The End Of Meteorological Winter—AKA Leap Day 2016

The coldest wettest part of winter is finally over in Western Washington.  Now we can have spring showers.   Tomorrow is predicted to have 0.7 inches of rain.  That will be one of the wettest days for the next 9 months.  The 10-day forecast is for 10 more days of rain.   Fortunately it will be warmer with longer hours of daylight finally breaking into 12 hours of daylight yesterday.

I am grateful for more daylight and warmer days.  It also means even less of that dreary Seattle mist.

My Friend Mike

I talk with my friend Michael several times a week by phone and in person once or twice a week.  Mostly I am just calling him to practice checking in and ensuring at least one conversation with another person having long-term recovery every day. 

I am extremely grateful for my friend Mike.

The Neighbor Kids—Then and Now

Went to Beneroya Hall last night to watch (part of) the Seattle Symphony back a Led Zeppelin cover band.  By the time I bought the last wheelchair accessible seat/ticket, it ended up being in the very last row.  The acoustics were great, but it was a too far away to see facial expressions. 

Led Zeppelin was together for 12.  The cover band had been together for 20 years.  They spent more time playing Led Zeppelin music than Led Zeppelin did.  With the symphony backing, LZ’s heavy metal sounded much more melodic stories of the hero’s journey.   It was a surprisingly good combination and we really enjoyed it.  I wished they had played louder—something I can’t ever remember wanting before at a rock concert.

I was going to go see Led Zeppelin with Kevin Warren almost 40 years ago.   He was the nearest neighbor kid my age and lived a mile away.   He bought the tickets and then screwed me over by saying someone stole them out of his home then taking and kid to the concert with my ticket.  Fast forward 20 years and it seems most likely that he died an alcoholic death in an unmarked grave in Arizona at about 40 years old.

I felt good about having finally seen Led Zeppelin 40 years later…and sad about Kevin.

My roommate  and I met son at a meeting tonight.   He is a Washington State Department of Corrections Work Release facility in downtown Seattle.  He came with two other guys from the WR place.   One of them was a nearby neighbor from his childhood.  In other words, they are both convicted felons doing time together.  They grew up in a small town 45 NNE of Seattle notorious for teen substance abuse problems in a way that did not exist back in my day.  We had alcohol and pot.   They had heroin, meth, opiate pills, plus alcohol and pot.

I felt sad when we left the meeting after chatting with him and his cohorts.  They are convicted felons due to stupid crimes they did to feed their insatiable drug habits.   That will affect the rest of their lives even if they never get caught again.   I hope that they stay sober and get on with living a better life than the one the lead them to prison.

I am grateful I finally got to see Zeppelin after getting ripped-off by a friend instead of meeting a childhood friend while incarcerated as a convicted felon.

Time For A New Apartment Lease

I have lived in the same apartment for the last 13 years.  My lease expires at the end of April and I got my dunning notice for next year’s rates.  My rent is going up by by 6%.  That is not bad for a hot housing market.  The rent increase would have been much more except for non-stop construction since last summer on new siding, deck railings and such.   The work is still not done and soon it will be time to paint.   I am sure that has lead to many moving out who would have otherwise stayed.

After 13 years, my low-quality rental carpet is trashed and the place needs to be painted.   My roommate is going to move out by July.   After that, I will move things around to get the placed tuned up one room at a time.   I really like the location and flat level parking lot close to my front door.  I may get parquet flooring and enhance my bathroom shower stall to make it more accessible for me.

I am grateful to be able to afford to live in a reasonably nice place in a great location with no crime that affects me in our complex.

Don’t Know

I used to have to have answers right now to communication problems that bothered me and did not do well with ambiguity.   Now I still don’t like ambiguity and poor communication, but I can deal with it better than how it used to be.

Striving to be mindful is a big help.  Prayer and meditation are also powerful tools that I did not used to have.

I am grateful to be much more okay with “don’t know” than how it used to be.

Being Of Service To Others

Gave two people a ride to my noon meeting today for their first time there.   One lady had six weeks and the other guy has 2+ years.  When we got there early, a gay man we all knew told us how he was about to go through a “de-gayification” treatment at the behest of his fellow church members.  We all staunchly advocated against that with love and kindness.   He decided to not go through with that painful humiliating sham.

Enjoyed the meeting, gave three people a ride from the meeting to their next stop and then met with our Tuesday gang at the mall.

I am grateful to have been of service to others today.   It got me out of myself. 

Living In The Seattle Metro Area

For a 2^nd tier major metro area in the US, Seattle seems to has excessive traffic problems, plenty of homelessness and a police force overseen by the US DoJ due to minority abuse.   The good news is that there are plenty of jobs, clean water and hope for improvement in the future.

Today’s post is not so much on how great Seattle is but on how badly people in other state’s treat their own people.  Flint, Michagan’s water supply contains lead in brain disabling doses due to choices made by local politicians who then act surprised when this becomes a problem.

In Washington State, we have some problems with state institutions housing criminals and the mentally ill.  The prison problem is the inevitable result of 40 years of the war on drugs in America with the prison problems.  It could be worse—much, much worse.  

Compared with other social problems in America and around the world, I am grateful for our regional problems that we make better.   That is a lot better than being a pawn like Syria in a second generation cold war married to religious conflict and corruption.

Mad Homework Skillz

Helped my roommate do a 25-question homework assignment on HIV/AIDS.   She was really struggling with her methodology.   She would handwrite every question and every answer while working from the [seemingly wrong] handout.   First I showed her how to highlight the question and right-click to Google the answer.   Then I got her to stop using the an old version of the handout and use the handout from her classes online website.

She was flummoxed, frustrated and overwhelmed by the assignment due in large part to an extremely labor intensive method due to a lack of skills with Word, Google and homework.

I tend to discount knowledge that I have due to a known fallacy of assuming people know what I know.   As reminded of while helping my roommate, I have excellent Google/copy/paste skills.   15 years ago as a MS Windows support tech, the best skill I had was being able to accurately setup a Google search.  If I could have only one web URL to use, that URL would be Google—to get to all others.

I am grateful for my reading, writing, computer and web literacy.   Those skills make my life incalculably better.

Record Rain

With ten days to go, the Seattle area has had record rainfall for meteorological winter for the months of December through February with just under 23 inches of rain.   With 10 mostly dry days in the forecast, that has broken the old record set in 1999 by a few hundredths of an inch.  

The rain mostly came in intermittent storms with a break in-between the storms or a lowering of the freezing level that kept snow in the mountains for a few days.   There was little or no snow in the lowlands and no extreme flooding or landslides.   The snow pack depth is at 102% of normal.  A bonus was seemingly less than usual of the Seattle mist that does not put down precipitation but makes it dark, gray and wet outside for days and weeks at a time.

I am grateful for lots of rain with a relatively mild rate of natural disaster action.  That is fantastically better than the extremes of drought or heavy flooding.

More Will Be Revealed

So I was baffled by a near-horrified response from our mall buddies yesterday.   Talked with two of them today.  It seems a couple thought I was stuck in the past and still going on about no more BS and being abusive.  Another did not think much of it.   Turns out I had badly mis-communicated timelines since I was talking about going forward and not looking back to rehash the past.

In the distant past, this sort of thing would be grounds to giving up on even important relationships.   Now it is an opportunity to be patient, wait a day and then check back to see what happened.   That is a lot healthier behavior.

I am grateful to my improving emotional and social IQ/maturity.  It is definitely coming slowly and late to my life, but that is fantastically better than never.

I Was Horribly Wrong

My roommate Lea made a wonderful heartfelt admission of love to me today.   I thanked her for that and then added I needed to “cut the bullshit” in the future.   Judging by her bolting in tears and the chastisements from others, I was wrong to do that.  I certainly hurt her feelings in a way that was not intended.   I also had a sense that this was at least somewhat staged, manipulative and mostly true.

Relationships and emotions are confusing for me.   Today I was totally baffled on several counts.

The good news is that I made amends to the best of my ability and we had a decent afternoon together.

I am grateful for the love, support, advice, guidance and feedback that I get from others that I trust and care for.

A Hate Crime In Redmond

Sandy and I have dine together nearly every week for going on eight years.   We have been having lunch for the last five years.   For three years before that, we would get together for dinner.    She is one of the best friends I have ever had in my life.  We meet somewhere in Redmond or Kirkland.   We used to make an effort to rotate restaurants every time.

Today we meet in Redmond to have lunch and patronize a thrift store owned by a black woman that had a KKK robe dropped off for consignment.   The thrift store owner was still traumatized by the experience almost a month later.   She had her door locked when we came by at 2 PM.

Turns out that she is a gospel singer and Sandy knew Leona from when she sang at Sandy’s church two years ago.   She is a talented woman from the Bahamas that sings, paints and dedicates a large portion of the proceeds from her store to health causes back in the Bahamas.   It boogles my mind how someone would think that is the sort of person deserving to be persecuted in our community—kind, smart, talented, hard-working.

Leona was clearly still upset by the experience as she recounted it to us.   Sandy was unaware of the story.   We got some items for purchase.   I paid for them and told Sandy her birthday came early this year.   Our birthdays are a few days apart in early March.  Mission accomplished!

I am grateful to live in a place where hate crimes are so rare as to make the news.   I am also grateful for the wherewithal to support talented immigrants and for my good friend Sandy.

A Reprieve

My roommate agreed to move out within a month on Tuesday.   She is so ready to fend for herself on variety of levels.   Having her here makes both our lives much easier.

With the help from wiser friends, she is going to stay here until the next outburst (probably won’t be for a long time), the summer break from school or sometime later.

I don’t know and doubt she knows why she had a melt-down and yelled at me several times.   She explained how moving out would save her time and money—that was exactly 100% wrong on a variety of levels.  Undoubtedly there was a predatory guy being a shitdisturber helping to fuel her righteous indignation.   Stress from school was a factor.

Talking about it with people we love and trust was a new experience for both of us.  We made a lot of progress that we could not have made on our own.  I am sure that was healthy new behavior.

I am grateful to have love and active support from a kind group of people I admire and respect in my life today.

Happy Four Days

I have felt happy for the last four days.  Getting a S.A.D. light last weekend probably helped.  A timeline for closure with my roommate helped.  Swimming helped.  Meetings helped.  Talking with others really helped.

I am grateful to have been in a moderately blissful state of happiness since Monday night.   That is fantastically better than a nagging sense of unease and morbid reflection.

A Full Day

Left at 8:45 AM for a dental appointment.   Got home at 9:45 from our monthly meeting at the prison.  Had lunch with Dan and meet with Bill after that.   Bought flowers and cards to give to four of my women friends for Valentine’s Day.  Gave them out 3 days early.   That went well.

I am tired and grateful for a full day.

Right Action vs Sloth

Working my way through the steps again, it has become even more abundantly clear that sloth is my major defect of character.   Certainly a part of that is laziness.   Probably the biggest part is a mental health problem dealing with fear.  More important than the source of the problem is how I deal with it.   HP powered right action is my best solution.

I am grateful to know my problem, the solution and be working on it.

Conflict Resolution by Group Support

My roommate and I had intractable conflict issues.   We meet with two other couples every Tuesday to talk in a mostly casual way about recovery.   They have over 100 years of sobriety along with tons of personal and professional experience deal with substance abuse and recovery issues.

My typical conflict response is to shut down.  My roommates first response is to run away.  It was major new behavior for us to sit down with strong directed active help from our betters to work out way through the conflict.

My conclusion about her needing to move out stands from last night.   We did use a much better process for discussing it so that we will be much more amicable and at peace with our decision and process.

I am grateful to have trusted great help from wise elders that love me so that I can learn and practice new behavior.

Almost Three Years

My roommate Lea has lived with me for the last 35 months while changing her life from having drug usage and crimes to pay for them to being mostly clean from street drugs.  She has progressed from the complete and utter incomprehensible demoralization of when the drugs stopped working to being in her second quarter of college with good grades.  It is a truly miraculous infinite improvement from all negative to mostly positive.

Unfortunately a few of her old shortcomings that come out sideways and are causing problems in our relationship that I can’t tolerate—and we have been through a lot.  In the last three weeks, she has bailed on her housekeeping chores and taken to screaming at me several times.  The cleaning was negotiable.  The verbal and emotional violence from yelling is not acceptable.

Helping her this far is the greatest thing I have done for another person in my life. I like her and love her and wish her great success on the rest of her journey through life.  

I am grateful for having had Lea in my life.   I enjoyed her company and learned a lot about relationships.  It has been a front-row seat to a miracle to watch her progress from where she was to where she is.

Superbowl 50

Normally the NFL numbers the Superbowl’s in Roman numberals.   Apparently “Superbowl L” was not nearly as cool as 50. Understandably so.

For Denver Bronco fans and aficionados, it was a great game.  For casual fans that like back-n-forth scores and thrilling finishes like me, it was a somewhat boring game.

Peyton Manning was one of the greatest quarterbacks ever with the most ever passing yardage and touchdown passes.  At 40 years old, he was a caretaker on offence with the league’s best defense shutting down the Carolina Panthers and their MVP quarterback Cam Newton.

The NFL is very profitable thanks in large part to massive public subsidies to their billion dollar stadiums that host, at most, a dozen games a year.  I like watching football.   I would feel a lot better about funding education, healthcare and housing for all our people instead of stadiums for billionaires.

I am grateful for the enjoyment people get out of watching NFL games.

A SAD Light

The down side to long summer days at latitude 47 is long winter days.  In December we got down to just over 8 hours of daylight.  Combining shorts days with our all too often overcast skies leads to Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) causing people to feel a sense of depression they would not otherwise have.

I had thought about getting some grow lights for indoor plants.  The downside of that would be potheads trying to break in to steal non-existent marijuana plants.  I went from having 40 plants on the deck last summer to one last lemon cypress tree which is like a miniature cedar tree due to my deck being off limits for the last 6 months, no plant lights, plant killing cats, and little effort on my part.

While restocking on kitty food, litter and a bale of toilet paper at Costco today, I got their version of an impulse buy stacked by the front door—a 7500 lumen Verilux happylight.  It has been on since I got home.  I feel better.  Does the SAD light work?  I can’t tell the difference between the placebo effect and real therapy.  The practical strategy is to feel better and tell myself it is working.

I am grateful for my SAD light.  Should have got another SAD light 4ish years ago after the last one died.  Progress, not perfection!

No Topic

Have some sort of writer’s block in finding a topic that lights my fire to write.

I am grateful to be writing even if it is quite possibly for the sake of a foolish consistency.  I doubt that.  I am sure that writing every night is good for me—no matter what I write.

Meeting With Bill

I am working my way through the NA step study guide by handwriting a page of answers nearly every night before I post here.  It usually takes 2-3 answers to questions to make a page.  I read and discuss my responses with Bill from NA.  We met most Thursday since July.  In the middle of December, life, health issues and the holidays took its toll and we had not meet for seven weeks until today.

It was good to see him, talk with him, catch up on what is going on in our lives and then discuss 4^th step issues.   We meet at Crossroads Mall since moving indoors for the winter.  Cut our meeting slightly short today due to a sudden surge in muzak volume throughout the mall.

Bill is a native Seattlite a few years older than me.  We get along well and enjoy discussing life and recovery together.

I am grateful to be sober in recovery and for having guys like Bill to help me achieve a better perspective on my life.

Online Banking

I get two pension checks deposited to my bank account every month.  They are ALWAYS ontime or early if payday is a weekend.   I love online banking when it comes to paying bills and monitoring account activity.  I definitely check my online banking more than I would if I had to deal with it in person or by phone—perhaps even slightly OCD about doing that.

I am blessed to have a checking account at the bank of my choice conveniently located less than 10 minutes away in 3 different directions.   It would suck to be poor, not have a regular bank account and get charged somewhere between 3 and 20% of each check to cash them like how it is for some huge fraction of people in the US and around the world.

I am grateful for online banking and electronic fund transfers.   It decreased my stamp usage like how the advent of cars cut down on the use of horses for transportation.

Serenity

Had a dental appointment mixup today due to the reminder call saying “1:30” when it was at 9:30.   Got to the dental office and got turned away for being there at the wrong time.

Was completely okay with the mixup.  My reaction then and now was a surprisely pleasant and serene response.  Am now scheduled for Thursday morning and again for a cleaning in early March.

I am grateful for the blissed-out serenity I got from swimming two days in a row.

The 2016 Iowa Caucus for Presidential Candidates

Bernie and Hillary are in a tie.  Cruz leads with 28% over Trump (24%) and Rubio (23%).    

In the past, I voted for fringe Presidential candidates as a way of making a statement and knowing my vote would not make tiniest iota of a difference for the mainstream candidates.

I am grateful to have Bernie Sanders running as a people’s candidate instead of a front man (or woman) for Wall Street or the far right-wing nut jobs.