Cutesy Spam E-mails I need some Alcoholics Anonymous etiquette advice.  You know sort of A.A. meets Emily Post.  

There is a woman in the program who has my E-mail.  She has my E-mail because she had asked me to sponsor her.  As far as sponsoring her goes, she never called me or took any of my suggestions.  She also wasn’t interested in working the steps or reading the Big Book again (she had read it once.)  So essentially I never sponsored her. She stopped going to meeting at all a few months ago after she got her one year coin.  

What she does do is send me cutesy spam E-mail.  You know the kind I mean, a picture of an adorable penguin tap dancing on a chubby polar bear. I really don’t like cutesy spam E-mails.  My mother-in-law sends E-mails like that I delete 90% of them sight unseen.  If my husband sends them I delete 99% without opening it.  I tolerated them from her because I thought that I was at least keeping the lines of communication open.  This is how our communication goes.

• She sends dancing polar bear E-mail


• I reply, “Nice to hear from you, what is new with you?”


• She replies with a “dumb husband” joke


• In response I ask her how her new job is going.


• She replies with an “oh fine” and a picture of an endangered egret.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it was only a few E-mails a week but, she sends me four to six of these spam E-mails every other day.  What should I do?    ¶ 11/29/2005 10:23:00 AM 12 comments

  Anonymous Alcoholic Hey, Recovery Bloggers check out Anonymous Alcoholic.  ¶ 11/28/2005 01:15:00 PM 1 comments

  Lawyers, Guns and Money In a Big Book meeting I attended last night, a woman shared that she keeps guns all over her house. She shared that although she has young children, she does not keep the guns locked up in case she needs to act quickly to protect her family. She also shared that her children’s social worker was at her house “pissing her off” but, the social worker did not know that she was within feet of a loaded gun. She laughed and I tried to figure out what guns had to do with what we had just read.

I have years in soberiety and I stilled don't know how to handle situations like this.  ¶ 11/28/2005 12:44:00 PM 11 comments

  hAAlf nAAked thursdAAY I am just showing off my tail feathers. (I spend way too much time on my hAAlf nAAked thursdAAy pictures.) Happy Thanksgiving to my fellow Americans and best wishes to everyone eles.

FYI to all the other hAAlf nAAked thursdAAy folks, some one has stolen our idea. Did we copyright that? (-: Click here for details.   ¶ 11/24/2005 12:00:00 AM 10 comments

  More Gratitude Sam has a new best buddy Alex. I was really glad to when Sam came home and told me about Alex. Sam is a kid who functions best with an official best friend. Sam hasn’t had an official best friend since Jacob in preschool nearly a year and a half ago.

Before I knew it Sam was scheduling a play date with this kid. Saturday came and we went over to drop Sam off at Alex's. We met Alex and his parents. They did not seem like they were gun toting, pedophile, country western fans. So we figured Sam was relatively safe there and Chuck and I took off for the grocery store.

In the middle of all this, I had been planning Sam's birthday party. I had been obsessing over the details and trying to micromanaged the whole thing. Not feeling a whole lot of gratitude. Then Chuck comes home after having retrieved Sam from Alex's house. "Do you know what Alex’s mother told me," he asked. "She told me that Alex has leukemia and he just finished treatment six months ago," he said.

O.K. so maybe the birthday party details are not all that important. And maybe I should pull my head out of …well you know.  ¶ 11/23/2005 07:47:00 PM 5 comments

  Gratitude List

• A day off with Sam
• Another Thanksgiving sober
• This morning's meeting
• Mary Jo
• A free source of Red Bull
• A warm home
• Cathy and her family
• Spending Thanksgiving with family
• Candy
• Sam's new best friend Alex
• My Car

  ¶ 11/23/2005 06:48:00 PM 1 comments

  Potential Christmas Picture What do you think?    ¶ 11/22/2005 02:29:00 PM 5 comments

  Thankful Blog. In this season of gratitude take a look at Thankful Blog.  ¶ 11/22/2005 12:25:00 PM 3 comments

  Do You Need a Speaker Meeting Do you need a speaker meeting? If you need a speaker meeting and cannot get to one XA-Speakers might fill the gap. Click here to learn more.  ¶ 11/22/2005 07:14:00 AM 0 comments

  Mental Illness Sucks Do you remember my A.A. friend Joan (not her real name) who said she prayed for her son to die? I gave her a ride home on Friday. Suddenly in the middle of she started ranting and raving. The ranting was mostly about our mutual friend Ted and how he had the right idea by dieing. How she wished that she was "that smart." Now Ted if you remember drank himself to death. When I got home, I called my husband and a couple of my A.A. friends. I knew what they were going to tell me but I did not want to be alone with the whole thing. Mental illness sucks.  ¶ 11/21/2005 06:54:00 PM 5 comments

  Fall Leaves This is Sam and our tenant's grandchildren playing in the leaves a week ago Saturday.    ¶ 11/21/2005 06:10:00 PM 4 comments

  Acceptance is the Answer Read more about Dr. Paul the author of Acceptance is the Answer, page 417 Big Book.  ¶ 11/21/2005 06:06:00 PM 0 comments

  naaked man personal Do you know that at least one person got to OMD today by typing in this goggle search, naaked+ man + personal. I am touched.

I really should type naked or naaked more often my hits should shoot right up there.  ¶ 11/18/2005 01:38:00 PM 4 comments

  Scott's A.A. Birthday It is Scott's A.A. birthday today!  ¶ 11/18/2005 08:34:00 AM 4 comments

  Job Interviews Just so you understand as background, what I do for a living is raise money for nonprofit groups though Planned Giving and Major Gifts work. When the planes hit the twin towers on September 11 they also hit my career. I had just changed careers a couple years before myopic as I am I was ill prepared.

Alright, so the interviews, thank you for asking. I had two, one was at 9:00 a.m. and one was at 11:00 a.m. They both went fine. A lot of red flags came up in the 11:00 one. One of the red flags was that they were not going to have the second round of interviews until January. Or as she put it, "January if we are lucky." They are a pretentious environmental group anyway and the position had lots of other red flags.

Today I have a phone interview with a consulting group. If I understood him correctly the position is consulting with nonprofit groups rather than working for one. This interests me but, overnight travel could be an issue.

Anyhow, God is in charge and more will be revealed.  ¶ 11/18/2005 07:19:00 AM 5 comments

  Diamonds on the Soles of Her Feet Yep, pumice, I need pumice. My soon to be seven year old took this picture. Not bad!   ¶ 11/17/2005 03:33:00 PM 3 comments

  Hold On, Wait You will have to wait for hAAlf nAAked thursdAAy, I got two job interviews this morning. I am a little nervous but, basically O.K.  ¶ 11/17/2005 06:24:00 AM 5 comments

  Gratitude List

• A God who is bigger than all my problems
• The fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous
• Two job interviews this week
• A substitute teaching job today
• I (with God's help) finished insulating our tenant's apartment yesterday
• This morning I prayed for others much more than I prayed for myself
• Two job interviews on Thursday (yes I am repeating myself)
• We get our Cub Scout Popcorn on Friday
• God is still God no matter who the President is
• I have hope today

  ¶ 11/15/2005 06:51:00 AM 9 comments

  My Monday I did not get called to substitute teach this morning. Just as well, last week I pulled a couple of really easy assignments so, I am about due insane preachers' kids on crack. Law of averages you know.

Instead of substituting I went to the Monday Morning Big Book meeting. Talk about insane preachers' kids on crack. The chair had stomach flu so they asked me to chair. "When asked to serve, serve," the old timers always told me, so I chaired.

When I got home from the morning meeting there were two messages (Vonage Rocks) waiting for me. I naturally assumed they were bill collectors and I almost did not listen to them. "Life on life's terms," I heard the committee in my head say. So I listen to the messages. The messages were two H.R. people wanting to interview me for jobs. Two actual jobs that are in driving distance and in my field. I just don't get God.  ¶ 11/14/2005 07:18:00 PM 6 comments

  Katrina America's Diaspora Katrina Survivors, where are they now? My thanks to Full Circle for linking to this page.
  ¶ 11/14/2005 08:43:00 AM 8 comments

  New Helicoptor What do you think of the new helicopter. I hear that Dick Cheney had his eye on this one.    ¶ 11/13/2005 05:16:00 PM 3 comments

  Can You Be Fired for Blogging? Hey guys, I got a question for you. Can you be fired for blogging? The short answer is, in most cases yes absolutely you can be fired for blogging. Click here to learn how to protect yourself. Now I am not worried because I don't have a job.  ¶ 11/12/2005 07:56:00 PM 4 comments

  Power Outage Sorry about missing hAAlf nAAked ThursdAAY, major power outage.  ¶ 11/11/2005 08:55:00 AM 3 comments

  Shame and Career I am feeling a lot of shame and weariness over my job situation in the past few days. I pray and pray and pray and it just feels like God is not listening. I used to pray for a job, now I pray to be useful to God today.

All those years of education, all those years of jockeying myself into positon and nothing. The best job I have found in CT so far is substitute teaching. I am not a teacher. I was never trained as a teacher. I hate it. I hate larger groups of children. Sometimes I even hate myself.

A friend from The Program suggested that I try food service. Food service is what I did in college. Now I have a college degree and three years of graduate school and the best I can do is food service. Meanwhile, it seems like all these people around me are getting good jobs. What am I doing wrong?  ¶ 11/09/2005 07:15:00 AM 14 comments

  Treason's Greetings     ¶ 11/08/2005 10:40:00 AM 4 comments

  Gratitude List

• Another day sober
• A God who loves me
• A God who really does know best
• That God has a plan
• That God's plan is good even if I don't understand it
• A day of job hunting
• A new idea for a book
• A beautiful sunrise
• An awesome (yes, I love the 80's) morning
• Chuck's new hours
• Chuck enjoying his new job
• Taking a risk yesterday in my job hunt even though nothing came of it
• New ideas for jobs
• Real community
• A healthy happy little Cub Scout

  ¶ 11/08/2005 06:36:00 AM 3 comments

  Cub Scouting is Weird Cub Scouting is weird. To me, the whole saluting, handshaking and motto saying thing is weird. Adults in Scout uniforms are weird. Flag ceremonies are weird. Merit badges are weird. Here is the catch; the weirder I think the whole thing is the more my son Sam seems to enjoy it. I just don't get it.  ¶ 11/07/2005 09:03:00 AM 10 comments

  Helicopter
Higher Power sent me this picture to make me feel better. It worked.  ¶ 11/04/2005 02:51:00 PM 7 comments

  Two words Two words, stomach flu.  ¶ 11/03/2005 07:15:00 PM 6 comments

  hAAlf nAAked ThursdAAy Alright, no cartoon characters this week. This is actually me. No, I did not have my 6 year old take this one for obvious reasons.    ¶ 11/03/2005 12:00:00 AM 7 comments

  Grief Have you ever been in a car accident?  You know how your whole body tenses up.  That is how I feel.  My shoulders feel like they are in a vise.  I think I have been this way since I heard about the death of my friend Ted.  

My German Lutheran upbringing tells me that I should not feel this way.  My upbringing tells me I should not grieve for Ted.  You only are supposed to grieve for relatives up to and sometimes including first cousins.  We were not related.  We were not even that close, in fact I do not think that I really knew him at all.  I feel sad anyway.  

Some of my grief is selfish.  Ted and I had a lot of similar interests.  He was a writer and we read each others stuff.  I wanted him to go on reading my stuff.  I wanted us to go on having conversations about writing, history and the absurdity of American culture.  I want to see him walk into the 10:00 meeting this morning. That all died when Ted died last weekend.        ¶ 11/02/2005 06:52:00 AM 7 comments

  Gratitude List

• A fun Halloween
• A fun kid to share Halloween with
• Awesome Trick or Treat weather
• I got called into work two days in a row and got to Blog both days
• Kathy watching Sam on mornings I go to work
• Fall colors
• Running into an old friend
• Chinese food
• Another day sober

  ¶ 11/01/2005 10:28:00 AM 5 comments