Please Allow Me To Introduce Myself...

Today's word of the day is ZEN.

I refound my Zen today. I didn't even know I lost it. I was mowing the lawn, giving it a scalp cut, 1st cut of the spring. This is where you cut it at the mower's lowest setting, trim off all the dead so it can grow back green for the spring. I was transfixed atop the riding mower doing a repetitive task, the drone of the engine, gentle breeze in my hair. I'm back in the groove again. A calm & peace came over me, & I was reminded of when I worked as maintenance man for Casablanca resort a few years back in Florida, how I would get this way almost every morning cleaning out the pool. It was a task I had done countless times. Muscle memory, you've done it so often you could practically "phone it in," and just lose yourself in the moment. Stop thinking, your body doing the job for you, just embracing the experience. And a sense of calm and serenity comes over you. Kinda like when people do yoga or that slow motion karate dance. A Zen moment.

Okay. Mowing's done, I grab my weed eater. Years & years ago when I 1st got sober I had a lawn care business. Out of necessity really. Back then I was trying to live down a reputation of being a raging alcoholic of supervillain proportions. I WAS the Heinous Anus (past tense). I had burnt so many bridges that NO one would hire me for a REAL job, but I had to make money somehow. So I got humble & I cut grass. I got good at it. It kept my mind off of drinking, it kept me busy and it earned me coin. For a while there it was how I put food on the table. I think about this as I'm weed eating the yard. Performing a repetitive task I've done so many times before I can do it without thinking. My mind can wander. I've mowed and trimmed this yard so many times I could almost do it with my eyes closed... Whoops. I just cut off part of the rose bush. Okay, so a LITTLE concentration is required while doing a repetitive task.

Scratch that. All of it.

Today's word of the day is ALMOST.

SoberDate 8041

A couple nights ago a series of thunderstorms rolled thru our area at nighttime. Around 11pm I got up for a late night snack from the fridge (a cheese stick) when the power went out. I ate my cheese and went back to bed.

Around midnight, my wife awoke to use the bathroom and the 1st thing she noticed was it was pitch black, no light from the clock, no nightlight from the bathroom, no light outside from the streetlight. Nothing, just total inky blackness. Now mind you, she's still recovering from her hospital visit for double pneumonia, she's still hoarse, her ears are still plugged up (she's already half deaf to begin with) and she's on oxygen. 1st thing that runs through her mind is "Oh God, what now? Am I blind now, too?"

She fumbles around on her nightstand looking for he cellphone because it has a flashlight function. Nope, not there. Oh wait, I left it plugged into the charger on the dresser. So she gets out of bed, shuffling slowly because the dogs lay on the floor on her side of the bed. She can't see ANYTHING. And the urge to relieve her bladder is becoming stronger. She finally makes her way to the dresser, whacking her shins on the chair in the process, and after a minute of fumbling, patting and grasping in the dark, she finds her cell phone. Now to find the buttons in the dark! Her bladder is now screaming at her from within. She is almost in a panic state at this point, she's deaf and blind, her fingers cannot find the ON button to her phone, she's about to wet herself, and there's a minefield of sleeping dogs on the floor between her and the bathroom just waiting to trip her. Oh, I almost forgot, her oxygen machine is no longer feeding her O2 to breath.

Finally the cell phone lights up and powers on. Oh thank God and Goddess! I thought I was blind! She shines the light at her feet to reveal two doggies lounging at her feet.

"Get up! Move damnit! I gotta pee!" At which point I wake up and mumble, "Be careful, the power is out."
"No SHIT!" She responds. She makes it to the bathroom in time but just barely.

The next morning we awake to a fully functional home, the only sign of electrical disturbance is some of the clocks are blinking and need to be reset. Coffee maker had started itself and her oxygen machine was running again. She entertains me and dad with this tale of despair she experienced the night before. We laughed.