Old home week.

I just read through the threads about Donna – Mischa, being Canadian, used to call her "Dee Zed.". Took her a while to get the DZ/Dizzy reference. Donna thought that was hilarious. I smile thinking about her.We drove up to Henderson to see her after we moved to the South. She was a little tired, but in great spirits and in fine fettle, given her condition. We spent the day chasing my daughter around her house and chatting about her husband, life, the board, whatever. We were so glad to finally meet her. Plans were laid to visit again in a few months, but she died about a month later. We're better for having spent those few hours with her, I guess. She'd hate that I said that, too. Didn't like all that public hoo hah. She sure made this place twinkle for a while.Funny the way this place changed us...or better: the way the people here changed us. All I wanted to do was quit smoking: what I got was that, and everything else, really. Just a little griping and whining, occasionally acting like a complete jackass (who, me?), and what with all the people here on your side you can't help but grow up a lot, despite your worst behavior. Changed my life, inside and out. Mamby-pamby pep talks and stupid jokes and relapses and enough sexual innuendo to make a porn star blush and everyone I know who stuck it out came out the other side a better person for the experience. Fred’s intro letter has a quiet subtext to it: this is the weirdest place a person who is trying to quit will ever visit on the entire internet. You just might quit smoking too, stick around here long enough, like it’s contagious. Might make some friends. Might make enemies. Might get married, too – careful, people. I am living evidence this is true, all the above.And now I have a lot of gray hair and I'm flabby and I have a five year old daughter who says things like "it's a GOOD idea to give me candy, because I like it and you want me to be happy" and a two year old son who says things like "HI DADDY! I STINK!" when he needs a diaper change. Hamlet he’s not. Sure cute,Herbal cigarettes, though, both of them.My dad died in August. He was eighty two. Tumor the “size of a lemon” when they found it in his left lung back in February. He smoked until they found the thing, and quit - not to try to prolong his life (“not a chance” said the doctors) but because he was, at that point, just entertaining a habit: he smoked out of boredom at the end. One of THOSE smokers. He’d quit for three months because he ran out and just didn’t feel like buying them. I could never do that. He was old school enough this place would have been no use to him, even if the internet had been in use during the 50’s. He was lucky, in a way. He went quietly, without too much discomfort, surrounded by his family, and in his own home. F&*^king cigarettes. I miss him like crazy sometimes.Well, heck – I’m in one of those maudlin moods. Need a change of subject. I’m thinking this: unless I am mistaken, I quit on April Fools day, 2004. That means I am roughly two and a half years along…again. I blew a two and a half year quit way back,stop smoking now, blamed it on joblessness and money woes. Uh huh, like I needed an excuse. I wanted a smoke the whole damn time. I planned it. I admit it. “When you’re ready, you’ll quit” is the big the buzzword, and I wasn’t.When I quit the last time, I just…quit. No patches, no pills, no nuthin’. Even living in Greer, South Carolina (FYI – Greer, South Carolina was the closest thing to Hell on Earth I could imagine: it wasn’t REALLY Hell – with fire and brimstone and a seas of searing humanity - but if you got on the roof I’m pretty sure you could see Hell just off a ways, burning in the distance), cigarettes were cheap-cheap-cheap, everyone smoked, it was the norm. And I just got sick of them and quit. Told myself it was for my children, and mostly it was, but there’s no quitting without a well-placed sense of self service, which I have always had in abundance. And that, dear friends, was that.Right. It sucked just as bad as the first time I quit – that overnight excursion into delusional thinking which ended in flames and failure. Fact: when you throw your smokes, a lighter, and an ashtray into the garbage oh…so…carefully, so they’re sitting neatly atop the pile of banana peels and empty beer bottles, this is not “quitting”. This is a “plan to smoke first thing in the morning”, all the better to extract them from the reeking trash can and spark one up at breakfast, just in time to get on the board and whine about it, because you didn’t really mean it. I sure didn’t.After a while I realized I was getting better at quitting. It’s true! I knew what to do, what to expect, all the tricks. Problem was, I didn’t need to be better at quitting. I needed to get better at staying quit.Today is November 27, 2006. I first quit in early August 1999. I’ve quit, oh, twenty times since. Sometimes, like my overnight “plan” and plea for attention, for less than eight hours. Twice for two and a half years. Did I learn anything?Kinda, kinda not. All I know is the following:1 – Can’t quit if you aren’t ready.2 – Aren’t ready if you want to keep smoking.3 – There are two types of quitters: those who are ready, and those who aren’t.4 – Those who are ready sometimes aren’t. Those who aren’t really aren’t.5 – This is all a bunch of philosophical BS. You’re ready, right now. Quit. It’s gonna suck. It takes forever, if forever is defined as a few weeks to a few months – however long the cravings hurt for. It gets better eventually.My rave for the day. I’m gonna stuff my face with a buncha leftover turkey and surf YouTube for a while. Be nice to each other.Ciao, bellas a bellos!Rick