Four Weeks Today

Y'know what's useful? Yelling in the car. Alone, of course, and it might get weird looks in heavy traffic but out in the middle of nodamnedwhere it is cathartic out the yin-yang to spend two thirds of the trip into town yelling about the trip into town, the people behind it and their ancestry. And no one need ever be the wiser.

Oh and speaking of saying things...a really long time ago I followed the blog of a twentysomething fellow who'd just kicked crystal meth and he shared something I liked: before speaking ask yourself "does this need to be said at all? Does it need to be said now? Does it need to be said by ME?" If the answer to all three isn't "yes" then just don't say whatever it is and it will make life easier. I might have the second and third questions inverted but it was that set of three for sure. (He suddenly quit blogging one day and though I checked back for a couple months he stayed gone.)

Bowling didn't suck so much tonight largely because that other family finally acknowledged us - when they came in Daughter (who is older than I am) waved and smiled and later Mother smiled too. I know it is dumb but it smoothed my hackles considerably. Seven weeks was a long time to play Ignore in an eight-lane alley, y'know? They had another couple with the three of them; maybe that helped. The male half of the add-on couple bowled left-handed; never saw that before. Or if I did I long since forgot.

At one point during the Red Zone (that miserable early evening time) I did in fact think "oh to hell with this. I wanna drink" but the urge passed quickly. I didn't even have to run through the -entire- litany of "it won't help...it will only make things worse...you don't need hung over and zero self esteem on top of Everything Else" before it left...although that is a good litany all the same.

Carry-out for dinner, left the dishes for morning and didn't have to make any stupid lunches...all those things helped this evening a lot. Saw the tiny fawn and its mother again too - that was pretty special. It had visibly grown (not much but still apparent) since whichever day I mentioned it before.

And now to bed.