Oneistoo

NOPE from me!

Nah, I spent some days at a friend's house while the paint was drying. :)

From Frez, spot on as it explains in a very simple way the many unexplained actions in my life: Addiction is a stupid thing and makes you make stupid decisions.

That's why I hope you'll never fade, bakon! :)

NOPE!

Down-on-knees scrubbing of dirty untreated wooden floors, medium-large sized room, duration forever. Great 1 hour power walk with borrowed dog in fresh air.

Quick NOPE...I'm not on my own computer.

I'm still having trouble sleeping, so my playlist of old movies on youtube gets longer and longer as I add to it daily. I now have 199 videos. Some of them are real gems. You have to watch the silent movies with the soundtrack off because the sound various people have added to the silents is awful and very distracting. I cut off the list at 1940....that's when the movies started to become very rigid and controlled. Here they are: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL_UJI0LI4NiZWwgxaRUbsFkyEWQCCJI48 Hmm...it's after midnight, and I'm hungry. Since I started painting the kitchen floor I've only eaten raw fruits and veggies, some dry fresh whole grain rye bread, and 5-grain rolled whole grains with raisins and rice milk (rice milk beats milk by a thousand percent because the sugar is natuarally built into the rice and you don't have to add it....plus, it keeps a lot longer in the fridge than milk). I noticed a vast improvement in my overall skin quality that has got to come from the diet (and perhaps also the minus cigarettes and much less coffee (coffee....my desire for coffee has vastly decreased lately). Hmm...back to being hungry. It always sucks when you get hungry after you've brushed and flossed and mouthwashed and gargled. Oh...I happened on a great recipe for home made mouthwash that I've been using for two weeks now, and it's a keeper! Here it is: Teaspoon or whatever of baking soda Bit of salt (I use Himalayan; it's natural, hasn't been bleached, has no added de-clumping chemicals and is pretty in pink) Drop of peppermint oil (optional) Quart or less of water Shake before use I've just guessed at the quantities when I've made it, and I make it every 4-5 days. I keep it in a jar in the bathroom. If it's cold in the bathroom, I add it to a bit of warm water in my rinse glass and swirl it around in my mouth. What attracted me to it was the fact that baking soda neutralizes acid, and this makes it great to use after you've eaten acidic foods or coffee (coffee is very acidic). Hmmm....back to the fact that I am hungry and have already brushed and flossed and mouthwashed. If I eat, I have to do the entire process over. There's another thing you can do if that's the bind you're in.....organic coconut oil. You just eat a spoonful, it does not contain sugar and it is not acidic so you are ok to not brush afterward. It gives the stomach something healthy to work on. I guess that's what I'll do. Goodnight, sweet souls.

Laura, you are rocking! Congratulations on three weeks. :)

Awww, you guys are so great. Glad and proud to be journeying with you! :)

Marti, what do you mean by shattered? Also, I can't PM you, I think your mailbox is full. Yesterday: 6 (friggin) hours of painting. Today: 5 (friggin) hours of painting. Benefit: That my arms and back are not sore at all. They used to be very sore after I had been painting, before I joined the gym. Truth: That I could have gone to the gym in the evenings.

Haha.....snarling. :) Well, I'm keeping a bit to myself this week and concentrating on getting the goddamn painting done already! The most maddening thing about it is the lack of light. Just about every day is grey and raining, and I need sharp daylight to be able to see the details in these very old and willful walls. At the end of my work on it today I had to postpone painting the last part of the ceiling because I simply couldn't see where I was painting. Anyway, the eyes are doing better. I don't think I'll ever be one of those women who whip out their eye drops in public, look up and drop them into their mascara'ed eyes. Me, I have to do it in the bathroom and it's more like doing a laborious operation. I may have to call for an additional prescription because I think I'll run out with all of the missing of my eyes with the drops. The way I'm doing it I might even be getting a triple dosis (the drops sometimes feel VERY big once in my eyes), just because I'm not doing it right. And yes, I did watch a video about doing it. But hey! Nothing much else to report. I'm looking forward to being able to wash the floors in the bedroom and moving my stuff in there. It's wildly annoying.....my apartment is such a mess right now. I bet you can tell that I'm being irritable, LOL. Though I haven't yet hit the Rottweiler stage. :)

Yeah, I want some of that baked goods too!!! I'm glad that you're feeling so good. :) Btw, if the baking involves kneading, you can consider it exercise.

Great going, Rob. The dinner sounds very nice, too. :)

I'm in painting land and don't notice anything else....NOPE

More good quit insights from Marti: "My new personality is less tolerant and actually, I am now genuinely happy about that. I have ditched toxic people because my self worth and self value is higher. I have stopped being as afraid of people seeing the parts of me that before I would rather hide. I stand at 4 months plus quit saying, this is what I am and I'm ok if it's not for you." "Quitting is a journey, not an event. Eternal vigilance. Addiction. All true, but look at the strength that surrounds this site, these people. This is a great time to be here and it feels amazing to pay it forward. I think I will be happy about it for a while." "I can never completely undo the damage I did. That is my penance for stupidity and lack of education but it is no excuse from now and hasn't been for some time. I will protect my brain by understanding the associations and why they happen and my body will be protected by a nope philosophy that I will need to engage for my whole life. Thank you brain for trying so desperately to cope and rewire to enable the damage but we are ok to move on now, when you're ready." :)

I didn't wake up with a giant migraine this morning which is always wonderful! I'm going to stick with these eye drops for the three weeks' duration. Already they've made go away the sensation I had for almost a month that pins were somehow lodged in my tearduct. I feel that my weight is SLIGHLY lower. The part of the kitchen floor that I'm in the process of painting is around the toaster and the stove, so there's a lot of stuff I can't make and eat right now. Since I'm painting the floor white (from an depressingly dark brown color), it's going to take five coats and then several coats of matte floor varnish on top, all with drying time in-between. Coat #5 is tomorrow morning first thing. I may or may not be able to do the first coat of varnish in the evening depending on the light - it's so friggin dark in January, and it makes it really hard to paint surfaces. But this makes it many more days where my main foodstuff will consist of mostly fruits and veggies. This is a good thing, because I had become a bit to liberal with the toasted sesame oil in my daily diet! I painted for six hours straight in the bedroom today. I'll consider that exercise. I think I only need one more coat on all surfaces, and then some trim work. I think my eye drops may have taken away my cravings for the past couple of days. They are pretty strong steroids, and I can feel them in my body. I'm reading Marti's blog diary, and consider myself fortunate and priveleged that she in this way lets me into her mind as she is going through her quit. But I can't find the entries from around April 3 to around May 4 in the insane blog setup! My fuse is perhaps a bit short this early in my quit but it is definitely triggered by the blog format in the same way as with a food product that is difficult to get to because of user-hostile packaging. I loved this entry. Thanks, Marti!: Goodness my brain has been busy!! It's so different now, the thinking, much easier but still conflicting. I know for sure I will not smoke, no matter what. 3 Reasons for this. 1 I want to be a non smoker 2 I simply cannot do that withdrawal again, never in all my days would I have called myself an addict, until I realized I was an addict. 3 My fear of smoking now far outweighs my fear of quitting and the random thought neurons I still possess. Reading that back I still run by fear rather than what others say which is you have to not want to smoke more than you want to smoke. Same end game though I think. My whole life is different from 3 months ago though, and I feel I ought to document that. -How annoying was smokers cough and how fabulous is life without it! It had been so long I didn't even know how awful it was -I am no longer controlled by impulses that damage my body -I really like food! Ironic that I spent that many years eating because I had too but now I eat because it tastes great -Financially, a weight has been lifted! £300 per month was no small amount to find -If I want to exercise, I can. No more bright red, I just look normal -I am building self belief here, I am an advocate of powerful thoughts but now I act in a way that aligns with how I thought I wish I didn't still have the thoughts of oh I would smoke here, but I do. Where once I felt fear for them, then felt annoyed by them, now I want to smash them into next week. I get angry it still happens, I mean how dare my own brain try and trip me up?! It's my own brain! But I take responsibility that I taught it this is how we work and now I need to re program myself. I continue to do that with reading and watching what smoking does to a person, then imagining that it's me. The horror I feel at someone telling me about Cancerous cells again, or having to tell my children I made myself sick pushes me on where no words ever could or would. I think I will always be scared of the damage I have already done though and that is penance in a way I guess. So this is how 3 months looks for me. I am ok, much better then I ever thought I would be really, who knew I could actually quit. The thoughts are just thoughts and I have found tools to cope with it. I read with real hope people who say they don't even think about smoking anymore :) Maybe not me though where I have to watch it and breath it 2nd hand every day, maybe I will have to be eternally strong and on guard? I really hope not though. Still the one comment I made once sticks with me, this is both the easiest and hardest thing I have ever done! But I am free!! There is all kinds of power in this freedom so I will always hold onto it. 3 months and counting.

NOPE, NOPE, NOPE

Kind of you to ask! I've been having such issues with my eyes ever since I scraped the ceiling in the room I'm now painting. The second opthamologist I consulted the other day (the first one gave me something useless for it) gave me steroid eyedrops and they are awful! Meaning, they give me a splitting headache and nausea from the moment I wake up. I have to take them for three weeks. I hope the side effects will lessen soon. I really want to get rid of this feeling that I have gravel in my eyes. So I'm kind of lying low.....and I'm still in a bit of a bad mood.....blame it on the meds, usually I'm the most delightful person on earth. ;)

Congratulations, Bandito....many more to come! :)

Congratulations, Lace. Wow, almost a year! :)

Congratulations, Chrysalis! You're an example for the rest of us....and a lovely one at that! :)

NOPE

Thanks, Marti. I just went to it to start reading it. But the goddamn blog format does not lend itself to reading someone's quit like a diary or journal. For starters, it's heavily subject-skewed, and people can't just pop in and write you a message that's more open than a pm. And second, it's in reverse order - it starts with the LAST entry you made. I had to spend a lot of time figuring out how the hell to get to your FIRST entry. The fun of reading other people's diaries is that you get to start with their very first tentative entry, and you watch the person grow through their quit. When people relapse and disappear, you can bump up their diary and keep them "there" until they (very often) return and resume writing in it. There's much more reading and interaction in each other's diaries, and the diaries become the reason for checking in every day. It's just a totally different dynamic. I look forward to reading about your journey, Marti. Tomorrow, when I'm not so irritable, lol. ;)

Did a lot of brisk walking when I got lost on my way to an appointment. Painting for two hours.