I was pushed over the edge. I smoked. For a whole week. You guys are like the fourth people I have told. It was delicious and I loved it.
I was on a business trip that went horribly. I'll refrain from revealing the town, but let me tell you, it wasn't fun. So the entire trip, I was a smoker. Now I haven't had one since I flew out of hell, but I guess I just thought you should know. It was pretty stupid. I'd say I won't ever do it again, but then I'd be a liar.
Has come and gone. I haven't had a cigarette in that long. Wow. Holy fuck.
So, do I feel better? Not really. I guess my endurance has kind of increased and stuff but not so much that I am noticing a huge difference. Maybe it will be different when we actually start normal practices.
I've been skating at least three times a week and going to Fight Club! at least once, usually twice a week. Fight club is awesome! It's held at the local grappling club, so not only does it smell like sweaty, shirtless men - the sweaty, shirtless men are there! The eye candy while working out is fantastic. Fight club is essentially circuit training. It's fun. If your idea of fun is sweating and stinking and hurting.
This is a dumb blog entry. I'll try and be better at this.
Holy shit. Monday was my two month anniversary of not smoking. I do have to admit, I'm floored. I had no idea that I could do it.
I almost smoked on Saturday night. We were at a wine tasting thing and it was me, my mom, DF and another friend. My mom, DF, and I are all ex-smokers. The wine really made us want to smoke. After a while we just forgot about it, which was nice. We played poker in our jammies. It was a fun time until DF made me go into a smoked fish shop. I almost killed her.
So that's the news from GB.
Oh, a friend of a friend is having a Vegan Potluck on August 2nd. (See comment in below post) I will keep you all posted on the time and place.
Last night I went to open skate with a group of derby girls. We are on hiatus from practice and didn't just want to sit around. My friend Alabaster Mom joined us with A. A really doesn't quite get the hang of roller skating yet. I made the mistake of letting A Mom know "You won't even have to skate, I'll watch her". I have a back ache today, we'll leave it at that. It was a really good time and I do think A really enjoyed herself.
Unfortunately, I let the girls talk me into going out after we skated. I was not what you would call sober exactly.
BUT
The good news is, I didn't smoke. I REALLY wanted to but I didn't.
And PS: I ordered my skates today, but I got the black ones instead of the white ones.
Or something like that.
It's been four weeks today. I won't call it a month until I hit the actual date, but things are going very well. I went out the other night and had a couple of beers. Did okay with that. Again, I feel like the "I still haven't smoked" posts are getting boring.
The farmer's markets have started, which makes me vair happy. I got some spinach and tomatoes today.
I live the life of a rock star, I know.
Yeah. I am a horribly boring person. I haven't smoked for 21 days, which is cool. But, like I have said in the past, I feel dumb announcing every single milestone that I hit now. What is fantastic is that a very good friend of mine has her quit date set for tomorrow. So, I am very happy that I will be able to provide a little guidance and support.
I am still having horrible insomnia. It has to be from the lack of nicotine, because I have been off the Chantix now for over a week. I have even stopped drinking soda after 6 pm. (I may have a slight diet coke problem).
Our last bout is coming up this weekend. I am glad to have some time to rest, since there are sore muscles that won't get better with out time off. I am also a little sad. I am not sure yet if I am going to try out for the traveling team (An all league team that travels nationwide to compete). Part of it is I am not sure I am good enough yet. Another thing is the cost. I am not sure how much the league covers and how much is my expense. I know I am going to continue to practice over the summer, I definitely don't want to have to retrain. I also want to work on my endurance since my lungs should get clearer and clearer week by week.
I think that these updates are getting kind of boring. It's been two weeks, I haven't smoked. I don't even really think about it any more.
It's weird, after the first week, it was actually easier for me to do this than it was to go vegan. I think that being vegan is much more freaky than smoking. I think people think that is more of an oddity.
What really doesn't make sense in this whole equation is being vegan is good. It's good for me, good for animals, good for the environment, it just generally rules. Smoking on the other hand is not good. In fact smoking is bad. Yet, people would more often taunt me about being vegan than they would about smoking.
In a perfect world, complete strangers would stare at me as I went outside to smoke, instead of when I order my pizza with out cheese.
At least not on account of me.
I haven't had a cigarette in 11 days. That's just crazy. My four readers know that I *always* had a cigarette in hand. Always. Now I don't. It's weird.
I talked to the doc and I can wean myself off the Chantix. Thank you jeebus. I am still only sleeping like three hours at a pop. It is fantastic when your night of sleep is actually a series of naps. Last night was really bad. I could almost take a nap right now.
My vegan friend Bri - ON was going to quit smoking after we got back from Chicago. I explained to him, that for me quitting smoking was very similar to going vegan. Not so much the reasons behind it. I mean there are tons of ethical reasons to quit smoking, but that wasn't my motivation.
Let me try and make sense of this. Before I went vegan, I ate A LOT of cheese. When I decided to go vegan, I didn't suddenly lose my taste for cheese. In other words, I didn't NOT want to eat cheese. I just didn't because for me it was the ethical thing to do. Same with smoking. I still WANT to smoke. More often than not, I want to smoke. But I know, even if I have one puff, I will be right back where I started. So I don't smoke.
Does that make any sense?
I do wish that I felt better. I am still hacking a lot and now my sinus are bad today. I have been slacking with the nettie pot, so I am going to have to be better at keeping that up. Sleep would help tremendously.
I have also had a bunch of kick ass people for support. Alabaster Mom, Mary, and Miss Leslie on line have been great. I have an awesome support system with my derby girls as well. You all rule. And my freaks. And I would like to thank the academy. Just kidding.
I think I am doing it. My husband even admitted to me that he was randomly surprised. I did have a few choice words with my FIL who I had the pleasure of seeing on Saturday. I told him that I quit, he asked for how long, and I said, since Wednesday. He proceeded to tell me that I shouldn't bother telling people if it had only been three days. I asked him how long he smoked and if he ever tried to quit. I also asked if there were any fifteen year habits he had that he wanted to try and break. He shut up.
I do have to admit, I like the smell of smoke still. I will go outside to stand with people who are smoking because I think it smells so delicious. Which I know makes me a freak.
I am trying to get a hold of my doc to see if I can go off the Chantix. I will keep using the website, because I think that it's awesome, but the side effects are starting to out weigh the benefits at this point. I only sleep for two hours at a time, I can't poop, and I have waaaaaaaaaay messed up dreams. I think even if I could lower the dose, that would help too. I'll keep you posted on that.
I think that's all the news here. Hopefully this won't turn into a quit smoking blog ;)
I feel a little better I guess. I had a nervous breakdown yesterday. Or is that another nervous breakdown? I am not sure. Some stuff went down at practice that wasn't cool and because I am oversensitive, it made me feel like shit.
I feel very sorry for my husband. He is taking the brunt of this and I know there is now way possible that he knows what this is like. It's kind of hard when you want to stab yourself in the eye. Explain that to some one. He wants me to go out tonight, but I am not sure yet if I am comfortable with it or not.
Yeah, I'd like to be sedated.
It has been 24 hours since my last cigarette. I am a little cranky, and I wanted to take out a woman at the grocery store today, but that's not all that odd. I do that on a normal day.
I am VERY thirsty, which I don't quite understand. I think it has to do with sucking out of a straw. Which is fun to say.
In general, this sucks.
Today has been rough. I’m not going to lie. Tomorrow is going to be even harder I would bet. It’s130 and I have only had two cigarettes today. This for me is huge. Normally I have two on the way to work.
The Chantix is really messing with my sleeping patterns, more so than I expected. Even when I sleep, I am having really messed up dreams and I wake up feeling like I ran a marathon. (Which is an odd thing for me since I have never ran a mile much less a marathon). It must be helping though, because although this sucks today, it isn’t nearly as bad as I expected. I did the math yesterday and determined that I was spending close to $1300 a year on cigarettes. That’s just absolutely absurd. That’s about half of a decent car payment. And that number is conservative.
The hardest thing right now is just changing habits. I normally smoke and stand outside when I let the dogs out. Yesterday I did wall sits and lunges instead. It was a weird feeling. My car is a huge trigger point and where I struggle the most. It is just such a normal force of habit thing. I am going to clean my car out this evening, vacuum, armor-all, febreeze, the whole shebang. Hopefully this will help me fight the urge to smoke in the car. I think I might put some straws or lolly pops or something in the car so that I have something to do with my hands.
The whole experience is really weird. I don’t know what I was expecting, since I have been smoking for 15 years. I guess I didn’t realize what a part of me it became. And the control it has over me is disgusting.
Or "The day that hell froze over"
This blog entry commemorates two pretty cool events in my life that are approaching quickly.
First things first (and this is the hell freezing over part) I am quitting smoking. My official date is 5/14 or next Wednesday. I am going to have the assistance of Pfizer, who is charging me out of the asshole for it. My doc prescribed Chantix back at the beginning of the year, I have just been too chicken to try. Well, after my Chicago Vegan Freak trip, I am quitting and I really want to. I am hoping it helps my sinuses, skating, and saves us some money as well.
I really debated on if I was going to blog about this or not. This is a pretty big step for me. I have been smoking for approximately half my life. I don't know how non-smokers can think that it is easy to kick a 15 year long habit. That's right folks a 15 year habit. So much in my life is going to have to change. I am going to have to find something different to do while driving. I am probably going to end up giving up diet coke as well, because "Nothing goes with a smoke, quite like a diet coke". I just made that up. Speaking of things that go with smoking, that's half the problem. I heard some one say once that smoking is more addictive than heroin, specifically because you can smoke while doing just about anything. *** Also, when you do heroin, you really don't feel like doing much except heroin. Smoking doesn't do that to most people. You can have a smoke and move on with your day like it's normal. It's pretty fucked up if you ask me. Any hoo, any words of wisdom you can provide would be fantastic.
The second FANTASTIC news is that I get to cut my hair in June. I am not sure I have ever been so excited about something, ever. I have been growing out my hair for a long ass time. I am growing it for Locks of Love and you need ten inches. I am at nine and a quarter. So on 6/20 it's all coming off. Lets look at a progression.
This is from November of 2005:
Okay, I changed my mind. No progression because I don't like any pictures of me ever. So just know that this is how short my hair was then, and now it is long enough that if I put a ponytail at the nape of my neck, I have ten inches to spare.
***I had to come back and add this. Just because I believe that it is fucked up that smoking is socially acceptable (in some cases) thereby making it harder to quit, does not mean I agree with a ban on smoking in public places at all. I believe that private business have the right to allow smoking in their buildings until it is illegal. If you don't want to be around smoke, don't eat there, go there, work there, bowl there, or spend money there.***
