10 days

April 27, 2012

Portrait

grat·i·tude

September 23, 2011

thankfully there is a foggy day in san francisco. a day off of school. a delivery to my favorite little chocolate shop in noe valley. back-to-school night. thankfully there is a new phone. a fried chicken sandwich with austin. a cactus garden. better than expected coffee. a long nap. thankfully there is a vacation on the horizon. a holiday. a few *big* birthdays. skinny jeans on my skinny little girl. grown up conversation. bucket lists (live in the city for at least a year). tumultuous change. teaching eduardo to read. thankfully there is a boy who responds to "yum!" with: it's good, but not as good as my mama's chocolate because NOTHING is as good as snake & butterfly. father's afraid of getting old and being a burden. trim thighs from goofy shoes. a man that requires a good back scrubbing in the shower. people i look forward to seeing at the market every week - people that bring me honey or flowers or cupcakes or their great dating adventures. thankfully there is a now defunct satellite that may shatter over our country tonight. a comfortable ebb and flow. deep discussions about the social and biological implications of marriage - and divorce. thankfully there are things to plan. an infant not my own. a perpetual forward motion. a spider that built its web on my side mirror, there, every morning for the past week. a pediatrician that suggests throwing rocks. thankfully there is cotton candy.

hello, my name is celeste and i love an alcoholic... or several

April 29, 2011

without getting into a long and sordid back story (and there always is one with me right?) let me just say that the winds of change are blowin' (sorry alabama et al). let's just say that i seem to attract alcoholic males into my very inner circle.

sidebar: rory is a drinking alcoholic (still working in bars) and has been for most of the past six or seven years. (at this point you're confused because the title has the word love in it. don't worry, i decidedly do not love him, or even hold a retrospective fondness for him). it's something that only became a problem in our marriage when he started working in restaurants, drinking heavily and cheating along the way. he's lost a couple of jobs due to drinking/stealing booze since he left. #fatheroftheyearwinning end sidebar.

in any case, i don't know why there are so many alcoholics in my life but i do know that addiction is something that i only understand in a very basic, post-psychology degree kind of way. my dad has been a smoker for most of his life, hates it and cannot - CANNOT- quit. and i desperately want him to, CANNOT understand why it is so here. additionally, there are drinkers and drys on both sides of my family but yet i, thankfully, do not seem to have inherited that genetic predisposition (mike? input?) to addiction. there's nothing in my life that i couldn't give up tomorrow. sure i might piss and moan if you took away my computer but i wouldn't go to drastic measures to get it back. so yeah, i have a hard time getting what it must be like. this has apparently not prevented me from passively enabling the alcoholics in my life. so without getting into all that, it is with great pleasure that i tell you that three very important people in my life have quit drinking and entered the "program."

/insert sigh of relief here>

my household is now dry. all of the alcohol has been carted off to rory's house (cute, right?). the wine glasses, the shot glasses, the booze and beer and wine don't live here any more. i know what the big book is. i'm slowly coming to understand the importance and nuances of meetings. we're playing board games and catch with the kids. things are better and yeah, i'm trying to let go of my fear of them failing (relapsing) and so far am totally thrilled with these grown ass men that are coming out of the woodwork. as for me and alcohol...i could take it or leave it and i'm leaving it for the long-term unforeseeable ish future. alanon anyone?