If you read this blog, you will notice I have had a rough patch. I’m climbing back, doing worthwhile things, but I need to re-establish the set of actions that help me and this household the most.

Little victories this week include no eating at restaurants since Sunday. The key is having dinner ready so J can’t suggest going out. I have a dinner planned for tomorrow. Chicken breasts, asparagus, and rutabega, with baked apples for dessert, maybe fresh pineapple with strawberries and bananas instead.

I need to go swimming at tbe same time every day, right after an AA meeting, when I am out and about. Nights after dinner won’t work in the winter when it is cold and dark outside.

I need to eat breakfast every morning, before I do anything else. Staying up in the morning is also key.

Developing interests outside of the house, like photography or writing about Richmond are important. I think a departure from recovery, Church and health/fitness would be well-advised, although I consider those areas to be critical, the basis, for me, of good self-care.

Lastly tonight, I will stop managing my time and making do-able goals unreachable by over-projecting. Just a little more tomorrow is enough.

I did the stuff on my Plan. I even made butterscotch pudding for dessert, the kind you cook on tbe stove top with whole milk. It is cooling as the pork roasts. What “Little” doesn’t like pudding cooked on the stove?

The meal is cooking. I went to the AA meeting and brought up a topic around relapsing; how the “relapse” process begins long before we drink. Things like not getting what we want, a resentment that festers, can set us back.

Dealing with negative sentiments, despair, and upsets takes work. I make a mistake when I think I am immune to this stuff.

I think I will go swimming after dinner. That would be wise.

Today looks like so many other days, except today is colder. I should eat something but I don’t know what. I will go shopping in a few minutes, pick up a pork roast(?) to have with sweet potatoes and green beans. Planning dinner is about the best I can do right now.

It is these mornings when I want to cry for no reason that are hard.

A Plan:

Put on boots, go grocery shopping. then AA. Hang out with people afterwards. Come home. Fix dinner. Wait for J to get home. Spend time with her, even if what we do is just lie in bed together,watching some sit com from the old days of TV. Avoid the Washington Goat Screw at all costs.

We kissed yesterday morning when she was in no hurry to get out the door. It was deep and long and lingering. The kiss made me feel like she thought I was worth kissing. That is a start.

Today was cold, rainy, with a flourish of wet snow for a finale. I could have stayed home, but I went to AA instead, two meetings, in fact. I’m glad I did. I needed to be with people, my beautiful friends. I like AA because all of the crap we cling to in the non-AA world falls away. And we sit down to learning how to live in this less than perfect world.

The football moratorium begun last year continues. Tonight Popeye is back. I have written plenty about him in tbe past. No more need be written.

I did some cooking, the sweet potato /pear dish of the last post, with a small bottom round roast. The meal was well-received.

I had the dental appointment I had to reschedule last week. Everything went well. The back molars extraction has made a huge difference. Less places for bacteria to hide. I left with the same number of teeth I came in with.

I’m tired. It’s not that late but I’m tired I’m going to bed.

I woke up around 4:00 AM. after sleeping about five hours. I wanted to sleep more, but other things beckoned, hot coffee, the Silver Meteor’s passage through Ashland, (on time!), the silence of the pre-dawn morning, a scan of Word Press and Flickr.

I checked the NFL which offers little surprises this year from prior years. (yawn).

I am waiting for something to happen. J will be leaving for work in a few minutes. Her lunch is packed. Here comes Autotrain NB 52 through Ashland. #86 is due in about rwo minutes, if it is running today (It is) Will passengers be boarding because it is a federal holiday? Apparently yes.

Now I want to go back to sleep. Get a do-over for the morning. Why not?

I stayed awake and went to 8:30 Mass. I was glad I went. I came home, ate breakfast, slept, awoke.

I did laundry, wrote an erotic story, to get some sexual feeling back. J came home. We then went to a 5:00 Mass together, just so I could be with her. We had dinner. Now I sit, waiting for trains to pass, much like how I started the day.

And now, I think of Armistice Day tomorrow, how we morphed it in the States to Veterans Day, then further morphed it into another marketing opportunity. A sale in a person’s name is the highest homage we can think of, here in America.

“We forget how to cry. We save photos instead.”- Jacques Brel.

That line from a Jacques Brel song haunts me even more, now that we have storage available for more photographs than we could ever hope to take or save.

I have wedding pictures from failed marriages, marriages I have shed not one tear over. One of those former spouses is dead, the other blows through relationships as if they were Kleenex©. I am the survivor.

So I will take my Sunday, with the wife who loves me in the only, if not the best, way she can. And trust that our best days will be filled with passion. And that changing the sheets will be necessary a lot more often.