Jeebus - I missed this whole week, man

So a few things.

Today I finally closed on my house, for good, for real. Part of it was kind of hard. Three times I dreamed of having a happy family in that house; three times I did my best to hold onto those dreams, and three times I refused to give up until the bitter end. The hard part was giving up a tree I planted in the back yard and the kitchen corner where I measured our daughter's height. I damn near hacked out that piece of the wall and brought it with me. I left my Halloween coffin in the garage, though. I had a lot of memories in that house, some wonderful, some painful. I guess it's time for that era to come to a close. It's hard to think I'm never going to have a house like that again - that's been a hard pill to swallow. I worked really hard to get that house, and now it's gone. Maybe some day, huh?

I had my three year sobriety-date (or at least the day I started recovery). I thought I should have done something to celebrate, but I think I just worked. I was having a bad day, a dry-drunk day, and the financial pressure had started getting to me, and I took too many anti-anxiety meds at work and fell asleep in the office. Toni had to come and drive me home. It was a little embarrassing but I don't think I did any real damage other that s few of the staff have been teasing me about falling asleep with a half-eaten hot dog in my hand in an office chair. Tuesday ended up mostly a blur, actually. Not much of a celebration there. But all in all, I made it through one more day.

Last night Toni and I had a fight (two actually) and afterwards I realized I've been a dry drunk for a the past few days, if not the past few weeks. I've been irritable and moody, and she's put up with a lot. Anyway, came to the realization of what I was doing after I went for a drive in the Bronco. Oddly enough, I wanted to drive to someplace I was happy, and I wanted to drive to my old house in Justin one more time one more time, but I don't have a spare and I was low on gas and couldn't make it. I ended up just driving around going nowhere, but I felt better afterwards.

I had another realization at work today as well; there was woman at work today that I was starting to feel that old compulsion towards, and I couldn't figure out why. As it turns out, after trying to dissect it mentally, there was something about her that reminded me of somebody I used to have e thing for, and once I put that together it seemed to have faded away and gone. Geez - it never ends, but it does get easier to dismantle, unpack and throw out. I like that I can share this stuff with my wife and she doesn't yell at or reject or speak to me harshly when I confess such things to her. She's cool like that.

I was thinking the past few days that she's the one that's gone to the most trouble to really learn about me. She learned my favorite movie. She goes to drum corp stuff with me. She went canoeing with me. She lets me rent movies I like and just seems to have spent the most time really paying attention to me. It's a nice feeling, to feel like somebody cares about you enough to find you a Wolverines t-shirt from Red Dawn.

My mom left for Memphis this morning for a few days, so we have the house to ourselves again for a bit. It's nice.

You know what else was nice? I opened the theater today; I got in at a few after nine AM. I got to go through all the pre-opening stuff by myself. The theater was quiet and peaceful, and it was really nice to spend some time alone in a quiet place, all alone for about an hour or so. I'm looking forward to opening by myself again- I really enjoy that part of the job. Running over 1000 people through a concession stand in just over an hour is more stressful, or trying to fix a movie that's fallen off the platter halfway through the film and spilled itself all over the floor is less peaceful.

So I've been trying to process what I think about some of my readership. I'm still noodling on that a bit, I guess. I'm wondering what questions, if any, that's gong to lead me to ask myself, and what those answer will be, or should be, or are.

Anyway, that's been my week, really. I'll try to get back on tomorrow. It's a kiddo-free weekend, so I oughta have a bit more spare time. Congratulations again to my folks for 40 years of married bliss, or at least not using live rounds when tempted.

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