see our way back to the house by firefly-light. 

Yes, you can climb out of the pool, and sit on the deck wrapped in a towel and eat your dinner straight off the grill and yes we will eat corn on the cob with gobs of butter that drips down our chins and eschew napkins and rinse everyone off in the hose afterward.

Yes, you can stay up late and watch old movies with me.

Yes, we can go for a long walk to the river because we have nowhere to be and search for the elusive blue beach glass that we have somehow decided brings good luck to the finder.

And for all of those reasons, I am counting down the hours until I can be summer Mom again. 

Because I have been out of energy and "done" since the last round of viral illness went through the house like wildfire and that was in early April. I have been sober for almost three months now and the energy that is involved in getting up every day, not drinking all day, doing the work, naval gazing, deep breathing, prayers, journaling, running, fighting cravings, going for another run, checking in with my amazing support group...  all of that LIFE stuff plus my sobriety stuff means we have missed parties because the beautiful photo card invitation with an adorably toothless child grinning at us has been buried under the mounting pile of bills and end of school year announcements about class parties and Field Days/ice cream/movie days and the avalanche of year end events and Oh crap there's another awards ceremony this morning and just wear your pinchy sneakers another day because you are going to be barefoot in a few days anyways and when is it going to EEEENNNDDD-ness.

I am not sitting easy in new sobriety.  It has awakened major perfectionist tendencies in me. I lie awake, thinking of all the ways I can overcompensate for my screw ups this past year, or really, the last two years when my drinking really got to a toxic place. The insomnia, the scratchy burning eyes and the seemingly endless nights where I toss and turn and flip to the cool side of the pillow over and over, all while wishing for a big "OFF" switch for my brain.. I feel pressure to get myself together for summer so we can actually enjoy ourselves . Which is how I sort of stumbled across the lure of Pinterest. (I am not naturally one of those impossibly crafty, super Mom types that I call Pinterest Barbies... who are always posting incredible, inspiring things they have made out of raffia and popscicle sticks or whatever.. That I am even attempting to absorb organization by osmosis shows how dire it really has become).

I created an account and "pinned" some ideas, challenging (kidding) myself to actually try out some sort of enriching craft/ super healthy popsicles and the like this summer. Pins with perky titles like "40 Summer Bucket list activities."  Nowhere do I see pins about plopping your kids down in front of a half hour of Princess Sofia so you can go cry in the bathroom because you are totally overwhelmed and not sure how you are going to make it through another 9 hours of this "use your words, stop yelling, what is this sticky mess, stop climbing the bookcase, did the cat fall in the fishtank again, say sorry, why do we work so hard and there is never any money and what if I'm just hopelessly screwing these kids up" type day while stone cold sober.

So, yesterday.  Due to distraction/nervous breakdown in progress/exhaustion or whatever, I forgot that when I signed the kids up for a week of summer camp, way back in January when I was still drinking,  I had "conveniently" checked the little magic box that said "Please withdraw the balance due automatically from my account on June 1st" because "Yay, I don't have to remember to go online and pay it. How wonderfully convenient! Hooray me, for signing the kids up early, lets have a glass or wine to celebrate"

Except you have to remember to actually transfer money into the account before June 1st.

So yesterday our entire checking account was wiped out in one fell swoop and I'm sure the fall out will be fun the next week or so until we get paid again.  

Honestly, signing up for a "high interest savings account" where you can transfer funds by electronic transfer and have money available for withdrawal in 4-5 business days SOUNDS like a good idea when you set it up. But not when you have $1.12 in your checking account and you will be bouncing literally every "automatic bill pay for dummies" transaction like some kind of hyper kangaroo and you get hit with 30 dollar non-sufficient funds fees every time (Gee thanks, bank people, for flogging me for not only being totally forgetful but also poor, that'll show me) and your cupboards are empty and 4-5 business days is a wicked long time, let me tell you.  And I'll be that weird lady with the giant jar of spare change at the coinstar making a ridiculous amount of noise with my three kids all clamoring for a turn over the clanking noise of coins....

All of which to say is that in my utterly overwhelmed, unhinged state, I decided that yesterday was the day that I was going to make an effort to feed my kids something other than string cheese, fruit, crackers and yogurt which is what they had in their lunches for about the last, oh.... too many days. I was going to do something Fabulous! 

Peering into the empty fridge, I found five eggs.  Enter that thing I pinned about "You too can make perfect hard boiled eggs in your oven.. imagine the ease, the no mess, the PERFECTION... the beautiful, delicious egg salad sandwiches soon to be yours."

And that is why Pinterest is exactly like a modern day snake oil salesman.  It promises a short cut, an easy out.

And in my desperate, foolish and sleep deprived state, I went right along for the ride..

The result:

I don't know about you, but hard boiled eggs that resemble yellowed BPA-laden circa 1978 Tupperware just aren't real high on the list of Appealing Things to Eat. And the smell?

The smell is like Satan's own Sulfurous Potpourri wafting directly from the depths of hell.

The glaring lesson to be learned is the same one we have been learning since pre-school.

Be yourself. And most things that are worth doing take time. Shortcuts and "magic fixes" rarely are either short or magical...

In all of the whirlwind and pink cloud days of being sober, I imagine that I have to change everything that I am, or make up for the things I lack or which I overlooked.  I have forgotten that though I am going through a big change, and putting things back together,  I can still enjoy being what I am. Or if not enjoy, at least accept.

I am a disorganized Mom who has a daughter who might have mulch in her hair more often than not from some daring swing set trick, but who also has the best heart, practices compassion as effortlessly as most people breathe.  She draws pictures that make me smile no matter how bad the day. She makes up crazy songs and gets busted reading books late into the night because her mind is voracious. She's a dancer with the energy level of a humming bird on crack. She is all wild hair and skinny arms and her will is as strong as mine which is a little scary.

I have a son who may wear head to toe mismatched camo outfits ALL THE TIME... but has an incredibly rich imagination, the best giggle, boundless enthusiasm for engineering, minecraft and monster fish. He practices scooter tricks and tells the best knock knock jokes. He has a tender heart and sensitive soul that is sometimes hard to see under all the quirks. He's the kid who really thinks about the underlying messages in Marvel movies and who discusses them with real sincerity and insight while I'm tucking him into bed with his beloved stuffed animals. He always needs one more hug. 

I have a frequently naked, ornery, adorable preschool girl who explores the world fearlessly and is scary-smart/ beautiful.  She can color a picture for an hour, hold her own at the skate park with teenage boys zooming past while she wears her Captain America helmet and rides her pink scooter. She is obsessed with owls and will spend hours curled up next to me reading a book or just because she is still my little one. She is my garden helper, and actually works hard helping pull weeds and has always sung to the plants to help them grow.  This year she been serenading the broccoli every day.

I need to just accept that God is using me; the hot mess, the hopelessly non-crafty, flawed, recovering, distracted but well-intentioned Mom to grow these little ones into joyful, incredible people. And that's a role that I can handle.  Because they are amazing.  Maddening and amazing. And I can do it without gallons of wine.  I can do it better without gallons of wine.

And it's best to just do it in my own imperfect way. If I'm learning anything in sobriety, it's that nothing can happen overnight. I have to take it easy, not rush ahead or be extreme.  That goes against my natural temperament.  My brain has identified the problem so it wants to fix every broken thing, right every wrong, eradicate every problem RIGHT NOW. But that's not how this all works.  I have to take my time. There aren't any short cuts or quick fixes.

So, I'm going to chalk those eggs up to folly.

I will gracefully keep busting out those cheese sticks and keep reminding myself that if I keep getting up every day and doing the right thing, and then the right thing after that, then ultimately...

Every little thing gonna be alright.