Chrysalis

Hi, Whack! So good to hear from you. I am delighted that you are still a non-smoker; congratulations for that. I miss your posts-- always intelligent and insightful, sometimes outrageous, but never boring! :D I hope you have a lovely holiday season. Check back in when you can-- I really miss your giant balloon animal photos!

Jess, thank you for posting this update. Last night I thought you were going to be OK, but it's nice to get the official confirmation. By the way, I DO know Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"--I must have been having a senior moment last night. :huh: I'm glad your karaoke went well. Say, could you do us a favor? I just started a new thread called "No! Do NOT post an SOS!" When you get a chance will you add your comments? I'm interested in exploring what makes someone decide to post or not post an SOS. You probably struggled with not posting last night before you finally did post. So what was your train of thought? What gave you the courage to post an SOS last night? Again, congratulations on a great job last night. Now you know that you ARE strong enough to keep your quit even at a holiday party with smokers. Of course, that doesn't mean you would want to do that again any time soon, but you know that is one trigger that you can meet and overcome. Good for you!

LOL!! That's a perfect definition of a Yankee. Eyuh. :D PS-- I HATE those swap games-- I think that they are crass and insulting and I do not participate in them. Just to give a different opinion.

You know, during the 9 months that I have been associated with quit smoking forums I have seen many quits saved because someone posted an SOS. I have also seen many quits lost because the person did NOT post an SOS. Believe me, there is nothing more frustrating for your quit buddies than someone with a good, solid quit going who posts, "Oops! I smoked last night! Now I'm finishing up the pack but I feel terrible about myself." Why tell us about your relapse after the fact? Why didn't you SOS before you lit that first cigarette??!! And that is the point of my thread title-- why do people NOT post an SOS when they could/should? It might help us to know the train of thought here so that we can guard against it. For myself, there have been a couple of times (maybe 2 or 3) when I was really, really close to relapsing. Thank heavens there were no cigarettes in the house so I didn't smoke. On those occasions I thought about posting an SOS but I didn't. Why? 1. I didn't want anybody to talk me out of smoking! Yep. That's the #1 reason I didn't post an SOS. Nicodemon had taken over my brain and told me that I didn't want those namby-pamby QT people spouting their trite anti-smoking slogans at me. Or telling me that I didn't want to smoke. B***S****! I most certainly DO want to smoke and I want you all to leave me alone so I can go buy some cigarettes. 2. I've gotten this many months into my quit and the QT folks think that I'm "strong and safe" in my quit. It will be too embarrassing to tell them that I am struggling. My reputation will be ruined and the newbies will be scared to see that people can struggle months after their quit. I'd better just keep my mouth shut and deal with this by myself. 3. If I DO relapse, I don't want to be harassed about it. Right now, I am on the cusp of smoking again. I might or might not do it. But if I post an SOS everybody will know that I am struggling. Then if I do relapse, they will all be "at" me with their "get back on the horse right now" advice or expressions of sympathy and/or disappointment. That will make me feel really badly about myself. So I'll just keep my current struggle to myself and hope for the best. Fortunately for me, I never did relapse. I've come awfully close and I probably will again some day. But so far just posting a regular message and getting some support and advice has worked for me. However, I have not (yet) been in the position of being inebriated when I was hit with a crave-- alcohol increases the probability of relapsing many fold. So how about you? Have you thought about posting an SOS but didn't? Have you been in a place where you know that you probably should have posted an SOS but you didn't? Why not? What was your thinking that prevented you from typing those 3 little letters? What advice can you give others so that they might not be so reluctant?

Sarge, did you ever find the paw paw plants you were looking for? This nursery in Indiana has some: https://indianaberry.com/products/1/10/Plants/Novelty_Plants Also, I never heard of hardy kiwi before. I'm thrilled! They will make a great gift for someone I know (and thank you for mentioning that you need both genders).

A pet rock??!! Sheesh! You'd better name it "Retro"! :)

I don't believe there is any such thing as a "social smoker". I think that people lie a lot about how much and how often they smoke or, at the very least, they lie to themselves about it. So whenever anyone tells you, "Oh, I only smoke when I'm out drinking." take that with a grain of salt. And whether or not there is such a think as a social smoker, that is irrelevant to you. Remember all the reasons why you want to quit. There are LOTS of them, aren't there? And remember that there is no such thing as "one perfect cigarette". If you go back to smoking, you will go ALL the way back to smoking. All the misery, smell, expense, health consequences, etc. of a full-blown smoker. The question is not, "Do I want one cigarette or not?" The question is really, "Do I want to go completely back to smoking like I did before?" because that's what will really happen. So ignore the so-called social smokers. You know who you are and what you want and stick to that. Let them deal with their own problems. Good for you for hanging in there! You were strong today! You should feel very good about that!

factor

punishment

:good3: Murder

shining

I think that a car cover is a great idea and will maintain the appearance of your car for a long time. The cover will prevent the fading and peeling of the paint and the fading and rotting of the dashboard and seat fabric. (Northern cars get rust; southern cars get fading and peeling.) I think your friends who advise against a cover just don't want to be bothered with you asking them to help you put the cover on or take it off.

"Drain" [Applause!! :) ] Axe

Beacon is 100% correct, Bakon. Get someone to help around the house. Maybe prepare a meal or two. If you take better care of yourself you will be able to take better care of your wife. HUGS! (((Bakon))

It!

baseball

bot

Oh, Bakon...Bakon...Bakon! Ease up! You're blowing the transaxel! ("Aliens" is one of my all time favorite movies.) You have way too much going on in your life right now. You're worried sick about your wife and you're trying desperately to keep everything absolutely normal and usual during this holiday time. you're trying to pretend the cancer does not exist. Don't do that! It will be much better for the two of you if you choose to keep just a few of the most important holiday traditions this year and spend the rest of your time being relaxed and happy with each other. (I recommend keeping the eggnog and brandy tradition to start with. :) ) My brother was diagnosed from out of the blue with stage IV cancer and I was his primary care giver. I know how mentally, emotionally, physically and financially devastating care giving can be. And I wasn't even trying to hold down a full time job at the time. Don't wrestle with a full-size tree. Go to Walmart or Walgreens and get a small table-top tree with built-in lights. Just for this year. You can put you wife's special angel on the top and a few favorite ornaments on it and then you and your wife can sit and listen to some Christmas music and enjoy looking at your tree (while you sip some eggnog with brandy). The tree, the angel, the music, the two of you. That's the important stuff. Skip everything else. Please try to identify the important things versus the things that you can let go (finger prints and spots do NOT deserve any notice!). Breathe deeply. Love your wife. Love your dog. Enjoy your time together. And chill... OK?

focaccia

pastrami

Wow! Great post, Lace! First, let me say that I'm so glad your folks are OK. Whew! But the fact that you could handle all that stress and not even think about smoking is fantastic! You really have turned the corner mind and body-- you really are a non-smoker now. And you're right; all of us who quit smoking will get there some day. We need to stop scaring ourselves about how difficult it will be to quit and just take the plunge. It is so worth it. Thanks again for the inspiring post.

You mean you actually got to TALK to somebody??!! You must be really persistent! I usually get stuck out on a limb of the phone tree. :angry:

pickle

Hey, Bakon, I like the basic concept of reaching out to newbies. However, I think we would be wise to remember that some people are a little shy, especially at first. And some like to lurk for a week or two and see how things work around here before going pubic. So calling out to people on the public forum might be too much too soon for some. Under the "Members" tab we can do an "advanced search" looking for people who registered before or after a certain date. What if, once a week, somebody sent a private message to everyone who signed up that week offering friendship and encouraging them to introduce themselves if they haven't already. I thought that Beth was going to start emailing fallen-away members a few months ago. How did that work out? Did she try it? What type of response did she get from "the disappeared"?

It is easy to count the chromosomes in white blood cells (red blood cells have no chromosomes). White blood cells are part of the immune system; they help detect and fight cancer cells. Scientists have known for 50 years that as men age, some of their white blood cells lose their Y chromosomes (LOY = Loss of Y Chromosome). Since it is much more difficult to count chromosomes in other types of cells, nobody knows what the Y chromosome situation is in other cell types. This group in Sweden asked the questions, "Why do men die earlier than women?" and "Why, when men get cancer, do they more often die from that cancer than women do?" What they found was: 1. Men > 70 years old often have LOY (15% of men >70 vs 4% of men < 70). 2. Those with LOY more often develop cancer and more often die of cancer than men without LOY. 3. Of the many lifestyle behaviors they studied, only smoking correlates with LOY. Smokers have 2-4 times higher risk of developing significant LOY than do non-smokers. These results were published in several studies over the last year or two in some of the best journals in the world including Nature Genetics and Science, which gives them a lot of credibility.