Quit Day 41; Chantix Day 60

Edited the Title: Because I really can't do math! Snort!

Wow -- seriously, was today the 60th day on Chantix? No wonder.....

Many, many posts ago, I noted that stress happens. It happens all the time. Traffic stinks or the kids get mouthy or North American marsupials try to move into your laundry room. Stress happens all the time, to absolutely everyone, and it's only us nicotine freaks who start lamenting, "If only I hadn't quit smoking!"

Today, though... Today was my day to totally flip out.

I made it to Franklin and back yesterday without smoking. In fact, I got stuck in traffic behind a bus that broke down and caught on fire, so I was actually in my beloved Prius for four hours instead of just 2 hours and 45 minutes. And I was late for the workshop. And it was nerve-wracking. And blah blah blah. It's stress, y'all. Everyone goes through it all the time.

And I didn't smoke.

I got home around 2:45 in the morning, and then I realized how very little I understand about the business. If it were a matter of being invited to go someplace and teach people how to scrapbook -- and to get paid for it because they really just loved me to death or whatever -- that would be one thing. But the business inherently comes with math-related issues. Like, supplies. Supplies must be purchased. Supplies must be shipped. Supplies must be paid for. And -- if the supplies are not strictly part of the workshop process, then supplies must have state sales tax applied to them.

And computers have to be told which supplies to purchase, and computers must be told which taxes must be paid.

And -- I have never been particularly good at these kinds of tasks. The Tennessee state resale tax code is written in a language that I am pretty sure doesn't originate on this planet. It looks like English, but when you read it out loud, it's like the words don't go together to make coherent thoughts. In English. Maybe they make coherent thoughts in other parts of the universe, but not here at my house, they don't.

Don't ask me about the ordering process. I will literally start crying again. I do not understand that computer program. I do not. I do not. I am embarrassed beyond all comprehension to admit that, because my favorite sister in the whole wide world is a computer programmer, and I know that if she looked at it, she would be embarrassed for me to be so utterly clueless when it comes to filling out those forms.

So. OK. I woke up this morning, and I was out of Chantix. Friday afternoon was beyond hectic, and I didn't have a chance to refill the prescription. I have missed the occasional dose, so I just finished 56 days' worth of pills on the 59th night. I was due another dose by this afternoon.

I tried to figure out the computer programs. I didn't succeed. I tried to calculate state sales tax. I didn't succeed. And then I realized, "This is just like math," and then I started crying.

Wait -- let me check the calendar -- No, I really am not being unduly hormonal. Sorry. I know every guy reading this blog is probably shaking his head and rolling his eyes, but no, it's not the phase of the moon. It's just an unusual amount of stress, that's all.

I cried and cried and cried. I left the computer. I couldn't concentrate on TV. (Why can't I find a decent newscast during the day? CNN Headline used to be news. Now it's news-ertainment or some giddy crap with excessive computer graphics and buxom broads chirping the headlines at me and exhorting me to send her email to tell her what I think about the news. ARGH!)

And -- That -- was when I realized, in all my pacing and sniffling and gnashing my teeth -- that's when I realized, "What I really want is a cigarette."

To say I started really bawling then is a massive understatement. I cried like little kids do. I cried so hard I couldn't catch my breath. I called my husband and sobbed over the phone. He told me to go to the pharmacy and get my next dang dose of Chantix.

And that's what I did. I stood there in the Rite Aid pharmacy, sniffling and hiccuping and gazing balefully at the pharmacist with my red, puffy eyes, and he filled that prescription so fast, it would make your head spin. Actually, I got a box that looked like the starter box of Chantix, but he assured me that they were just out of the regular dose, and he had pried open the starter box and replaced the 0.5 mg sleeve of pills with regular 1.0 mg pills. I wiped my nose on my sleeve and thanked him.

I made it through the storm. I was more than a bit weepy all day long, but I made it without buying cigarettes or smoking. I was just so emotionally distraught that I wasn't thinking straight. Focusing on getting my prescription refilled was what got me through the crisis. I don't know if I needed the next pill, but it was easier to work toward that than it was to go through another fifteen minutes of wanting to smoke.

Just when I think I'm out of the woods... Well, I still have plenty of Chantix, and a whole 'nother month to work on getting past this emotional neediness of mine.

Quit Day 47. That's *so* cool. I'm so glad I made it through another day.

Pop quiz

Well, Friday night brings a test to my resolve. Here I've been breaking my arm, patting myself on the back. Tomorrow night should be the real test.

I'm driving to Nashville.

Without cigarettes.

I haven't taken a significant road trip without smoking since my freshman year of college.

I wonder how this one's going to go?

There are other various points of stress and interest. Like, I'm teaching a class. Like, the supplies for that class haven't all arrived yet. Like, I have to drive three hours without smoking, teach a class, and turn around and drive home again.

Without smoking.

In the meantime, I was sick Thursday morning. I woke up feeling very, very profoundly unwell. I won't be too specific, because upchucking in my opinion is an indelicate behavior at best and darned uncivilized at worst. So let's just say I felt entirely unwell Thursday morning and didn't take any Chantix until very late in the day. Since I have to take it on a moderately full stomach, and I didn't eat anything until late in the day.

It throws off my entire schedule, but hey, I haven't smoked anything. So I guess I had enough Chantix in my system to get me through the indelicate part of the day.

Honestly, I am looking forward to the day that I don't *think* about it all so much. It's so much effort some days. It's easier on other days. I am conflicted at the moment.

Maybe Monday will be a nice, easy day.

No, wait, I have a dental appointment Monday. Darn it!

Oh, well, at least I know I'm not alone!

Five Weeks!

It's been five weeks since I've had a cigarette.

Chantix's "GetQuit" site tells me that I can now officially call myself a non-smoker or an ex-smoker. It also cautions that if I have one cigarette, I'll probably start smoking again.

To be brutally, painfully, unpleasantly honest: I have not found the GetQuit feature to be particularly helpful in this quest to quit smoking. Taking Chantix: Yes. Blogging about it: Yes. Reading other Chantix quitters' blogs: Yes. Quitting along with my sister: Yes.

All these attributes have been extremely helpful in my quest to quit smoking.

But the GetQuit stuff?

Eh.

Not so much. For one thing, their grammar drives me crazy. "Less colds," one headline recently touted, and my insides cringed, "FEWER colds, FEWER colds, FEWER colds!" This despite my graduate school professor who assured me that English is a living language and I needed to loosen up about spelling and grammar.

I have obviously failed my old professor.

GetQuit has been cute. And it has been time-consuming when I need it to be. Otherwise, it has not been very helpful to me. I really rely more on Maggie and Tasina and the other bloggers. Or I rely on myself and my ability to distract myself when I would like to smoke. "Have a cigarette? No, thank you, I think I'll wash some dishes." Or, "No, thanks, I think I'll sit here and make some cards."

Keeping busy is better than watching the asinine GetQuit cartoons.

(I used to be the head copywriter for an ad agency from hell. Sometimes the GetQuit cartoons make me want to scream and throw Addys through a window.)

But in the final analysis -- cutesy or not, poor grammar or perfectly composed -- I'm still not smoking. I climbed a mountain, I cleaned my front porch, I made 11 scrapbook pages in a single week -- and I didn't light a cigarette the whole time.

Maybe they're right. Maybe I really *am* a non-smoker.

Weird.

Chantix side effects

ADDED
February, 2009

This post is now a year and five months old, yet I still get more hits on this one than any other. I've gotten some very pointed comments about how evil Chantix is and how I'm an idiot for using it. Yet I have to say that after a year and five months, I'm still not smoking.

Chantix was the perfect drug. For me.

I'm sorry if it is not the perfect drug for you.

I understand if you think it's a dangerous drug. I agree to a point. Most drugs are dangerous in the wrong hands.

But I still love the stuff and am terribly grateful to it for making me able to quit smoking.

So stop writing to me about how awful Chantix is and how the government should ban it. I disagree vehemently. You can't change my mind. I promise I won't make you take it. But don't take it away from me and all the other smokers who could benefit from its good qualities.

Now, on with the original post...

While rhapsodizing about mountains and Zippo lighters, I totally forgot to mention the latest news in my own personal Chantix side effects.

The nausea came back for a visit on Wednesday. No idea why. I guess I hadn't eaten enough before taking the pill.

Eh, whatever. I got over it, and I still took the next pill that night.

Today I was surfing around the Internet and finally heard that at least one person may have died because of Chantix. At least his girlfriend thinks it was Chantix that did the trick.

This is sad. It's sad on so many levels. I'll have to gather my thoughts and decide how to address this issue some other day. For now, I have to write some stuff and earn my keep. And I still am not smoking, not even when I'm writing. Pretty cool, huh?

Smokies from the ex-smoker

I was scrapbooking while the TV was on tonight, and I heard the distinctive sound of a Zippo lighter. Click, zzzzzzzzzz, phphphph, cuh-click!

It was Marlee Matlin in "Children of a Lesser God." I looked up and watched her exhale a cloud of smoke. And I was, of course, mesmerized. Smoking is pretty, darn it. It's so photogenic. No wonder it's still going on in the world today.

Someday I should photograph my Zippo collection. I love Zippo lighters. I have good stories about all of them.

My mother met my father during World War II. (I was a late surprise for my parents -- I really am not as old as most WWII couples' children are.) Anyway, Mama met Daddy at Maison Blanche in New Orleans at the height of World War II. Daddy was a Naval aviator. Mama was a secretary to the head of the candy division at Maison Blanche, who happened to be Daddy's long-lost uncle.

It's almost a scene out of a movie: "Good looking sailor walks into office where typewriters clack and telephones ring as 'Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree' plays on tinny radio. Shy, bookish secretary looks up and is instantly smitten. Sailor asks for long-lost uncle. Uncle proposes a night on the town in the Big Easy. Gorgeous rival secretary is busy. Shy secretary gets to go out on double-date with boss, boss' wife, and handsome sailor, then spends the next two years chasing handsome sailor to the altar."

It didn't take Mama two years. She snagged Daddy with a Zippo lighter. Everyone smoked in World War II, and Daddy was no exception. The thing was, with the rations and the hoarding metal for munitions and planes and such, you couldn't get a Zippo lighter. Daddy was using paper matches to light his cigarettes. Mama noticed this, and when he shipped out, she went to the counter at Maison Blanche -- which was a huge department store back in the day -- and told the girls there to let her know if they got a shipment of Zippos. Sure enough, a few months later when they did get some Zippos, they called Mama in the candy office.

Mama used up ration coupons and some of her hard-earned salary. She bought a Zippo lighter, and she promptly packaged it up and sent it to Daddy with a lighthearted note, "I noticed you didn't have a lighter, so I thought I would send you one. Here you go! Hope to hear from you soon!"

Puh-leeeeeeeeeze, keep in mind -- the entire time all this was going on, Mama was about 18 years old, and she was the only gainfully employed person in her entire family. Her father got occasional work, but he was disabled. Her mother was a real, old-fashioned housewife. Her older sister Sybil had been abandoned by a deadbeat husband, and Sybil didn't work. Sybil had a baby named Rodney. Mama's younger siblings were Dolores, who kept cutting school, and the baby of the family was Buddy, who was precocious and managed to make trouble where none was to be found.

Mama was supporting seven people on her secretarial salary, and she still managed to snag a guy that the Navy kept sending back to college with nothing more than a lighter.

I'm telling you, Zippos are good. Even if cigarettes are not.

The photo above is the Smoky Mountains. I don't know who introduced tobacco to the world, but whoever it was caused a lot of trouble for me and all the other happy smokers. I still don't think of myself as a non-smoker, but maybe I will be someday. In the meantime, I'm keeping my Zippos and my Smoky Mountains. I hope everyone understands. Some things are just too nice to be forgotten simply because they're related to smoking.

One Month

This will be a short post due to lingering, overwhelming exhaustion.

I have not smoked a cigarette in a month.

To celebrate that, my little family and I went to Cades Cove in the Great Smoky Mountains.

I have been there before. Having spent all the summers of my youth in a girls' camp in the southern Appalachians, I adore the mountains. I love them. I love them. I love them. I cannot emphasize enough how much I love the mountains. I am not a beach girl -- I hate the salt and the wind and the crashing surf with all those biting fish and stinging things. I love the mountains.

But this time, we decided to go to Abrams Falls. That's a five-mile hike, round-trip. And it's up hill and down hill, and the sign at the start of the trail even warns that it is a hike of "medium" difficulty, and it could be a 3 to 4 hour hike.

It took me about 5 hours. I was literally the last person to stumble out of the forest Monday night.

People that I left at the falls... passed me on the trail.

Seriously.

I was the LAST person to walk out of the woods Monday night.

But at least it wasn't pitch-black. And I didn't get attacked by a bear or anything.

I do love the woods -- I particularly love the mountains. The verdant, fertile, black, old, rotting earth under the mountain laurels smells so delicious to me. It's so rich and sublime. Even in our drought, in the darkest, shadiest spots on the trail, trickles of underground springs made things muddy and mossy for me. I adore that kind of earth. I would live there forever if I could.

But I only get to visit.

Since I survived the whole ordeal, I do get to point out that I made it five miles and didn't need anyone to carry me out of the forest. Even my sister Amy thinks that if I still smoked, I would not have made it -- and I think she's right. I might not be past the point of being susceptible to lung cancer, but I am a lot better than I was 28 days ago.

I can't believe I still haven't smoked.

On the other hand, I am awfully glad I've made it this far.

Thank you, Chantix! And thank you, Chantix bloggers!!!!!! You guys keep me going when I think I'd like to have a cigarette!!!!!!

Scatterbrained but happy

I am -- scattered.

I don't know if it's the Chantix. I don't know if it's quitting smoking. I don't know if it's that I'm 40 years old. All I know is that I am more than a bit scatterbrained since I started taking Chantix.

The image here is a flipped scan of some unmounted rubber stamps. Those of you who do not craft, stamp, papercraft, or scrapbook are wondering what the heck the purpose of this stuff is. It's ... more cost and space efficient than traditional wood-mounted rubber stamps.

I have stacks of these things in my house, the result of a 7-year- obsession with everything Club Scrap. Late last week, a Club Scrap member posted on the email loop that she was searching for the "Kit for a Cause" unmounteds. I told her I had them, and five days later, I finally sent her a scan of the rubberstamp sheet that you see in this blog post.

It took me five stinkin' days to send her a scan that took me five minutes to accomplish and re-size for email.

And then she wrote back to me and said, "Those are the 'Reach Out' kit UM's. I was looking for the 'Kit for a Cause' UM's, but thank you so much, anyway, and I'll keep looking."

Seriously?

The moment she said it, I knew she was right. I *do* have the Reach Out UM's. I *don't* have the "Kit for a Cause" UM's. Sure, both of 'em were for charity, and both of them were wonderful, warm sentiments and images -- but how on earth could I -- *I*, an obsessed and rabid Club Scrap fan -- how could *I* confuse the two?? And spend *days* being confused? And actually *scan* the wrong UM's and send a picture days late to the person who wanted to buy the retired and much adored UM's in question?

I think it's the Chantix.

The other side effect of Chantix that no one warned me about was -- I think I'm generally happier.

As in, not quite as clinically depressed as I've been for so much of my adult life.

I love therapists and I hate drugs, so I spend a lot of time denying my basic underlying depression. I'm a glass-half-full kind of person, but things always get out of hand when I'm not looking.

Since I've been taking Chantix, I've been cleaning the house. I let housecleaning slide most of the time. It's so easy to give up on it. I mean, if you clean something up, it just gets dirty again. What's the point of making the beds? Someone's just going to go sleep in it and get it all rumpled again in a few hours.

But for the last few weeks -- I've been doing the most amazing things. Mopping the kitchen floor every few days. Sweeping all the wood floors every day. Tidying up bird cages, moving boxes of bottles to better storage facilities, and heck, yesterday, I moved the couch and swept *under* it. This is not something I *do*. Unless I've lost one of my favorite pens.

And cooking -- I've been reborn. I know Maggie's talked about all her cooking efforts on her fabulous blog, but honestly, for the last year, I have been in the most severe and uncompromising rut about cooking. I cooked dinner for 20 years. I got good and tired of it. My entire family knows -- after months of training -- not to ask the worst question in the world, "What's for dinner?" I can go berserk over such a horrid question. Don't ask. If there's a dinner in front of you, that's what's for dinner. If there isn't, well, find something else. And do not risk the Wrath of Bay by asking me what I'm going to cook. I can't stand making that decision....

Except that for the last couple of weeks, deciding what's for dinner and then making it has been enormously satisfying. Roast beef, pork chops, or my beloved steamed broccoli with lemon zest and balsamic vinegar -- I'm perfectly happy with dinner these days. It doesn't feel like the insurmountable chore that it felt like three or four months ago.

Maybe it's the Chantix. Maybe it's just coincidence. I don't know.

Oh, that reminds me. I really don't smell or taste things better than I did before quitting. I keep wondering if that's going to improve. I do feel better, and my mouth tastes better when I wake up in the mornings -- but other than that, the only benefit from quitting that I can discern is... I'm saving money.

And that's cool. I'm OK with saving money.

It makes up for being stupid and cleaning house all the time.

Where did all my money go?

According to my Quit Meter, I've saved almost $240 by not smoking over the last 24 days.

Seriously?

OK -- wait, let me quantify that last word. Shonda Rhimes and the cast of "Grey's Anatomy" has made the question, "Seriously?" terribly popular. I just want to let you all know that I seriously said "seriously" long before that TV show debuted.

I think it's a writer chick kind of word, which is why it just had to make it to the front of the entertainment world.

Oh, my gosh, y'all -- no one on Grey's Anatomy smokes. Not even the baddies!

Back to tonight's post: I have saved almost $240 by not smoking. Of course, I've spent $260 on Chantix so far. But I still have $65 worth of Chantix pills left! So that's a savings of, what, $45? YEAH! I think I did the math really well that time. My sister the math genius will let me know if I messed that up. OK, so I've bought two months of Chantix, and I've not smoked for three weeks and three days, and I'm already past the breaking-even point.

Now, my husband and I are "envelope" people. We don't use envelopes any more, but we are the kind of people who put our finances in order by putting all our money into categories. Bill money, grocery money, and daily money. We've been using this method for more than ten years, and it works for us. (Actually, Wesley was using that method before I married him, but I kicked him off track for a few years. And then I almost defaulted on my student loan, and then we got back on track by the "envelope" method. Our credit union gal loves us for this -- we are her most organized customers.)

So. I have had the same allotment for "daily money" as I have had for a few years. (We do have occasional raises in daily money to allow for inflation, y'know. Daily money used to be $15 per day. I don't wanna say how long ago that was.)

Now that I'm not spending some of my daily money on cigarettes, we have more daily money. Somehow most of it gets spent. But sometimes I have a little left over, and I tuck a $5 bill away in the secret compartment of my wallet.

This happens specifically because prescriptions come out of the "bill money" category of our family finances. If I had rolled the daily money surplus over into the bill money category, then I would not have been able to scrimp pennies together every once in a while.

And even though I've only been without a cigarette for about 24 days, I've already taken the whole family out for dinner once. In a nice restaurant. Where they wait on you at your table. And the drinks arrive in glasses, not paper cups. I mean -- this place had cloth napkins. I am not making that up.

I like that. I could taste the food; I could smell the food; I didn't have to cook the food; and someone else washed the dishes. And the whole thing was paid for -- out of what I had saved from not buying two packs of Capri Menthol 120's every day.

I rock.

My sister Amy rocks, too. She has been quit for more than a whole month, now!!!! And she hasn't lapsed at all!!!!! She is a rock star, and I am in awe of her!!!!

Then again, I have always been in awe of Amy. She helped me with my math homework, y'know.

Sept. 11th

No matter which way you look at it, September 11th is a tough day in anyone's memory.

I will never forget where I was or what I was doing when I first found out what was going on.

As a homeschooler, I didn't turn on the TV when I woke up that morning. I made breakfast, I drank coffee, and I chilled out before starting to educate my children. Then around 9:30, I turned on the computer to check my email.

I was on AOL at the time. A very dear friend of mine -- Linda -- IM'ed me almost immediately.

"Isn't it awful?" she wrote.

"What?" I typed.

"Turn on your TV."

I didn't even get offline -- I went up to the front of the house and turned on the TV, and from that moment on, I was riveted.

I lived on my couch for three days. I didnt turn off the TV. I did talk to people on the phone. And at about 3:00 in the afternoon, I woke up my husband, and I made him wake up because I had heard that gas prices were being raised, and we needed to fill our tanks with gas and get extra, because of the price gouging, which I never saw, but I always heard about during that week....

A year or two later, we were at dinner with friends, talking about that week. Some of our friends were in another state on a golf vacation with a large group of golfers. Our friend said, "We were on the greens that morning. When we finished our round, we heard what had happened. And then we didn't feel much like golfing after that."

Instead of feeling total empathy with that party, I was struck by his disconnection. "Didn't feel like golfing"??? He's got to be kidding. I could barely function that week. I couldn't remember to cook dinner for my children. I couldn't get off the couch. I was absolutely slain by the events of 9/11. I bawled my eyes out every time I saw a recap. "Didn't feel like golfing"??? Is he insane?

Now -- MSNBC re-ran their entire original 9/11 coverage this morning. And I didn't join the broadcast until 10:00 or so. I saw the towers collapse. I saw the misinformation as it was read out loud by anchors as if it were news instead of gossip at that point.

I remember that day so horribly vividly.

And tempered with that recollection -- is the memory that I was smoking the entire time.

A month later, my sister and I went to NYC. I would like to say we were with the rescue and relief teams, but really, we were the tourists. We were among the first tourists to brave getting on planes and flying directly to New York City, and we were proud to do so. When I think of our memorable trip, parts of it are colored by the fact that it was less than a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center. The other parts are colored by -- we were two smokers among thousands of non-smokers.

Smoking

Let's face it; we can't get away from it. What joins us all here is the fact that we are all quitting smoking.

I spent days after 9/11, camping out on the couch and smoking.

Now I'm watching those same videos, remembering New York City in early October, 2001, -- and I'm not smoking now.

It's a whole new world.

Check with me in a couple of decades to see if this "new world" has improved any since 9/11.

No Glasses

My daughter and I were just talking about how she hasn't noticed that I'm not smoking.

How can she not notice???

I guess it's a bit like having a friend who wears glasses, and one day she shows up without them, and you spend the whole day looking at her curiously and wondering, "What's different? I know something is changed -- is it her hair? Her lipstick? Her heel height?" And you feel just awful that you can't figure it out, but you're terribly surprised when you find out after 8 hours that she's just gotten contacts.

No glasses. How can I not notice???

Oh, well, as I was saying to a friend of mine the other day, "If you don't tell you you're fabulous, who's going to tell you the stuff you need to hear?"

I spend -- well, maybe an inordinate amount of time telling me I'm fabulous because I'm not smoking. I walk around telling people, "I smell good. I quit smoking." Sure, they look at me like I'm not right in the head, but they did that when I smoked, anyway, so I'm kind of accustomed to it.

But aside from announcing my fabulosity to perfect strangers, I also tell myself how cool I am. I wash dishes, apply lotion to my detergent-abused hands, and then smell them so I can tell myself, "The way these hands smell now is the way they'll smell in half an hour." And sure enough, they DO! How cool is that?

My hair? Oh, my goodness gracious, sakes alive. My hair smells *so* delicious. I can't help but remember those commercials from the 70's, "Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific!" Of course, the person telling me this is not the cute quarterback from 1970's high school heaven, but me. That's OK. I don't need a teenaged football player complicating my life. There are other Tennesseans who went that route recently and infamously, and that sort of thing tends to end in tragedy, and darn it, I am trying to AVOID tragedy, which is why I gave up my beloved Capri Menthol 120's, anyway.

OH! That reminds me. There was a huuuuuuuuuge piece on tonight's evening news about Neyland Stadium. For those of you who don't live in this glorious state of gentle, green, rolling Smoky Mountain foothills, that's the place where the University of Tennessee Volunteers play football every fall. I've been to exactly one home game. Eleven years ago. But it was still a very nice experience.

Anyway, Neyland Stadium is going non-smoking. (I think they have to -- I think Tennessee passed some sort of really stringent anti-smoking law that goes into effect soon.) Neyland Stadium has always been a mecca for smokers -- you could smoke in your seat for years and years, and then there were all kinds of designated smoking areas.

As of today, there were only designated smoking areas outside the arena.

As of next week, if you leave the stadium, you won't be allowed back in.

So if you're a smoker, you are going to have to sit through an entire football game without a cigarette at all.

Oh, my goodness, the WBIR crew interviewed a dozen people or more for this piece. Many smokers were completely blindsided by this decision and were quite distraught. They love their football, and they love their cigarettes, and how can they possibly give up one for the other?

One young, young couple of smokers were sanguine about the development. "There are more non-smokers than smokers," said the young man. "Majority rules."

This is a fellow who obviously never lived as a smoker before the advent of non-smoking areas in restaurants, office buildings, and football stadiums.

But one woman -- honestly, I felt as if I knew her -- one woman said, "I never thought the Tobacco State would go this far. Never!"

I know what she means.

On the other hand -- and honestly, this was what I was going to blog about if I had only blogged earlier today --

-- I find myself... becoming ... slightly ... *repulsed* by smoking.

Not real smoking -- If I run into a cloud of real smoke outside the grocery store, I don't fall apart or retch or attack some unsuspecting smoker and snarl, as so many nonsmokers did at me over the years, "Smoking's bad for you!"

No, I find myself emotionally involved whenever I see someone smoking in a movie or a TV show. I'm torn. I'm fascinated by the mechanics of it. Light the cigarette, hold the cigarette, inhale the smoke, wave the cigarette away, exhale the smoke. As an actor, I am fascinated by the choices they make, whether to just exhale all the smoke out and then speak the dialogue, or to exhale the smoke with each word, which, to me, is the mark of a serious smoker and a much more serious character as a direct result of such an action. It *has* to be a conscious decision, acting-wise. It cannot be that the actors said, "Yes, I'll smoke for this movie, but I won't inhale. I'll just hold the cigarette."

They *do* just hold the cigarettes on the AMC channel's original series "Mad Men." A very few of the actors are actually seen inhaling and exhaling smoke, but they're all standing around holding lit cigarettes.

I was therefore fascinated Friday night, when I saw the 1940 movie "Rebecca." Sir Lawrence Olivier's character Maxim seemed to be bothered by smoke. Repeatedly, characters would ask about smoking, or put out their cigarettes in his presence. This was just fascinating to watch. (Especially juxtaposed against the eventually outcome for Manderley, but I shan't spoil the ending of the movie for any of you who many not have seen it before.) I have no idea whether Olivier himself were a smoker or not, but the sheer volume of etiquette surrounding smoking -- almost 70 years ago --

Aw, now, see? I've gone off on too many tangents. I'll never untangle this snarled mess! Just suffice it to say that I wonder if -- after 22 years of smoking -- I'll ever be "quit" enough not to think about it.

Say, I just remembered. I quit biting my nails for my 23rd birthday. I obsessed about them for an entire year -- oh, my manicure kit was sublime! -- and then I was able to just stop. Both the biting and the obsessing. I hope, I hope that I'll be able to stop obsessing about the quitting smoking thing someday, too.

Really, a pretty good day

As usual, I needed to keep my hands busy, so I made cards with the latest Club Scrap kit. I love the purple.

I did keep busy, which I think helps, even when you're taking Chantix.

As a result of a beloved old teacher's death, I talked to two old friends whom I hadn't talked to recently. Both of them asked me how I was doing in general, and I was able to share with them that I had stopped smoking. And both of these dear old friends were absolutely thrilled.

That helps, I think -- to get positive affirmation at such a difficult time.

Also, I got lots of praise from my family. I made tacos for dinner tonight. That seems so easy, since El Paso makes taco dinner "kits." But in truth, one has to chop the tomatoes, slice the lettuce, grate the cheese, and put the sour cream, taco sauce, and picante sauce in places that all the guests can enjoy those condiments. It's not just a matter of browning the ground beef and crisping the taco shells after all, y'know.

And we Loftises do love taco night.

All of that aside, I didn't smoke again today. It was actually a pretty good day. I talked to two people who hadn't talked to our theatre teacher in years, and we were all choked up, and I didn't smoke.

That equals a pretty good Chantix day.

Very rough day

I had some sad news today, and I didn't smoke. In fact, I actually thought a few hours later, "Dang, I didn't get a chance to tell her I quit smoking." And she would've loved it.

A dear old friend of the family, who was also my high school drama coach, died yesterday. I actually hadn't talked to her recently. The last time I heard from her was in an email in 2002 when she was retiring from teaching at the high school. (She went on to teach and direct at the local college in her "retirement.") She wondered if I still had my teaching certificate. She was trying to find a replacement for herself.

There is no replacement for her.

Teachers touch so many lives; it's cliched to say that she influenced hundreds of people through her years of teaching. But -- for me, she was more than a teacher and a director. She was literally a friend of my mother's. I didn't just have to toe the line in class or on the stage -- I was gonna run into Pat at dinner or when my mother was walking all summer long for her health.

When I first heard about this, I was empty. I was speechless. I literally sat for many seconds and couldn't think of anything to say.

Late in the afternoon, I drove half an hour south to buy a newspaper with an article about her. And on the way, I told my daughter the story of how Pat was a power-hungry, controlling megalomaniac who exerted her will over young actors and actresses without mercy, and how I broke her record when I turned out to be the only person in my high school who could sing well enough to be Peter Pan.

At the end of my awful story, Emily asked me, "Why did you go visit her if you didn't like her?"

And I said, "Because she had all the power, and I had to pay homage."

Hours later -- as I sit at my sad little second-hand desk and pound out my blog entry -- I realize, no, it was more than all the power that Pat wielded to keep me running back to her every few years to beg for a favor. It was that -- no matter what -- no matter how big or small -- no matter how long it had been since I had done anything nice for *her* -- if I called Pat and asked her to help me, she always did.

She always did.

She designed the set of the first play I ever directed; she let me use her theatre at the high school for practically nothing; she always helped me design my lighting schemes; and once she let me walk into her years-collected, vast array of a costume closet, and she let me take whatever I wanted, and she let me *wreck* those costumes with alterations.

And she never asked for anything in return. Except once, she emailed me and told me to be nicer to my oldest sister, the difficult one, the one who drives me the craziest, and for that reason alone, I haven't talked to Pat in about five years.

It's not fair.

I always thought I would have more time to figure out what to say to her.

And she's gone.

She would've loved it that I'm not smoking, so I can't break down now and have a cigarette.

(I made the sign that still hangs in the make-up room at the high school theatre. It reads, "Smoke Not, Thou Sinner, Thou!" That sign has hung there since 1983. I started smoking in 1985.)

Gah, I miss her.

Another one bites the dust

I made it through yet another day without a cigarette.

Can I just say -- can I *please* just say -- how absolutely benign this is all beginning to feel? I'm starting to think I shouldn't blog about it. "Ho hum, didn't smoke for another day, blah dee blah, Chantix rocks." I must sound like a broken record.

But that's the thing: I didn't smoke for another day. It wasn't even terribly difficult. Like most of my days since, oh, the fourth quit day. I just don't think about smoking. When I do think about it, I tell myself, "Move on," and I do. As a result -- I'm not smoking. I don't buy cigarettes. I don't light them. I am not smoking.

And somehow, it all seems utterly pedantic to keep prattling on about how I'm not smoking.

Yesterday, my first dose of Chantix was so late before I remembered it that I actually had nausea for the first time in weeks. And then I totally forgot to take the night time dose.

If I can forget to take the drug -- and I can forget to smoke the cigarette -- doesn't that make me an ... ex-smoker?

I have stress. My children rely on me for their education; there's a tree falling down in the back yard; I had a North American marsupial in my laundry room; my air conditioning broke for the millionth time in the last seven years. Bills have to be paid; dinner has to be cooked. My hair still doesn't trip my zizz wheel.

Stress happens. It happens all the time, to absolutely everyone. It isn't enough to make me want to light a cigarette and un-do all the NOT smoking I've done over the past couple of weeks.

So I'm not sure it's worth mentioning that I made it through another day without a cigarette. Maybe I should start posting every third day. Maybe then it will be more relevant.

But I have to say -- if you're a smoker, and you're researching Chantix... I endorse this drug wholeheartedly. I cannot possibly be the only one responsible for my quitting. It has to be the Chantix.

Southern heat

It's September, and I live in the South, and my air conditioner is broken.

This is ugly, no matter which way you slice it. Southern girls don't even acknowledge the possibility of sweating.

My husband tells me the rotor is sheered off. Or maybe it's sheared off. I honestly don't understand the difference between those two verbs or what the heck a rotor is; I just know that my air conditioner is not keeping me cool.

And so, in almost unbearable heat and humidity, I know that I didn't smoke.

So the Chantix must still be doing its job.

(Truth be told, I was so hot that I took the first dose of Chantix almost two hours late. I had the nausea for the first ime in weeks. I got through it; I didn't buy any cigarettes; and I have not smoked.)

Viva la difference!

Happy Hollerdays

I'm just warning you -- if you're squeamish or easily upset by tales that can only come from the boonies, then you should skip this post.

Seriously.

I did not have a lovely Sunday. It was supposed to be perfectly lovely, and I spent most of the day happily making scrapbook pages and stamping and stenciling paper to my heart's content. When I wasn't making stuff out of paper, I made a roast beef dinner. We do love roast beast. The pot roast was so big that I didn't have room in the pot for all our potatoes, so I had to make some mashed potatoes to fill out the order. That beef, with potatoes and green beans, was a lovely dinner.

While I was making it, I realized that the kitchen surely was hot.

Well, of course, that's not entirely unexpected. Lots of burners and ovens running, after all.

But the dining room was hot. And the hall was hot. And come to think of it, every room was hot.

Yep. Air conditioner. On the fritz.

And it's a holiday weekend. Can't call the repair dude 'til Tuesday. Argh.

So after my lovely dinner, I tried to open windows and move box fans around to facilitate the natural cooling of the house as the evening air became cooler and cooler.

Finally -- long after dark, around midnight, when I just couldn't stand the heat any more, I opened the front door to let in even more cool air.

Then I went to the kitchen and cleaned up a bit.

During the time that I was in there, Two Major Things happened.

Major Thing #1. My cat Hector escaped.
I don't know how he did it. I had closed him up in the back of the house. But somehow he got the door to the back hallway open, and he walked right out the front door.

I spent a good bit of time running around and looking for Hector. Yep. Running around the yard in my jammies with a flashlight and calling "kitty kitty kitty kitty kitty!" More fun than I can recommend.

Hector did come back home -- he literally just walked up to me and said hello, so I picked him up and carried him back inside.

So that leads to the other thing that happened while the front door was open. After I brought Hector inside, I took him to his food dish to remind him why he should stay inside, and while I was in the back hallway....

Major Thing #2. A small, young, not fully grown opossum climbed up to the top of my laundry hamper, looked at me solemnly, and promptly disappeared behind the washing machine.
I tried not to scream and jump around like an idiot. Wesley, my husband, has been asleep for hours and needs to get up at 4:00 to go to work. Screaming would accomplish nothing and would just deprive the poor thing of some much-needed sleep.

I can only assume that the opossum came in while the front door was open, and he headed for the cat's food because it smelled the best. (Obviously opossums don't know how great leftover roast beef is, and I'm glad, so don't anyone tell my houseguest the opossum, because I do not want to share.)

Since meeting this uninvited guest, I have Googled "opossum extermination," "opossum removal," and just plain "opossum" in an effort to figure out what to do as the night turns to the wee hours of the morning and I'm still freaking out because there's a 9-inch rat-tailed beast in my laundry room.

And now I feel guilty because I wanted to stomp that baby possum. Because there are actual organizations out there to promote the health and well-being of the only North American marsupial. Turns out opossums don't contract rabies, are very delicate little critters, and actually eat all sorts of things that we humans really don't like -- like mice, rats, and slugs.

Still, I don't want a baby possum living in my back hallway, so if he doesn't leave really soon, we're going to have some issues.

All of this has stressed me out more than I can say. Dead air conditioner -- ow. Missing Hector -- dang it. And visiting opossum -- eek.

If I had a cigarette, I would definitely be smoking it right now.

But I don't have one. There's a convenience store just ten minutes away. I'm not driving there.

I've made it almost two weeks without a cigarette, and I am not going to cave in now just because things are a little weird around here. I shall prevail.

Chantix is a miracle drug. I swear.

And happy Labor Day. I hope yours is smoother and more relaxing than mine might be.

Obsequious

When, exactly, did the word "obsequious" become negative? It means "marked by a fawning attentiveness." As someone who really loves applause, attention, and anything remotely related to praise, I am trying to understand how "obsequious" could be a bad thing.

Sorry. I was just watching "Miss Congeniality" for a minute while I was flipping channels.

Chantix Day 32, Quit Day 12

To be honest, I think today was one of those slightly rougher days. I was fidgety and distracted all day long. I still engaged in a number of productive tasks to keep my hands busy, but at the end of each tiny job, I wanted to give myself a cigarette for a reward.

I didn't, though. I didn't smoke a cigarette; I didn't buy a pack. And sometimes, at the end of the day, just noting those two accomplishments is enough to make me feel like trying another non-cigaretted day.

A friend of mine -- a very dear friend of mine -- just went to Disney World last weekend with her daughter, and they had a wonderful trip during which, on ONE DAY, they ran around three parks (Disney-MGM Studios, Epcot, and the Magic Kingdom), went swimming in the best Disney resort pool (Stormalong Bay), and finished out their day with an evening at Pleasure Island.

Just six years ago, my dear friend and I would have done the same thing as if we were her daughter's age. In fact, we *did* do exactly that -- just seven years ago. (And five years ago, and three years ago...)

Last November when we were there together, the running about like teenagers was pretty severely limited by my total inability to run without wheezing.

So I was reading my friend's report of her day with her daughter, and practically crying with jealousy and hope for *our* next trip to Walt Disney World, and then I realized -- the next time I go to Disney World with Krisi, I'll be a non-smoker.

Maybe... maybe I won't wheeze as much. Maybe I'll be able to keep ahead of the crowds. Maybe I'll be able to dance all night without having to take smoke breaks!

I hope my friend quits smoking, too. That'll make life a lot easier if we're both non-smokers.

But see, that's part of the thing I wrote about early on in this blog. ALL my best friends smoke. My sister Amy smoked. Krisi smokes. My very dear friend Terri smokes. The people I love the mostest -- all smoke. Well, OK, Amy and I quit. But -- I can't help but hope that Krisi and Terri quit, too. I don't want to pressure them, but I am really gonna be hard pressed to stay quit if I'm hangin' out in the smoking areas with my friends.

Sniffle.

See? I said it was a rough day.

Sunday will be easier. I'm coming up on two weeks without a cigarette, and I have to say -- I am really very hopeful that this is the end for me and smoking. And my sister Amy (who has just sailed away on an Alaskan cruise today) has quit, too, which is a huge motivating factor for me. We quit together! We quit together! And together, we can beat our cravings for cigarettes!!!!

Deep sigh... wistful glance into the future....

All the cool kids

I've made it another day without smoking. And the strange thing is, it really is getting easier. I don't feel like I'm struggling that hard to get through a day without a cigarette.

On the other hand, in the middle of wanting one, it feels like all I want is to smoke.

I was trying to think of some cool way to say, "Hey, I'm not suffering," and there is no cool way to say that. It's like saying, "I didn't stub my toe today." I think most people make it through their days without stubbing toes or suffering or smoking. So to comment on it -- even though I am clearly very special and wonderful for making it 11 days or so without smoking -- seems inherently uncool.

Tennessee has recently enacted a bunch of laws against smoking. There are the recently increased taxes, to be sure, but there are also new laws against smoking in restaurants. These kinds of laws drive me crazy on a political level.

On the other hand, non-smoking restaurants are some of my newest bestest friends. I have been living in fear of running into a big cloud of cigarette smoke in public, worrying that smelling it would send me into such a tizzy of nostalgic longing, it would compel me to run to the nearest store, buy a big pack of cigarettes, and immediately smoke 8 in a row. Or maybe all at once. I just didn't know what would happen if I smelled cigarette smoke.

Today -- after literally scrubbing certain kitchen appliances for hours in order to remove caked on grease and grime -- I decided I didn't want to cook dinner. (OK, really, I never want to cook dinner, but frugality forces me to do so most of the time.) So I called in an order at a restaurant in a town 20 minutes away, and then I drove there to pick it up. This is what you do when you live in the boonies. There is no such thing as "delivery."

So I drove the 20 minutes and walked inside... and the first thing I noticed was a sign that read, "This establishment will be non-smoking as of October 1st."

On the left side of the restaurant, which has been the smoking area since the mid-1990's, only a smattering of tables held customers. On the non-smoking side of the restaurant, every table was full.

And at a table right behind me, there was a cigarette in an ashtray at a completely empty table, burning merrily away.

Totally unavoidable lungs-fuls of delicious, delectable, unfettered, unattached, unattended and presumably unowned tobacco smoke.

If it hadn't been a brown-filtered cigarette of some non-mentholated sort, I might have been tempted to steal it and run away.

Nah, that's not true. I'll be honest; I had a tingle up and down my spine and part of me thrilled and wondered how I would react to this temptation. But -- it didn't do much of anything to me. I didn't long for a cigarette. I wasn't disgusted by the smoke. It was actually kind of a letdown to realize that -- only 11 or so days into this quitting thing -- I seem to have no emotional reaction to live cigarette smoke.

Dang, y'all, if cigarettes were an ex-boyfriend, I would at least have a mild temper tantrum, wouldn't I?

So -- y'know, whatev. Let's see what Day 111 brings, shall we?