What's in a name?

I was driving on a 2 lane road the other day when I got stuck behind one of these. Being as how I had to slow down 20 miles an hour, I thought it slightly ironic.

Cruising

Katie and I are going on another cruise in January. Even in the doldrums I've been in lately I still look forward to vacationing. I've been thinking about our cruise experiences in the past and thought I'd share a story with you. It's a story with a moral.

On the cruise line we've been on in the past, they have a set time for dinner. You are assigned a table which usually has 10 place settings. This means that you end up sitting with people you don't know. Because dinner can take well over an hour on a cruise, you're a little bit nervous about getting stuck with someone that you don't hit it off with. If you were to ask most males who their ideal table mates would be, you'd probably hear 'scantily clad large breasted women'.

So anyways, when we showed first to the table on the first night of our last cruise we waited anxiously to see who we might be subjected to sitting with. When a party of 4 came up to our table and started seated themselves I quickly realized that one man's heaven is another man's hell. Of the 4 people, there were 3 girls wearing low cut dresses. They all had huge boobs. It turns out the three were a mother and her two daughters. The gentleman was the father of the girls and husband of the mother (and by the way turned out to be a hell of a nice guy). The girls sat right next to me. I can count on one hand the times in my life I've been more uncomfortable. I've got my wife on my right side, 3 beautiful ladies falling out of their dresses on my left side and their father/husband across the table looking at me. I think I kept my eyes on the ceiling for an hour to avoid getting busted sneaking a quick peak at an illicit rack. When we met up with another couple in recovery the next day, I was grateful to switch tables to some people I felt more comfortable around. The moral of the story is: what's the point of all that eye candy if you can't even take advantage of it?

Telling on myself

So I've been struggling for the last couple of weeks. The color has gone out of the world for me. I find it hard to get excited about anything. Katie and I put an offer in on a house. That should be exciting for me, but I feel nonplussed about the whole deal. If we get it, okay. If we don't, okay.

When I was younger and still drinking and doing coke I felt terrific highs and catastrophic lows. Often in the same day. Right after I finally stopped doing all of that, the mood swings were tough to deal with without the aid of alcohol and drugs. I went on antidepressants for a few years to level out the swings and repair the damage that the years of drinking and smoking crack did to the dopamine centers in my brain. Of course I was drinking and using here and there while I was taking those antidepressants so they weren't as effective as they could have been. I eventually got off the meds and learned to deal with the ups and downs. And those ups and downs leveled off in time.

Lately, though, I feel as though I've flatlined. No ups, no downs. So the good news is that my mood has been stable. The bad news is that I'm sick of feeling this way. An alcoholic who wants to feel differently is in a dangerous spot. Because I know EXACTLY how to feel differently. Feeling differently isn't worth losing a marriage to me, though. And that's what would happen. So I'm telling on myself. My thinking is suspect the last couple of weeks. I've thought about drinking more than I have in the nearly 16 months of sobriety. I'm going to meetings and meeting with my sponsees. I'm talking to my sponsor, and all the while I'm thinking about drinking.

I understand that even thinking about drinking is a form of insanity. Why would someone who has been through what I have ever even consider drinking again? There are a lot of answers to that question. One is that I am nuts. I'm okay with being nuts. It doesn't bother me. The more practical answer is that I've got complacent. I've allowed myself to slip back into doing the things that keep me sober just so I can put a mental check next to my mental list. Meetings. Check. Talk to sponsor. Check. I have failed to enlarge my spiritual life as they say in the rooms. And I'm paying the price.

So what am I going to do about it? After talking to my sponsor about it, it's pretty clear what I have to do. Keep working on making my amends. Keep going to meetings. Don't panic and don't run. And remember that to a large extent my feelings are unimportant. You guys don't judge me by my thoughts or my feelings. You judge me by my actions. That last one is really tough sometimes because feelings and emotions can be really overwhelming at times. They always pass, though. Good or bad. And this too shall pass...

Update

I think my phone is an optimist. It doesn't have the words crap or bureaucracy in it's text dictionary. Of course it doesn't have Katie's name in it either, so maybe optimist isn't the right word. Romantic, perhaps.... Kidding, I'm only kidding...

Why do they call the people that prepare sushi for you 'sushi chefs' ? Don't chefs have to go to school and learn more than how to properly cook rice and tempura? When some wise ass calls himself a 'Doctor of Love' we all laugh, but we go along when someone calls himself a sushi chef? What gives? Do we feel we know more about what a real doctor does than a real chef to call out the love doctor but not the sushi chef? The Krebs cycle, well that's easy. Making a fine beef wellington, now THAT'S a mystery!

When I drove by my credit union on the way to work today I noticed it said it was 17 degrees outside. Not 5 days ago I was complaining that the air conditioning in my car didn't work well enough and now it's 17 degrees. Welcome to Utah...

So our band has a gig in December. We're playing my company's 'Year End Festival', which I believe is the PC version of the company Christmas party. There won't be too many people there, maybe 80 or 100. Still, I'm kind of nervous. These aren't random yahoos that I never see. These are yahoos I see every day. 2 other people that work here are in the band, so at least I will sink or swim with company. Stay tuned....