Trying to Relax

Yesterday I participated in a worship service at the church where I used to work. Without going into gory detail, I'll just say it was an exhausting event, and I had no time to relax and regroup between leaving the church and getting to an AA meeting. I showed up at the meeting in my church duds, and was immediately dubbed, "Fancy Francie" by someone in the group, because no one's ever seen me in anything other than tees, shorts and flipflops. (More on that meeting, later...)

It was hot yesterday and, by the time I got home, I was ready to crash and burn. So, I did what I usually do when I find myself in that state - I peeled off those Sunday-go-to-meetin' rags, climbed into the tee/shorts/flipflops outfit, grabbed a couple of books and all of that paper piecing I did a few days ago, jumped into the BlackBird, and headed for Starbucks. I got my usual mocha-cookie-crumble-frappuccino-add-shot-double-blended-add-whip, and a huge brownie, and then drove to my favorite hangout place down on the jetty, looking out at this glorious view...

I spent the next few hours getting back into my skin - I sipped my frapp, munched the brownie (truly decadent), watched the ships and fishing boats go by, listened to the tide slapping the rocks, and to the rumbling and mournful whistles of the trains across the river, did some reading, and listened to Sunday afternoon jazz on KCSM. When I was totally calmed down, I pulled out the paper-pieced dog teeth and started ripping the paper off. I took it nice and slow, because I'd put so much work and frustration into those damned things, I definitely didn't want to accidentally un-sew any of them while un-papering them. By the time I had all of them done, and I was feeling sooooo relaxed and mellow.

So, here are the "teeth", and I think I'll be ready by tomorrow to jump back into this project and make some more progress on this tedious piece.

As I mentioned earlier, here's a post script on the AA meeting...

One of yesterday's readings was about keeping alcohol in the house while you're trying to recover. For weeks, I've had an almost full bottle of Jack Daniel's hanging around, for whatever reason, I just don't know. On Saturday afternoon, it started calling to me, and I almost caved. On my way home from the meeting, I was thinking about the reading, and decided that bottle just had to go. I was hell bent by the time I got home. I barged in the door, kicked off my shoes, went straight for the cupboard, grabbed the Jack, yanked the lid off and upended it over the sink. Glug...glug...glug...glug...glug. Gawd. It hurt. Gawd. It felt good. After that was done, I spied a hapless bottle of Meyer's rum in the cupboard, and gave it the same treatment. By that time the kitchen smelled like a still, and I was thinking... Egads! I just dumped nearly $50 worth of booze down the drain. Why am I feeling so freakin' GOOD????? Go figure, but I WAS feeling good! I was feeling F-double-f*cking AWESOME! All of which leads me to this realization: The only good bottle of Jack is an empty bottle of Jack.

Amen!