Hey there, hi there, ho there!!!  (You're as welcome as can be!)  I'm sitting here in my lovely "home office" corner of the living room and savoring the coziness of the moment.  It's COLD outside!  (Yuck!)  But it's nice and toasty in here, and I have my cup of coffee, and the television is positioned perfectly to watch the Ellen de Generes show in twenty minutes, and what the heck else could I possibly want right now?  Learning to be content in the moment is what it's all about for me these days.  I have an aggravating tendency to live about three weeks in the future, most of the time, so this is heady stuff for me!

Steve and I had a fantastic time this past weekend, and we attended my second wedding in sobriety (not MY wedding, mind you, but the second wedding I've been invited to...  Oh, phooey, you know what I mean!).  The first time around, last year, I was still relatively fresh in my clean/sober time, and it was a little weird watching everyone get shitfaced at the reception (although not difficult since, thank heavens, Steve is sober too and he stayed by my side the whole time).  This time had its tricky moments, too, but they were more bearable as long as I used the tools I've gathered in the rooms.  Now if only I had some tricks under my belt to keep me from eating all those chocolate truffles!  LOL

Yeah, OK, well I suppose I'd better start jumping on some of the little errands I need to run later today.  Assuming all goes as "planned," I could end up being pretty busy!   Toodles!!

This week promises to be interesting.  My boyfriend, who recently accepted a position doing IT support for a local drug and alcohol treatment facility, will be going on a business trip for a week to show some social workers how to use a computer database.  I'll be here all by my little self! 

Fortunately, I'll have plenty to keep myself busy with.  I'm going to start working on a collaborative project with my former employer (the job ended on good terms, and I'm even renting my apartment from her daughter).  I work in health care, but she's a real estate agent, and she thought there might be a market for information on which banks are providing mortgage loans in the county.  So I'll be going to the courthouse (nice to know it'll be for work and not because I have charges!) and researching home loans and other home sales-y stuff.  The idea is that I'll be maintaining a spreadsheet, to be updated monthly, and selling the information to various banks and mortgage companies.

Actually, it won't be the information that I'm selling so much as the time and effort it takes to compile all the data.  The info is there for the taking for anyone who cares to go get it, but the people who need it the most probably don't have the time to do so.

I'll also hit my meetings and go to work as usual (in addition to one 4-hour chunk of overtime if they don't cancel me).  I'd also like to grab my camera and head out into the more rural areas around here - the autumn leaves are just about perfect for picture takin' right now.  And I'll go hang out with my grandmother a few times.  Just basically doing all those "next right thing(s)" and staying open to whatever healthy activity may pop up.

I've been trying to keep myself occupied with the good stuff lately.  I celebrated 15 months of clean/sober time on October 5th, and I'm SOOO happy about it, but I'm also a little skittish.  The last time I was sober, I relapsed at 16 months and it was really spontaneous and impulsive.  I mean, I know that the relapse was well on its way to happening long before it did - it was the longest I'd ever been sober, and I had become complacent and BORED.  It didn't help that my best friend at the time was a heavy partier and I was getting bummed out over her tales of exciting nights out on the town.

Anyway, I get nervous now because I keep wondering, "What if I'm bored now and don't know it?  What if I'm entertaining notions of using or drinking again and don't know THAT?"  Honestly, I don't want to do either.  Life is too beautiful right now, and no drink or drug could ever be worth losing it all for.  But my brain has been known to play dirty tricks on me before.  At least now I know that I have to be far more vigilant than I was the last time around.  I'm sober for ME this time around.  That last time, I only gave it a shot because I was trying to save the utterly pathetic marriage I was in.  (That divorce was the best thing that could have happened!)

Once I get past that 16-month mark, I'll be just fine.  Meanwhile, I'm going to bust some serious tail reinforcing the fact that sober is the only way for me to be.  I'll be doing all the things I know I wouldn't be doing if I were doping or drinking.

I'm also backtracking and re-doing my steps, starting at Number One.  It's been a little hard for me to get into it while my honey is here (I'm so easily distracted!).  So I'll take advantage of our time apart to do something useful.  Lordy, I will be one busy girl!