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Twelve and so 20. Twelve and so 20! Popeye and Greg House and William Burroughs!

This window cannot be washed. Not by me. I’d have to stand on the roof – the steep bit over the laundry room – and there’d be the screens and paper towels and “We have some sad news about your son, Mrs. Hamid.” But really I want to clean this window just like I cleaned out the closet near the stairs and it’s Astro’s room now.

There are spaces in this house I did not know were here, though some other little spaces, it is possible, have disappeared.

Six and so 2. Six and so 2!

I suppose this all ends when they ask me. When they come to me. When they need my superpowers. Everything gone awry and astray and then like Popeye with spinach, Doctor House with his Vicodin, Burroughs with heroin, the music shall rise and ta-da the hero is back with his powers. Superpowers.

Nineteen so 7. Nineteen so 7! If I sit on the sill, with one leg outside like this, no wait, listen, this makes sense, then I can reach several panes with little, or less, chance of a fall. But if this part is clean and that part, unreachable, over there, is still dirty, there exists a chance of the contrast making the dirt that much more obvious.

It’s a risk.

This is my first post in 19 days and this is not me coming back yet but it’s the longest I’ve been without posting in 7 years. Nineteen so 7.

And this is my sixth day without smoking and that’s the longest I’ve been without smoking in 2 years. Six and so 2.

And it’s my twelfth day without drinking and this is where it gets wild so pay attention and it’s the longest I’ve been without drinking since 1999. Twelve and so 20. Twelve and so 20! Which this is not to say I am quitting. This is an experiment. Understand. This is seeing what sobriety does to my head and anyway, they’re probably just going to come and need my superpowers like Popeye and Greg House and William Burroughs.  

Probably.

Right?

Comments

  1. Twelfth day without drinking ???? I would hate to see what sobriety does to my head after 12 days!!!

    And Happy New Year to you to!!

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    1. And Happy New year to you, Mistress!

      Thirteen days now and this experiment might be just about done. I can do it, it doesn't seem to make my mind sharper or make me any friendlier, wasn't that fun?

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  2. YOU ... can DO it, Mane! It's all in the mind! Power over your body, and everything that goes INTO it! you CAN Do it! IF ... that's what you REALLY wanna do. YOU. CAN. DO. It. ! I thought I was gonna die when I quit smoking in '06. DID that shit! Thought I was gonna die when I quit DRINKING in '10. DID that shit! uh! I haven't vaped (I haven't smoked any reefer in well over four years. I have a Volcano) any reefer since SEPTEMBER 28th, '18! Did that shit, too! ANY ... THING(!) you really wanna do? You. Can. Do. That. Shit. Mane! I WANT ... to move to Colorado. You know what? I've reservations in Grand Junction for March 23-April-23 while I house hunt! Oh, yeah. I'ma DO THAT SHIT, TOO! ANY. THING! .. well, except for maybe cleaning windows ... cuz I don't do windows. Hang In There, Baby! I mean, if you WANT to.
    Beej(currently) in TN
    ps crazy new front page format, mane, crazy!

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    1. Colorado sounds like a good move.

      I've quit smoking several times and I'm getting pretty good at it. But most bad habits don't seem like such a critical thing in my life once I quit them. The trick is that your brain works against itself while you're quitting.

      But that doesn't mean I'm quitting anything. It's a break.

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    2. I didn't quit all that shit at the SAME TIME, either, or I WOULD have died.
      Here's hoping the 'break' takes US back to the time machine at the end of the hall and the missing spaces in your home. Stay OFF the window ledge, though, huh?
      Beej In TN

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    3. I seem to be exercising more, which is a classic way old junkies try and funnel their addictive behavior. Of course, it doesn't work for old junkies, so there's no reason to believe it's a long term solution for middle-aged drunks, either. But, like I said, it's an experiment.

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  3. I saw the movie "Bohemian Rhapsody" recently and learned that Freddie Mercury gave each of his cats its own luxurious room in his London mansion. I hope Astro appreciates that you have attempted something similar.

    Remember, you only have to resist ONE cigarette -- the next one. And ONE drink -- the next one. Thinking like that will keep things in manageable perspective and defeat feeling overwhelmed. Well, it worked for me when I quit smoking, anyway.

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    1. Astro's room was supposed to be a sort of pantry, I think, because it has rows of shelves that go all the way around the walls. Three layers of shelves. He seems to like it, and I won't tell him that people who sold millions of records in the Seventies probably did a lot better.

      The cigarettes are what concern me, for the most part, and that's what I've got to stick with. The drinking... well, every night isn't good, but I don't black out for three days and end up in a foreign country or something.

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  4. Well, let's see, I last smoked a cigarette in 2007, and I last got high in 2008. I stopped smoking when the pain in my side came back, the same pain that got me to stop in 2005 (the stopping did make the pain go away, but the night they kicked in the door and stole my guitars, Briana's bass, and our computer I bummed a Camel off of Briana and was back smoking again. My '67 SG!!!) only in 2007 the pain was worse and my liver swelled up and knocked me out of commission for three days. Sometimes I actually can take a hint, and that was one of those times.
    Then, a year later I had a stroke, and haven't gotten high since.
    Was it fucking retarded to wait until I almost died and did become permanently disabled to stop getting high? (Whether the getting high contributed to the stroke is questionable, but the avoiding of the doctor to try to hide the getting high from bosses and such did keep me from discovering my hypertension, and that did in fact, contribute to the stroke.)
    Yes. Yes, it was the very definition of retarded.
    I am here to say that things are different, but I am still me, and amid the challenges of learning to live as a disabled person, the stopping of the getting high barely even registered.
    I will share two things from my time in acute rehab from the stroke:
    First, they have a program they call "time management" aimed at getting you to not do the things that got you there in the first place. A worthwhile endeavor, as there were patients there for the second, third, and one for the fourth time.
    When they asked, in front of the group, how I planned to avoid getting high when I got home and had all of that time on my hands, I told them that should I feel tempted, I would simply make myself remember the time between having the stroke and getting cleared for toilet transfers. I'm certain that would have worked if I had needed it to, but the truth is, I just didn't. It turns out that not wanting to get high is the most effective way of not getting high any more. Which brings me to:
    Second, Vanna, my awesome speech pathologist, asked me point blank whether I missed getting high. I told her, yeah, a little, but not as much as I miss the chunk of my brain that doesn't work any more. That's what I really miss.
    She had me write that down in my fucked-up-from-the-stroke handwriting, and tacked it to the door of her office.
    So may your little experiment go well, and whatever you get from it will be, by definition, orders of magnitude less retarded than mine.
    So, do you think you're related to king Hamid? I just read about him the other day. I think he was Albanian and ruled what is now Kosovo before the Turks took it over in 1912 or some shit. I tried looking it up again, but I still have to use the Opera browser to comment here and I'm afraid of losing all of the stuff I've written already...

    -Doug in Oakland

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    1. I quit smoking for, well, years in about 2007. That time, it was my ex (then gf) exiling me to the backyard when I wanted to smoke. Then I smoked inside the house in late 2016, remember how much I liked drinking and smoking while zipping around the net late at night, and I was back on it again.

      When I got Astro, I exiled myself to the back yard, but still took me a while to try and stop again.

      Health is a big inspiration to stop this crap. My side had been hurting at night (closer to the chest), and stopping everything has made that stop. I wish I knew whether it was the drinking or smoking that was causing it, because I would then know which one I could keep doing.

      I suspect I'm not related to any royalty.

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  5. Every day without smoking and without drinking adds another delightful day to your life when you COULD be blogging...you knw....I know it's not easy to give up what you enjoy Harry......it's hard and you deserve a good deal of respect for having done this much already. That's one lucky cat you've got there, by the way.

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    1. Thank you! Getting to sleep without drinking is a big step. I've always been afraid that if I quit, I would lie awake all night. It hasn't happened yet.

      My fear of lying awake is a whole other blog, I guess.

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  6. Harry, don't worry about your mind, feel into your heart. What is your heart /soul saying? I'm so proud of you! Keep it up! This is "death" to old stories. Who knows what lies ahead??

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    1. Thanks! We'll see what happens. I knew I wanted to shake things up a little this year, and this might be a first step. Or a first and second step.

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  7. Time for changes! Shaking things up is good - I love to know what my limits are, and wander as far as I can. Unstick yourself, get off the map, report back :-)

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    1. Hi, Lisa. Yeah, and the thing is, no matter how out there I believe I'm going, it ends up to mesh more or less with who I've been and what I do, so there's not a whole lot to be lost. Might as well try new things and see what happens!

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  8. I've tried writing without coffee and without sugar and without mango or pomegranate. It was strange. Experiments are cool. I like them. Give me more. Also, about those windows...

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    1. The good thing is that if something doesn't work or it is awful, I can always go back to the way I did things before. You can't say that about everything in life, but with this sort of thing, it seems like I'm not really out anything, worst case scenario.

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  9. It hasn't been as bad as what I feared. So far, so good. Which doesn't mean I'm not going to drink myself to sleep tonight.

    And yes, this page was "The Rise and Fall of Harry Hamid," and I'm changing that, although I haven't figured out how yet. For now, that's as big of a change as what I'm up for...

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  10. You got plenty of super powers without the booze. It's just a bit sharper is all.

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    1. It's amazing how many things around the house I'm getting done now that I'm not drinking. It's sort of weird.

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    2. I get the most done when I'm trying to avoid writing something I'm not sure about.

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