Dinner tonight?

A good friend of mine (I used to sponsor her) had a baby last week, as I mentioned on my blog. I was watching a show half heartedly yesterday as I worked, which was on post-partum depression. I didn't realize how severe this can be.

Many of us, from years of fiddling around with our brains, have damaged our mood patterns, at least that is my opinion. So it wouldn't surprise me that with all the hormones of pregnancy then childbirth and its stressors (she's breastfeeding so she's up every two hours), that my friend would be a bit freaked out. Another thing, her mother lives in another country and she isn't in touch with her, so she doesn't really have a nuclear family to help.

So my friend Lisa and I are taking over dinner for the family tonight. It's an easy dinner: chili, my world famous (the dogs think so, anyway) zucchini bread , and a salad. My friend Lisa is making cornbread so we'll have fun seeing the baby, eating, and having a few laughs.

I am also making time to call her every few days just to check on her: not so much to be a bother, but enough to let her know we care.

Until I blog again, I just wanted to share how good it feels today to think of someone beside me! I may not be much, but I'm all I usually think about!

My best thinking got me here

A blog post today got me thinking, which is not always a good thing. This post had a quote from poet Charles Baudelaire, "a vice is natural, while virtue is artificial because it calls for us to restrain our natural instinct ..."

I was watching Dexter the other night, the sociopathic serial murderer (is that redundant?) who believes he was born evil. His father, when Dexter was young, told him to "Think of your immediate reaction, then say the opposite" when Dexter was trying to pass a psychological profile test. Doing this, he passed.

I've been clean awhile, but I find that sometimes my immediate thinking is just wrong. If I acted on it, I'd have been in big trouble long ago. You'd think after years in recovery, that "wrong" thinking would go away.

Case in point. I had about ten years clean and I was at an ATM behind a person who used the ATM then left his card. I walked up, took the card, then didn't know what to do. The person with me looked at me like I was crazy, took the card from my hand, and yelled after the man, "Hey, you forgot your card." My mind was wondering what to do, what was the right thing to do, I mean, take the card and use it or...?

I'll admit, today I would know what to do, but I still have to think sometimes. In many cases, my thinking is just flat wrong.

A woman flamed me professionally the other day on a list I belong to because I said something that was incorrect. My first instinct was to flame her back. Instead, I did two things. First, I wrote her a pretty decent letter telling her I felt impelled to write because she embarrassed me in front of my professional peers and it hurt my feelings. (I won't mail it.) Then, I found her phone number via her email address and called her and asked her to call me.

People often behave ignorantly, and most of the time it's best to let it slide. But in this case, I really felt like I had to tell her how I felt. It was about how I felt, not about her behavior, if you get the difference.

She emailed me immediately and apologized, saying she was having a bad day and just after she pressed the send button she regretted it. This kept me from stewing about the situation.

I am not yet well, but I'm a darn site better than I was. Progress is a beautiful thing. It's a great fall day and I'm heading out. Until then, be safe. And don't flame people.

NA members please complete membership survey

For anyone who is interested and has not taken the time to do the survey, the link is below.

NA members last completed an anonymous survey in 2003 at the world convention in San Diego , CA . We would like to update the information to more accurately reflect our membership today. The information we gather from the survey helps professionals see NA in a more realistic manner and helps to dispel old myths about our membership. It is our desire to have professionals who refer addicts to NA along with family members and the general public to view Narcotics Anonymous as a viable, credible program of choice for recovery.

We hope to capture a better picture of our global membership by posting the survey online not just distributing it to those who attend a world convention. We want to encourage you and your friends to complete this anonymous survey. You can help us to more accurately reflect the demographics of the worldwide fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous. This survey will be online until 31 October 2007 at http://naws.org/surveys/index.php?sid=1 . We thank you for your efforts in completing the survey as well as informing other members to complete it. And, remember, please complete only one survey.

Thank you for allowing us to serve.
NA World Services

Beautiful day on the Osage River

We took off today in my boyfriend's bass boat and drove up the Osage River into the Missouri then into Loose Creek. In Loose Creek, hoards of flying carp crashed into the boat, scaring me out of my seat and into the floor of the boat. I didn't know fish could fly.

These pics show some of the leaves changing and the bottom picture is a beaver dam. We also saw two herons and a bald eagle.

Then I hit my home group so my day was complete.

Things change quickly

When things change, they tend to change quickly, it always seems to me. From the time I was little, I hated change. I realized in my early high school years that my best friend at the time, with whom I could share every detail of my oh so dramatic (I thought) life, was not always going to be my best friend. And I didn't like it.

"But you'll have a new best friend," she pointed out to me when I raised this dilemma with her.

"But I want you!" I wailed mournfully, coming down from a day-long, ditch-school and trip- through-Phoenix acid extravaganza. Of course, I soon left home and have had several best friends since then. And I lived through the changes.

When life changes today, I am now realizing that God is offering me a handpicked opportunity for growth. I may not like it much, because I am a person most comfortable rooted in my past, even if that past is painful. So I try to focus on the future and its possibilities.

Until I blog again, I hope you have a great day.

The sponsorship tree, or high school revisited

I am going to vent and share my experience, strength and hope (and my opinion) with something I see going on in my area as well as what I've seen in a few other areas. That is the NA cliches.
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In the year between eighth grade and high school I started using to fit in somewhere. When I came to NA, I quickly found a group of people who loved me and put up with my two years of the revolving door syndrome; but there were plenty of people who shunned me, I mean flat out even were rude to me, laughed at me with others, and in short thought I was a flake. Most of them aren't clean today. They were the movers and shakers in the area and at region. I clearly remember when I worked at the World Service Office and some of these regional representatives came over for Conference, they excluded me from their lunches and dinners, and boy, that felt like crap.

It's true, we don't have to like everyone we meet in the rooms or make the decision to hang out with them. But we should extend an atmosphere of love and tolerance and at least feign interest in newcomers when they are at meetings, in my opinion.

Last weekend our area, which is actually three cities about 60 miles apart and the area in between, held a picnic in the largest city, halfway between my city and the city 60 miles away. I grabbed a newcomer who was going through a rough time and was driving everyone crazy and drove up for the picnic.

I'd never been to this park, and when I got there, it was huge. We drove through the park for half an hour and never did find the meeting. No one had bothered to put up a sign, in my way of thinking because this particular portion of NA is so proud of its cliquishness it just overlooked that anyone who wasn't part of the 'in crowd' wouldn't recognize the vehicles. Not such a great message to show the newcomer.

But wait, there's more. There is much talk in this bigger town of "sponsorship trees." I hear often, usually from newcomers, "Oh, she's in my sponsorship tree," or "He's my grand sponsor."

Today one of the big NA cliches is having a BBQ for everyone in several "sponsorship trees," which means that much of the area, especially newcomers, are excluded. Now I don't know how to fix that or if we need to fix that, but I do think this: This was not the intent of sponsorship.

So I've had my vent for the day and look forward to your input. I preach the gospel of "Who put you in charge of that," so I don't talk about this except in my blog and with my sponsor, who would never condone this type of activity. I think it's high school thinking to exclude people from gatherings because they aren't "a branch in your tree." What do you think?

I've got to be ME!

Meet Schatz; she's Oz' half sister on their sire's side, Bastin. Isn't she a ham? To visit her mom, a fellow recovery blogger, click here!

I met Schatz' mom when she googled Schatz' sire's name, and she found me. She's in recovery, too. Shatz is with her in Illinois.

Ms. Romy gets ready for fall