Money Get Back

What helps to keep me from not smoking is pondering all the positive aspects of life without cigarettes. I smell better, for one, both as far as my own body aroma and my ability to detect other fragrances is concerned. Food has more taste and I find that I get by with far less Tabasco sauce. I don't wake up in the morning hacking and coughing. I don't get one side of my face wet and cold when I drive in bad weather because there is no need to roll down a window for smoke to escape. I don't have to stand out in the rain at work sucking on a cig. I generally feel better with fewer headaches, sore throats, stuffed sinuses, etc, etc, etc.

I also don't have to spend money on cigarettes...and it's adding up....big time.

This habit cost me around $10 a day. I guess that's not much as far as addictions go. I know crack addicts that go through hundreds every day. Still, ten bucks is ten bucks.

$70 a week - that's a night out at a decent restaurant and a tank of gas. $280 a month - that's a car payment or the utility bills. $3360 a year - a pretty nice vacation. Over the years I've pissed away a great deal of money for cigarettes. It's time I stopped giving my hard earned cash to the tobacco industry.

Keep your hands off my stack, R.J. Reynolds.

On a Roll

I'm on my tenth day of not smoking. That's pretty good for me because the last several attempts at quitting, all I was able to manage was a couple of days...maybe three.

Do I think about smoking?

Hell yeah.

But I'm able to choose not to smoke and feel all right about it. It's been a very long time since I have been able to do that.

Monday Cat Blogging

One Week!

Seven days. No cigarettes. Not one. Not even a puff.

That may seem like no big deal to a lot of people and I know that I've pretty much devoted the whole week to yammering about not smoking...but this is a huge thing for me. I've been trying to quit for years. Usually I could do it for about 3 days before relapsing, with all the resulting frustration and guilt along with the bonus of an increase in the amount I smoked. It was a vicious cycle that I could not figure a way out of, and it was killing me.

Something clicked this time. I don't know what or how, but something is different about this attempt. Oh...there are still the urges, the temptations, the self-rationalizations; but it doesn't seem to have any power over me any more. At long last, I feel like I have control.

And....if I can control this....I can control other things about my body as well.

Adding Up

I really like the quitmeter thingie that is on the top of my blog here. I've always believed that if you don't have some way of tracking a goal, you may as well call it wishful thinking. The meter is an ongoing reminder of progress...real progress...especially for those times when it doesn't seem that I'm making any difference at all.

I look up at that quitmeter this morning, my sixth since my latest attempt to quit smoking. I'm facing the trial of going through the weekend. I'm facing increasingly intrusive thoughts of rationalizing smoking again. I get worried. Then I study on the meter. Nearly $50 saved. Well, that's good, but it's not like I'm impoverished and those nicotine patches and cinnamon toothpicks cost money too.

200 plus cigarettes not smoked.

Whoa. That's a carton. I went through a carton in five days? Two hundred cigarettes. Two hundred butts. Somewhere around a thousand times I inhaled smoke into my lungs. When did I become such a heavy smoker? Why did I let it go on for so long?

Here Come De Judge

I finally get a chance to use my abilities, expertise, and talent to the fullest at my job today. There is to be a chili cook-off in my department and I'm to be one of the judges. This might be a good thing because I love chili. It also might be a bad thing because I love chili....and my standards are pretty high. Kansans seem to have an aversion to spicy foods. For instance; what they call flaming hot salsa here in Kansas, they use in Texas to rub on a baby's gums to soothe them when they are teething.

I've also noticed that the chili in this neck of the woods seems to be very heavy on beans and light on the beef. That's not necessarily bad. I actually prefer my chili con frijoles. I'm not smoking today, so my senses will be sharper than usual and there won't be any unfortunate lighter accidents as I perform my judiciary duties.

Tell Me Lies.... Tell Me Sweet Little Lies

Okay. I've completed three days without smoking. I've saved around $30 that I would have normally spent on cigarettes, which about covers the cost of nicotine patches for a week. My teeth are clean and my breath is nicely scented thanks to all the cinnamon toothpicks I've been chomping on. I can actually smell things again and can take a deep breath without feeling like my lungs are going to seize up on me. My smoker's cough is fading. I have more O2 in my blood and have a bit more energy during the day.

This is a dangerous time for me.

It's dangerous because all the immediate ill effects of smoking are fading and I only have memories of what I liked about smoking. This is the point when I start talking to myself and...when the addict voice talks...it lies.

and oh the lies I can lie to myself

"Go ahead and have one. You don't have to completely stop. If you just have one or two cigarettes a day, that will make it easier to quit. Well, (insert name of friend) smokes and they are perfectly healthy. You can smoke tomorrow because it will be a stressful day. Smoking keeps you from overeating."

and on, and on, and on.....with the always lurking whisper from that addict voice inside of me; "no one will ever know"

I've discovered that in this stage of the quitting process, I can find a lot of excuses to relapse. Everything from being stressed to being bored, they all sound good. The only way I've figured how to fight against those sweet little lies is to mentally shout "YOU LIE!" every time they pop up in my brain's self dialogue.

It's working for me so far.

I may start having to yell it out loud if my inner liar gets more persistent. That should make for interesting times at work.

Substitutes

This is what I put in my mouth three or four dozen times a day rather than a lit cigarette. It actually works pretty well for those especially tough times; like driving, talking to people who are smoking or smell like smoke, after a meal, watching TV, being on the computer, reading, sitting, standing,....come to think of it...just being awake. Hot little cinnamon toothpicks seem to do the trick and allows me to get past that momentary urge to light up a cig; and, really, the urge only lasts for a second or two.

I have a two tube a day habit now.

Counting Flowers on the Wall

The hard part, the really hard part about giving up cigarettes, is not so much giving up the cigarettes as giving up everything you've always done with cigarettes....or at least getting use to doing them without smoking.

Take mornings for instance. I'd always start my morning off with coffee and a few smokes. Now, I just have my coffee and stare dumbly into space while my right hand makes automatic movements to grab a non-existent pack and lighter. I drink coffee, I want a cigarette. I don't drink coffee, I want a cigarette even more. I want one if I check my email. I want one when I write on my blog. I want one if I read the paper. I want one when I turn on the TV. Thank goodness Captain Kangaroo is no longer on the air in the morning.

This is what makes giving up this particular addiction so difficult. If you've smoked for years, cigarettes become entrenched in virtually every aspect of your life. Take the cigarettes away and you're left with a lot of holes in your day and each and every one of them is a pit to fall back into relapsing. The real work in recovery is filling those holes...quickly. Leave them there for long and they will refill themselves with what use to be there. That is a fact that I've learned from the experience of several prior attempts.

Now, don't tell my I've nothing to do.

Monday Cat Blogging

 

I Have Way Too Much Free Time

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Boss Day

Okay...so I know that I often complain about my workload and the supervisor that gives it to me but, in actuality, I'm quite fond of both my job and my boss. My boss is pretty demanding. She expects a very high level of performance and, though it irritates me at times, it has made me excel in my profession. She also is probably one of the hardest working individuals in the agency where I am employed. My little domain of responsibility is puny compared to what she has to keep track of. I try to keep that in mind when I feel overwhelmed with my job. My boss has never demanded that others work harder than herself.

So happy boss day, Lisa. You don't even know about this blog so you'll never know that a primary reason I stay in your department is because I believe it's the best in the agency... and that's largely due to you.

Monday Cat Blogging

A Parable

I was with my wife this morning doing a bit of shopping at the local Walmart. I know, Wally World is not the socially/politically correct place to go; but I'm a working stiff who can't afford Whole Food Nation or the Gap. So, if you think I'm a bad liberal for shopping there, bite me.

Anyway...whilst I was wheeling out my cart of stuff to the parking lot and grumbling why coffee was over eight freaking bucks a can, I noticed a couple of young girls fighting over a balloon. Their mother was stashing bags of groceries in her car and the girls were really starting to go at each other.

"Lemme hold it!"

"No! It's mine!"

"But I wanna hold it too!"

"Mom!"

Mom turned to the girls with that look of soul shriveling fury that only a mother who has reached her limits can generate. Without saying a word, she reached over, grabbed the balloon, and let it go. The girls just stood there with their mouths open watching it drift away as the mom ordered both of them into the car.

There's a moral there, but I'll let you figure it out yourself.

It's What I Do

I have a lot of people ask me what I do for a living. It's really hard to talk much about my job, mainly because there is a lot of confidentiality involved. No...I'm not a secret agent or brothel madam; I just deal with people and the things I deal with are rather personal. What I can say is that I try and help others. The video below is probably the best way I can describe a typical work day without giving any details of what I do during the day. I go from place to place and attempt to keep bad things from happening to complete strangers. Most of the time, like the guy in the video, I'm perceived as something of an asshole by those who don't understand what I'm doing and why and that I probably saved them from disaster.

It's what I do.

...and I wouldn't do anything else

I Love Coffee

I really do. I've been drinking coffee for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, I'd mix it up with creamer and sugar and always thought it was a great treat. Now...before you go off on my parents for letting me do this, keep in mind that it's probably a much better option than soda pop. Plus the caffeine most likely tamed my ADD tendencies without the need for the amphetamine pills they throw at every kid these days who show the slightest hint of being energetic.

Later on, I rejected the cream and sugar to take my coffee straight up black. I loved the flavor. I loved the smell. Even in the Navy, where the coffee was usually strong enough to take the paint off a bulkhead, I drank it by the gallon. Wherever I have lived, the one appliance that I considered a necessity of life was a coffee pot. If I was broke, I bought coffee over food....in fact...there were times I used coffee to kill hunger because I didn't have any food.

I love coffee. I've tried to limit my consumption by drinking tea once in awhile. I like tea, but it just doesn't do quite what I need. I've tried de-caff but it tastes terrible and my brain isn't fooled one little bit, usually giving me a grand headache until I deliver the real stuff.

Coffee rules my day.

Monday Cat Blogging

Just What is it that I Really Want?

From the time we are born, we all want things. At first, it's pretty simple. You want to be warm. You want to be fed. You want to be dry. Not much but I think it's the start of a life-long path of confusing what we want most with what we want at the moment. In the beginning, it's all the same. Later on in life....it gets complicated.

Try an experiment sometime. Ask a kid what they want to be when he or she grows up. You'll hear some lofty goals and enthusiastic passion that you won't find in many adults. Now, take that same kid to a candy store and ask what they want.

Different answer.

Instant gratification. It's not necessarily a bad thing. Biologically, it's a good survival instinct. Those that take advantage of opportunities when they come across them tend to have a better chance at surviving. Not so great a thing when what you want at the moment interferes with what you want the most. Eating lots of food when it might be a long time before the next meal..good. Eating lots of food because there is lots of food...not good.

This is a problem that I deal with almost every day. The decision as to whether I want something now or maintain what I want the most; which may take a very long time to obtain, if ever. Success is the continuation toward a goal with the knowledge of what must be traded in day to day desire. Do I want a piece of pie or do I want to have a flat belly? Do I want to watch my favorite television show or do I want to be physically fit? Do I want a cigarette or do I want to have a healthy life?

What do I want the most?

Who Needs a Life?

I am beginning to think that the primary duty of a supervisor is to delegate their work load to others. At least it seems that way to me. When my team is down several members, our supervisors leap into action and assign us to cover the shortfall. When reports on their departments have to be in ASAP my supervisors selfishly remain at their office for an extra five minutes past quitting time to write an email instructing me to get them done yesterday.

I'm drowning in paperwork....mine and that of my supervisors in my management heavy agency.

Is it the weekend yet?

$100 Winner

Monday Cat Blogging

Visit

Road Trip from Jay Sheer on Vimeo.

Now Comes the Hard Part

It's been my experience, based on the several times I've tried to quit smoking, that the first few days are surprisingly easy. Well.. maybe easy is not the right word, but certainly bearable. What makes it bearable for me is using nicotine patches. You can say all you want about how I'm just substituting one nicotine delivery system for another; but the patches deliver a far less amount of nicotine during the day than with all the cigarettes and without all the smoke. Plus, it stabilizes my mood so that I don't wind up getting fired or divorced. The most important thing that the patch does; however, it to keep me from getting cigarettes and lighting up "just one...or maybe two". If I don't put a fresh one on first thing in the morning, I will "put it off" and I will smoke before the day is over. So my ritual in the mornings has become exercising, showering, patch; with no opportunity to think about it or let my mind create any of the excuses that seem to be perfectly reasonable at the time.

After the first few days though....man! I get brief and very intense cravings periodically through the day. They only last a second or two but make me almost want to cry because the are so powerful.

I'm hoping that will pass.

Monday Cat Blogging

Flex Time

There's a neat little policy where I work. Rather than pay for overtime, my boss would much prefer that I utilize flex time. I mean...really prefer...as in "you ask for some overtime pay I'm going to ask if you are worth it". Submitting requests to be paid for overtime is a pain with paperwork (as if there isn't enough of that in my life) and one is almost made to feel as if you are stealing by asking to be paid for putting in over forty hours a week.

Simply put...not worth the trouble. So I do the flex time thingy. Flex time basically means that I go off the clock. Theoretically I'm not doing any work. The problem is, I still have all the deadlines and tasks that have to be completed. Thanks to modern technology, I can perform a great deal of work on a laptop at home. I can even have my phone calls routed to my cell.

whoop de doo

CPR Training

It's that time again. This morning I'll be with a bunch of other people watching a film about CPR and spending a great deal of time trying to resuscitate a legless, armless dummy like the one above. The dummies are suppose to give you a feel for what it is like to perform CPR though...if it were to be truly realistic...there would be significant amounts of vomit and perhaps a bit of blood involved. They should also make dummies with pot bellies and facial hair just to add to realism. They might have some with large breasts; though I suppose a few in class would likely steal those for themselves.

I think I've probably taken these classes at least a couple of dozen times over the years. I sit listening to the instructor while wondering why my agency doesn't join the 21st century and get defibrillators instead of depending on the hit-or-miss method of pushing up and down on a person's rib cage until an ambulance arrives. Still, better than nothing, I suppose. If I flopped to the floor at work due to a heart attack, I'd rather people around me try anything they could to save my ass. Jump up and down on me. Break my ribs. Hook up jumper cables to my nipples. Try something, anything.

The dummies in the class never recover. I would hope for a better result.

Monday Cat Blogging

 

Sitting With Cicadas

Monday Cat Blogging

Keep Your Hands Off of My Stack

What's worse than somebody breaking into your house and stealing some of your stuff? When it's one of your neighbors doing the stealing.

I foolishly left my garage door open for a period of time and when I went to close it, discovered that my bicycle and several tools were missing. Several things scattered on the floor as if I might have interupted the scumbags work. I peek outside and see my neighbor trotting across the street into his house....then I see him peering out the window.

I know he did it. Nothing I can really do about it. The police in this city are no help at all when it comes to stuff like this. I can't even get them to come over which would at least shake my neighbor a bit and maybe keep him away from my house in the future. I'm not going over to his house to confront him and risk getting a bullet just for a bicycle.

I'm just going to take the loss..which pisses me off. Not because some stuff was stolen, but the idea of other people stealing stuff. I work hard for what I have. It angers me that there are people who don't want to do the same.

Priorities of Living

Imagine that you lived tens of thousands of years ago. You're strolling along the savanna and you find yourself face to face with the little kitty pictured above. Would you be concerned about what you might have for dinner...or would you be more concerned what the tiger is wanting for dinner?

Would you care about your weight? Your looks? If you had money? What your friends think about you?

Would you be depressed? Would you mope about your rotten luck? Would you tell yourself that you don't want to live anymore and moan to everybody you know to see if they would rescue you..to show that they care?

The human instinct would be an overpowering urge to survive and to run like hell. Would you wait for somebody to make the cat go away, or would you do something about the situation yourself?

In a society that provides for all of our needs...whining is a luxury.

But like most luxuries...it's not very practical or useful.

Gas Shortage?

Protein shakes are wonderful. I find them a great way to have a quick meal without a lot of muss and fuss, they're relatively cheap, and good for me. This is all opposed to my old habit of grabbing some greasy burger or enjoying fine dining at Taco Hell. I use Myoplex vanilla flavor, throw in some fruit, blend it together and I've got myself a satisfying meal with all the needed nutrients for around 300 calories.

The only drawback is that the protein powder tends to produce a bit of gas. Combine that with the chicken, refried bean, and jalapeno burritos I had with another meal that day and.....





I'll be needing to re-tile the bathroom.

and my cat is still in hiding.

Round and Round and Getting Rounder

There is a vicious little cycle that I go through that I'm sure a lot of people experience. I decide "this is it...I'm going to do something about my weight...I'm going to hit the gym and get fit".

And I do. I go all out. Push my body to the limits and beyond.

And pay for it the next day. And the day after. And the next.

And wind up back where I started.... waiting for the next decision to do something about my weight.

On Leaving the World a Better Place

"Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt." ~ Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Quit Day

Monday Cat Blogging

I Finally Got Wood

The biggest obstacle in my quest for attaining health and fitness is not my age....it's this 35+ year smoking habit. Habit doesn't really describe it, it's an addiction. I have a habit of waking up early. It is my habit to check my emails and phone messages when I enter my office in the morning. I cultivate the habit of eating with my mouth closed and not belching when I dine around other people. My wife is trying to get me to break the habit of leaving my underwear on the floor.

An addiction is the continuation of an action that causes you harm in spite (and this is the important part) of the knowledge that it is causing harm and the desire not to engage in the behavior. That fits my experience with smoking to a tee. I know it's bad for me. I know it will kill me...and not in a pleasant way either. I continue to smoke. I quit for awhile. I relapse. I quit. I relapse. Over and over and over again.

A problem that I have is that I can't really go cold turkey off of nicotine. That would be the best way to lick this addiction. I mean, that's what works with alcohol, heroin, or meth addictions....you stop taking the drug...period. That's all fine and dandy if you are in a closed and controlled environment for 28 days or so. I have to continue with my life. I have to go to work. I also have to function. So I put on nicotine patches that give me just enough of the drug to be able to concentrate on my job and not bite some random person's head off during the day. The bonus of the patch is that it keeps me from lighting up a cigarette while I have the thing on. If I smoke anytime within eight hours or so from taking off the patch...I get sick as a dog. So, even when I get intense cravings, I'm pretty much stuck with not smoking for several hours. Unfortunately, this usually leads me to stop putting on a new patch in the morning just in case I may want a cigarette during the day. I know..it's crazy...but this is how addiction screws with your thinking process. Once I don't put on the patch, it's all over and I'm back to two packs a day like I never quit.

I need something for those brief yet intense urges to light up a cigarette. Food works great, but I can't eat all day and it's mostly impractical to carry around munchies everywhere I go. I need something intense to counteract the oral need to stick a burning weed into my mouth.

That's when I thought of cinnamon toothpicks. I searched high and low for some but they seem to be a fairly rare item these days. I looked for cinnamon oil but it seems like it's some kind of controlled substance and is harder to find than crack at an Amish barn raising party. I was about to give up and resign myself to chewing gum or something when I found the beauties pictured above in my local health food store. At $4 a pack they are pricey but still less than a pack of cigarettes.

I'll see if they will work and I can at long last leave this nasty habit behind me.

Grace Under Pressure

I feel good today. I feel good because I've come to the startling realization that, while I may not be physically in the best shape, I'm pretty strong with my mental health.

I recently changed duties at my job. The position that I had before for several years went to another....who left. Then to another who is desperately wanting to leave it because of the stress involved. It is a stressful job. Continuous crisis events, dealing with a wide range of people most of which are experiencing significant life crisis of their own. A thousand details. Countless decisions every day all day...some of which can be disastrous if the wrong choice is made.

It's a meat grinder; and I did it for several years. It was a difficult job but I made it look easy. I thrived on the pressure. I flourished being in charge. I walked showing grace under the type of pressure that appears to make most people crumble. I learned to let the turmoils of the job flow around me rather than batter me down to the ground. Like the trees that grew in my childhood home in West Texas...constantly blown by the wind and sand without giving into it's unrelenting force.

Now; however, I'm in a much calmer environment.

Yet I often feel like a misshapen tree in a sheltered forest. I miss the windstorms.

Safe Sex

Most of us know all about the birds and the bees. For the bee's part, going from flower to flower and collecting nectar is an integral part of reproduction for many plants. The bee gets a little dab of nectar and the flower gobs on some pollen to the bees knees. The bee flies to another flower for another sip of nectar, the pollen lands on the other flower and violins play.

The bees don't do this for the flowers sex lives. They do it for the nectar, so they can bring it back to their hive, throw it up, and make honey. Bees have a reputation of being busy because they have to spend all day going from flower to flower, hundreds of them, to collect enough nectar for their honey production. Given a choice, bees will be just as lazy as any creature and what creature doesn't love an all-you-can-eat buffet.

I put up a feeder right after I spotted a hummingbird in my yard. My hopes were that I might attract a few but the only things feeding on my feeder are these dang bees. I estimate that they are going through about a pint a week. I'm a little afraid to stop re-filling it. You know how sugar junkies can be went you cut them off.

It's okay, I guess. I like bees too. It would be interesting to find out what the honey they are making will taste like. The syrup smells somewhat like maple syrup and tastes like grape kool-aid. I wonder if the honey will be bright red?

The down side is that I have a yard full of frustrated flowers.

Long Week

Monday Cat Blogging

Viva la Vida

This is a difficult post. Difficult for me, that is, because I've a great many emotions churning and I'm not sure that I can make much sense out of them with words.

but here goes....

Last month, my father suffered a heart attack. It was pretty bad and he ended up getting a triple by-pass. He is still in intensive care but appears to be heading for a good recovery. He was lucky; he received excellent medical care and my father is also pretty tough for a man his age.

Still...wow....seeing him laying in a hospital bed...I believe it was the first time in my life that I've ever seen him vulnerable. He had tubes going into every orifice in his body and they even made a few new ones to accommodate more. Heavily sedated with only brief flashes of confused consciousness mixed with pain. Nothing to do but watch and wait. The thought banging against my rapidly dwindling sense of denial....he could die.

Of course, everybody dies. I know that. It's a given expectation that I would outlive my parents just as I assume that my children will long outlive me. Yet, I didn't expect my father to come so near to death. Not yet. I talked with him just a few days prior. He would always be there. Though he is in his seventies...surely his body would keep on plugging away for many more years.

And that is when I had another thought as I sit here several hundreds of miles away waiting daily for news of any progress.

I am my father's son.

This may be a preview of me if I don't change some aspects of my lifestyle. Certainly my body will age and parts will break down. Eventually there will come a time when nothing more is able to be fixed and I will die. The scary thing to think about is - do I want it to happen in twenty or thirty years, or next year?

I may yet have a choice.

My Dad....he still teaches me stuff.

Life Happens

Okay...I know it's been awhile since I've written, or updated on my weight loss, or even posted a cat photo. Among the usual little daily things that shift one's focus there comes along truly major incidents that quickly become much higher priorities. I'm fine. Somebody very important in my life isn't though, and most of my emotional energy is taken up with thoughts and feelings about him.

I thought of writing about it and I probably will, someday...but not today.