Smarts Donation Page

Good morning everyone! I’m sorry for being so distant the last couple of days, with not posting or commenting. I have been busy researching the Hoops for Heart Campaign Drive that Smarts and I are participating in. We are both so excited to do this in honor of my Dad, her “Pops”. Cute little story really quick…

When I was little my oldest brother and I used to annoy the heck out of my Dad by calling him Pops, it made him feel old and he hated it. When my daughter began to talk, I taught her that his name was Pops just for a little bit of annoyance (funny annoyance, not pissy) and he took right to it. He said my children can call him anything as long as they call him. So now he’s Pops and loves the name.

Anyway, I want to let everyone know that drinking to excess can kill your heart. Alcoholism doesn’t just strike at your liver, it can kill every organ in your body, including your brain. We mostly refer to alcoholism as killing your liver because cancer of the liver is the most common illness associated with alcoholism. There is no rhyme or reason to how alcoholism effects our body, this killer disease doesn’t just want to be your drinking buddy, it wants to kill you and if given enough strength; it will kill you.

Some Warning Signs of a Heart Attack include:

* Uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain in the center of the chest that last more than a few minutes or goes away and comes back.
* Pain or discomfort in one or both arms, the back, neck, jaw or stomach.
* Shortness of breath with or without chest discomfort.
* Other signs such as breaking out in a cold sweat, nausea or lightheadedness.

List compiled by the AHA and can be found on there website.

I am in no way shape or form have a PhD and I certainly do not play a doctor on TV, so please if in doubt talk with a doctor as soon as possible.

If you are an alcoholic or just “think” you have a drinking problem I can direct you to help if you would like it, just shoot me a comment and I’ll get back with you ASAP.
And I also need to make a note here, that names (atleast mine and my family’s) are anonymous so if you do go to the Hoops for Heart Donation page and decide to post here, please do not use my daughter’s real name…on this blog we refer to her as Smarts. You can get to her page by clicking on the Hoops For Heart image in my sidebar or by clicking here.

Today I have been alive for 35 years!  Happy Birthday to me.   I’ve got nothing else for ya, other than that.  hehe.

I spoke with my Dad a couple times this week. Each time I spoke with him the conversation turns to him wanting his kids to understand that they don’t have to die like him. Heart disease is something that runs rabid in his family, his Dad died at 45 of it so for him to go out like this is taking an emotional toll on him. I try to just listen with openness and sincerity. “Bats, I’ve already defined my life. This is the way I’m going out, I’m dying but you and your brothers don’t have to.” In our family I’m probably the most healthiest and well I’m an alcoholic, Bipolar, and addicted to everything under the sun, so what does that tell you? “Bats, I’m feeling weaker everyday. Everyday I feel it but I’m trying.” I always remember these little blurbs my Dad says as I talk with him, each one holds it’s meaning so defined in it.

He’s in the final stages of his disease and he’s thinking maybe another 6 months. I know I need to be figuring out my goodbye to him but I just don’t know how. I mean how do you say goodbye to someone who has been there for you for 34 years? How do you say goodbye to someone whom has loved you unconditionally for 34 years? How do define that last moment?

On another note this morning my daughter brought home paperwork from her school of a fund drive they are doing with The American Heart Association for Heart Disease. (Irony at it’s best again, you think?) We are very excited to campaign for this wonderful cause. It’s called Hoops for Hearts and I haven’t done any research on it yet so haven’t posted a link here but definately be looking for it in the weeks to come. We are excited to raise money for a cause so people like my Dad don’t have to die of this disease. It is a horrible slow death and I can’t wait to get a plan going on how we are going to tackle this. It’s definately going to be some posting about it on here.

Trying to keep my family healthy I had signed us up for a flu vaccine, H1N1 kind.  It took a long time to get and a lot of work was involved to get it.  And what happens….I now am sick.  Blah.  I need more coffee but it’s going to have to be the cold kind because I am dripping wet with fever, this just sucks.

Just a quick post this morning while I enjoy a nice warm cup of joe.  I want to point everyone to my new social vibe widget, I felt the need to change it yesterday as images of Haiti filled my TV screen, mind, and heart.  I don’t think any one of us can understand the amount of destruction that has happened to that wonderful, beautiful place and even with a mom like I have and the emotional and physical abuse I had to endure because of that, I can’t understand the destruction of the lives of the people that call Haiti their homeland, their soil, their heart and souls.  Think of your favorite city and imagine walking through it with 50,000 dead people lying in the streets.  I think anyone of us would call a place like that uninhabitable;  terror and horror would fill our minds and hearts.

So I went searching for a new Social Vibe widget and found one that will donate trees to Haiti, which isn’t anything that they need right now but hopefully someday, they will need it.  So please have fun with it!

I received the Honest Scrap Award the other day from Pinochina.  Thank you so much! This is one of those awards that requires you do actually do something, so thanks for giving me homework!

The rules say I have to tell 10 honest things about myself, so here goes.

1. I hate having pictures taken of me. I haven’t appeared in any picture in over 8 years.
2. I practice the Wiccan religion and even though popular belief would be that I sold my soul to the devil because of this, that’s the farthest thing from the truth.
3. I eat frosting out of the container. I also enjoy cookie dough in the same way but frosting is by far my favorite.
4. I enjoy watching Spongebob with my kids.
5. I am a chronically disorganized person.
6. I want to move to Jamaica so I can own a shack on the beach and have a tshirt stand.
7. I don’t drive for fear of killing myself, my kids, or someone else.
8. Lounge pants are my daily wear, unless I have to go out.
9. I want to meet Vin Diesel before he is 45.
10. I really wish I wasn’t Bipolar or an Alcoholic.

And now I need to recommend 10 blogs so…

1. I Want Ice Water
2. Highly Irritable
3. JC Larkin’s Weblog
4. Dry Blog
5. raincoaster
6. Va Grant Jack
7. Protect Your Joy
8. T Double I
9. Salted Lithium
10. AA No Help

Happy Blogging Everyone! And thanks for the readership everyone!

Being a parent, I can not imagine the horror that is going on in Haiti. The dreams of the children no more, no smiles; just screams of pain and terror.  Loved one’s lost, dead, badly hurt with no medical attention available, no food or water, no where to rest a tired head, no toys for the children, no one to tell the children that it will be okay, that help is on the way, and in fact no one to tell that exact same thing to the parents, adults of the nation.  People digging or trying to at best to get to loved one’s that are either still screaming in terror and pain or to uncover their loved one’s whom are now silent because death took them before they could get to them.  The devastation and destruction are more than my mind, heart and soul can bear.  The pictures and news stories here in America don’t hide anything.  There are people, children lying on the side of the road already deceased or just about to be.  As I was watching the news coverage last night, the one thing that struck me was that there were very few children they were showing, are they the one’s stuck in hideous holes, concrete tombs, waiting for someone to bless them so their souls can move on?  Or was the news coverage trying to save people like me the heart ache of knowing what the true destruction is down there?  Statistics tell us that about 50% of people in Haiti are children and 39% of the people of Haiti are under the age of 15.  That right there tells me more than I can imagine of the carnage that has happened.  Everything and I mean everything is damaged, destroyed; I mean the Presidential Palace has crumbled along with the prison so not only are these people unsafe from the structures, the weather, the aftershocks, no food or water but they also have to fear that criminals may hurt them.  The news told us about gun shots ringing in the air, in the plazas; would those have been from people trying to protect themselves from the hardened criminals or putting someone out of their misery?  Again I have to say I just can not imagine.  Haiti we hear you, we are coming to help.

Please if you can donate anything, any amount of money at this point would be help.  Last night before I went to bed The Red Cross  had said that already they had gotten over a million dollars in donations, but that’s not enough, they need more. Please if you can donate money go to http://www.redcross.org/ . This is also the link for Cnn that takes you to many other links to help out so many organizations that are legit and you can be sure that any money you donate will go to Haiti and Haiti alone.

Haiti, I promise you we are coming to help!

Just a quick post this morning…

I am frustrated.  Frustrated about the fact that I can not seem to find any blogs by women quitting or already quit, alcoholics.  All I keep finding are men….which is fine, I relate just the same to them and can carry on a conversation just as well with them but jeesh I am sick of running into the artsy crafty mom blogs.  I’m going to have to do a Google and Bing search to see what I can find on  other blog ’stations’.

This suggests a question of are women alcoholics more hidden than men?  More embarrassed?  Less social? More ashamed?

Simplicity gets hard to notice in such a drama filled chaotic life.  However I am trying hard to come up with some sort of gratitude for it.

Ice cream!  I have ice cream in the freezer and man oh man I love ice cream.
A child playing when they don’t realize you are watching.
A hot cup of coffee on a morning when snow is falling.
Colors, I don’t think I would be happy in a black and white world.
Sobriety…and that brings me back to ice cream.

How simple can you keep your life today?  Please feel free to share!

I’m feeling pretty shaky.  Tomorrow marks the fact that I haven’t purchased nor drank any alcohol for 6 months.  Normally with anniversaries I get shaky around 6 months, 1 year, a year and a half and of course I’ve never made it to 2 years.  Although I know of and how to use resources available to me to keep my sobriety in check, somehow I forget that those exist or maybe I just get complacent with being sober.  I don’t know, I’m just not good with dealing with my feelings or problems, I can take on the whole worlds problems but when it comes to taking care of what I need, my brain shuts down or I start getting that little lady sitting on my shoulder telling me how selfish I am, telling me about how I’ve thought only about myself for all those years of drinking and now I don’t deserve the brain matter it takes to take care of me, to think about what I need.  Maybe it’s the flashbacks that happen around my sobriety anniversaries, you know the flashes that pop into your head as you are doing the dishes, the flashes that hold valuable information of why you are a fool, a drunk, a stupid lush.  These flashes are very concrete and they show all the memories and thoughts that you were trying to get rid of when you were drinking and now that you’re sober they come back at you and slap you on the back of the head to remind yourself that you owe everyone around you time, peace, and comfort because you stole all of that from them with your many blackouts, embarrassing parties, weeks, months, years of being sloppy and non human, being unfair, bitchy, dangerous.   

This is a big reason why AA and I don’t mix, because there is (and this is only my humbled opinion) no reason in the world I should bring it all to the surface once again to make so called amends to all those people that I damned or hurt from my many bouts of alcoholic actions.  Shouldn’t the memory of these that will permanently live in my brain and memory be enough?

Of course then there is the whole “The past is gone forever” modo of WFS that really annoys me because although it is in the past, it hasn’t gone anywhere other than one part of my Bipolar mind to another part of it.  Flashes of my past come up regularly in my vision and thoughts.  Is that bad?  Sometimes it can break me down and other times it is the reason I hold my shoulders back and my head high.  Sometimes it causes nightmares and other times it makes me smile, laugh out loud at myself because believe me some of it is really funny!

I’m sober tonight though and it’s Friday.