Today is nine months since I've had a cigarette.
I just need to remind myself every once in a while that I was able to accomplish that.
Especially on days like today, when a certain offspring has made me want to smoke 40 cigarettes at the same time while drinking a pint of Jack Daniels.
Nine months. I could have had a baby since my last cigarette.
AHAHAHAHAHAhaaaaaaaaaaaa!
I just slapped myself upside the head.
So this weeks marks FIVE MONTHS since I quit smoking. Yeeha! And I've yet to become a militant non-smoker!
So uh...go r and look at my pictures in some random kind of virtual celebration.
www.flickr.com
|
Have I told you lately that I love you?
*yet another movie quote
Today is two months since I quit smoking.
There are days when I don't think about it at all.
And there are days when the cravings make me think about doing unspeakable things to those I love, said scenarios involving chainsaws and machetes.
Today is one of those days. But I will get through it, as I have gotten through the past eight weeks.
I could always direct my energies here, and finally post something I've been working on for two weeks that's sure to ruffle feathers and raise some eyebrows. Or not. That machete is sure looking good.
Two months. I hope you don't mind if I congratulate myself. I had no confidene in getting this far without falling off the wagon. I surprise even myself sometimes.
Almost six weeks after giving up smoking, I am having the most intense cravings EVER.
I'm going to ram someone's head through a door in a second. Most likely my own.
I tried taking it out on American Idol contestants, but it's not working.
I see a gallon of Haagen Daaz in my immediate future.
Today marks three weeks since I quit smoking.
I've saved about $100.
I have been sleeping through the night without a single apnea episode.
But I will still tear you apart with my bare hands if you come near me while I'm in the midst of an intense craving.
I know those cravings will subside soon. I'm sure my family knows that as well and they're not plotting a coup or anything like that.
Anyhow, just wanted to thank you for all the encouragement and advice and let you know that I'm still a quitter.
I was going to get around to those other questions today. And I had a couple of other things on the fire as well.
However, I am in the foulest of foul moods. Ever have one of those days where you take every thing said to you as insult, or where you're just waiting for someone to cut you off or look at you wrong so you have an excuse to whip out your Swiss army knife and twist the corkscrew into their eyes?
I want a cigarette so bad my hands are shaking and the only thing I want to do with my hands right now, if not grab a cigarette, is wrap them around the throat of the closest avialable asshole. And seeing as this guy is 3,000 miles away, I'll have to find another idiot to choke. Or just stay at my desk until this mood passes over.
If I was an asshole to you today - and chances are good that if you emailed me or left a comment I was - I apologize. I really thought the cravings would be gone by now, but today's jonesing is the worst it's been in the nearly two weeks since I quit. And I'm taking it out on anyone who steps into my space today.
So this would be a good time to leave work, go home, put on some comfortable clothes, curl up on the couch and make love to the remote for several hours. By make love, I mean push its buttons. Whatever. Computer is off until Idol time. Because I can't be trusted at the keyboard right now.
I certainly can't be trusted at 7-11. So I'll be going straight home instead of stopping off to get a comforting 24 oz. hot chocolate/blueberry coffee combo. Which will make me sad. It's a vicious cycle. My lungs better be really fucking thankful for this.
By the numbers:
I am so proud of me.
And I've developed a crush on Salad Fingers.
No, I didn't cave. I just kicked the couch a few times and went to bed.
Today at 2pm will mark one week. Not only am I really going through with this, but I'm doing it with conviction, and without stuffing food in my mouth ever two seconds.
Sure, my family hates me and small animals fear me. But that's nothing new. And they'll learn to adjust.
However, today marks the day where I should move past the cranky bitch stage and welcome myself to the world of hacking up my lungs in tiny, yellow chunks. Mmm.....lung butter.
Have you ever wanted to stage a parent strike? Or maybe just run away? Leave the house for ten, twelve hours and not tell anyone where you're going? Sell your children into servitude? Drink an entire bottle of Jack Daniels? Ram your car into the back of the car in front of you in traffic over and over again? Stab an obnoxious stranger in the eye with an icepick? Kick your husband in the balls? Kill a telemarketer, slowly and painfully?
I. WANT. A FUCKING. CIGARETTE.
Short and succint today:
Here is something you can't understand, how I could just kill a man.*
Cranky doesn't even begin to describe it.
I've recieved a lot of email about quitting smoking. Most of it has been great and supportive and I thank all of you (and will eventually return the emails).
A few people wrote to say how evil the tobacco industry is (in response to my distaste of the truth.com commercials, I suppose) and that I should read that book or see this movie or read some website to find out how I've been lied to, taken advantage of and poisoned by big tobacco, the government and some clandestine cabal of fringe groups and covert operatives.
Listen carefully: I have no one to blame but myself. I knew when I was 13 and took my first drag off of a cigarette (my cousin's Winston) that what I was doing was bad for me. I knew when I bought my first pack of Parliaments (55 cents) that smoking was terrible for my health. I knew when I smoked a pack of Marlboros a day at 19 that I was destroying my lungs. I knew this when I quit smoking in 1983 and I knew it when I started up again in 1996 and went straight back to a pack a day and then onto stress-related chain smoking almost two packs a day. I knew this when I watched my aunt attach herself to an oxygen machine 24 hours a day. I knew this when I had bronchitis and held my inhaler in one hand a cigarette in the other.
I don't blame big tobacco or the government or Joe Camel for my addiction. The blame rests solely with me. I willingly picked up a habit I knew was destructive, costly and disgusting. And not just once. I quit and went back a few times, knowing full well what I was doing.
I don't blame McDonald's for my weight gain. I don't blame the makers of M&M's for my cavities. I don't blame my parents for my shortcomings. I don't blame Judas Priest for my crappy hearing. And I don't blame RJ Reynolds for my expensive, lung destroying habit.
So I won't read the book or check out the website or watch the movie or give another chance to truth.com because I am the only one responsible for my actions. And I'm not a big Russell Crowe fan, anyhow.
I have never in my entire life felt a craving this intense. Not even when I was pregnant with Natalie and went out at four in the morning to get those little ten cent packets of Kool-Aid because I had to have it, and then drank a quart of cherry and a quart of some green flavor and peed rainbows for the next two days, and also dreamed about the Kool-Aid guy three nights in a row.
If that Kool-Aid guy showed up now, I'd kick him right in the knees. Why? Because I woke up with my entire body set on vibrate as it waits, waits, waits for that nicotine intake. It's jonesing. And I'm not giving it what it wants. So in turn my brain is like, "Hey, if she's going to screw us out of our addiction like that, let's fuck around with her mind!" and now I'm sitting here quite sure that today will be the day where I tear somebody's head off their neck and smoke their corpse.
But I can breathe a bit better so that counts for something, right?
