My Anniversary

It just hit me this morning. Coming up in one week, I will be sober for 17 years. My first day of sobriety is July 1, 1996. It is hard for me to believe sometimes that I have been able to get through as much "life stuff" as I have in these past years, without having to pick up a drink. 

It has not been easy. At times it has been damn hard. I have lost so many family and friends, several times through horrible tragedy, and still have managed to stay on the path of the sobriety. I lost marriages, jobs, and nearly lost my own life.

I sit back now, and watch what goes on around me, and every single day I thank God that I have not picked up a drink. I see adults, falling down drunk, in front of their children. I see marriages break up and families torn apart, because of addiction.

I have met many wonderful people on my journey, and know I will meet many more. You know who you are, and even though I don't know your last names, I don't need to. I know how to reach out and find you, and vice versa.

If you are reading this, please stop for a moment and think about your own behaviors. Are you being the person you want your children, your friends, or your other family members to see, and possibly emulate? Make the right choices. And, if you can't make the choices yourself, ask for help.

 

“It reminds me of that old joke- you know, a guy walks into a psychiatrist's office and says, hey doc, my brother's crazy! He thinks he's a chicken. Then the doc says, why don't you turn him in? Then the guy says, I would but I need the eggs. I guess that's how I feel about relationships. They're totally crazy, irrational, and absurd, but we keep going through it because we need the eggs.”

― Woody Allen, Annie Hall

Dingledodies!??!??!?!

"They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn..."

Anyone know where this quote comes from?

It is a fabulous book and a definite must read!

Matzo Soup

Not quite sure what possessed me to attempt to make Matzo Soup today. I guess it's because I got two boxes for $1.00 at the discount grocery store. All I had to add to the mix was water, eggs and vegetable oil. But still......

When I opened up the soup pot and saw these gargantuan matzo balls (and I am still not quite sure what they are actually comprised of) I was a bit intimidated. This is soup? Really?

I served up a bowl of the soup to each of my kids, ages three and nine. They weren't quite sure what to think when they checked it out. Turns out my three year old loved it, and my nine year old just liked the broth.

The overall winner though was Sandy, our 10 month old Beagle/Basset puppy. She LOVED it. Ate three bowls of it, to be precise. Not that I was planning on that.....but she managed to grab our three bowls and knock them to the kitchen floor and slurp them up.

Who knew that dogs like to eat Kosher?

Memorial Day Weekend

I say it ever single year on Memorial Day Weekend. It always rains and it is always cold on Memorial Day Weekend. This past week, we suffered through 90 degree temperatures with 100% humidity. And of course, the air conditioners were not yet out of storage.

As a kid, I worked at the local swimming pool. I would be so excited to start work at my job on Memorial Day Weekend. I would wake up Saturday to find rain, cold, and wind, and the pool would stay closed. Pool closed = no income for me. That really sucked.

As I got older and started going to the shore for the holiday weekend, I fought 6 hours of shore traffic for a trip that should take 2 hours tops. I'd get to the shore after braving that chaos to fin...you got it...a cold and rainy weekend at the beach.

This Memorial Day promises to be a bit better. Right now it is 44 degrees (usually it is 60 this time of year). I hear there is little chance of rain which is a true miracle. It's going to be cool and windy today, but I guess the picnic/party we're going to will work out just fine.

Sunday and Monday look a bit better. My fingers are crossed. Hopefully, this is a good sign to the start of an awesome summer!

Hey! Glad you decided to take a moment to hang in DeVille with me. I can't promise to always be entertaining, but I'll strive for informative, a bit witty, sometimes off-center, and always sarcastic. Seems my "dry" sense of humor gets me into trouble, whether it be with family, friends, co-workers, and yes, even with the boss. Life is way too short not to have some laughs, hell, many laughs, as many as possible! Enjoy!