Last weekend the Kellers laid low at home and watched two movies about addicts, Clean and Rachel Getting Married. Generally I’m not a fan of addiction and recovery themes, too much like real life, I guess. But I found these films to be engrossing. Both center on addicted women, played by Maggie Cheung and Anne Hathaway, who are very unsympathetic characters. Alienating all around them with their destructive and self possessed behavior, these human train wrecks seem to be destined to lose everything to their addiction, and not have anyone left to care. In Clean, Cheung’s character, Emily, is cleaning up after a stint in prison and is trying to reunite with her son, who is being cared for by the parents of her overdose victim husband. Hathaway’s Kym, is on a furlough from treatment to attend her sister’s wedding, and soon makes it obvious that she thinks everything is about her and about her problem. She turns her toast at the groom’s dinner into a twelve step amends, going on and on about how sorry she is for everything, without ever mentioning the bride and groom. That wouldn’t qualify as making amends at the meetings I went to.
It was the former behavior that bothered me the most. I’m a recovering alcoholic, or as my father who shared the malady called it, a dehorn. That must have been stockyards lingo. I’ve gone 24 Â years without a drink, if you don’t count the time this summer when I grabbed the wrong beer bottle off the counter at a family gathering. It wasn’t O’Doul’s. I’m not counting it. I try to stay pretty low key about it, I get uncomfortable when people call attention to it. I’ll cop to it if the situation calls for it, but I always hope the conversation goes elsewhere quickly. Continue reading Clean and Sober
I haven’t been behind a retail counter for 31 years. Until today. Last time I was slinging drinks, the cash register had real buttons with numbers on them. You rang up the prices, took the cash and made change. God forbid someone gave you a credit card, you had to get out that crazy slider thing. Change jumped into my hands, I didn’t even have to think about it, and a lot of the math I did in my head. Now each product  has a menu button and the array of buttons is mind boggling.
New snow, new job, new carpet. There’s a theme here. It looks like a day of cleansing. As much as I hate to see snow in mid October, a new snowfall, one with “big hunky flakes,” is a beautiful thing. It looks clean, and even smells clean. New carpet, well it probably will smell like a chemical spill for a couple of weeks, but even that beats the cat pee stench that we’ve been living with for months. If we’ve entertained you at our house in the last three months, it means we are very comfortable in our friendship, or we don’t give a dam about impressing you, or both. And then there’s the other smell of newness, fresh brewed coffee! I start my new career behind the coffee shop counter today. I’m not going to make any comparisons  to my old job and cat pee though.
Lucia Watson, chef and proprietor of 
Maybe it’s the constant rain and gloom since I began my Post-Dex life. Maybe a former boss was right that I lack self confidence. Whatever the reason, nagging doubt has been creeping in. One of my freelance possibilities fizzled out last week, another lead hasn’t panned out. Did I do the right thing? I’m glad to be gone from Dex, because the job was killing me. Am I going to be able to bring in enough money to float the boat without finding another full time job? And if that becomes necessary, would I even be able to find one? But all of these I can chalk up to natural anxiety for a person in my position. I have some very specific doubts about my immediate future.