Dumb Dogs, Pre-School is O-K, So is the U.S. Financial Crisis

I'm so happy to have quit smoking. When the stock market collapses, and the US's financial crisis really gets swinging, cigarettes are going to be very expensive. I'm happy to stop now.

I had some problems with sickness from Chantix. Gut-wrenching, dizzying, headachy sickness. But that seems to have abated. I had to go back to having a few cigarettes a day for about two weeks to help me from feeling so damned bad. A few days ago I cut it to one cigarette in the morning, and one at night. Two days ago I just had one in the morning. I didn't have one yesterday. I haven't had one today.

I would have, had I been silly enough to have a pack around. This morning was terrible, dropping off Zane. Yesterday I went with him into his classroom. Today Terri went with us for the drop-off, which I kinda thought might make things more difficult, and it did. He wanted us both to go in to the class, and we decided not to. He really freaked out.

I had to fight a lot of instinct. I wanted to run through the stumbling line of three-year-olds, knocking a trail through them, tear the huge glass doors off their hinges and rush to my kid. Then I wanted to take him to get cookies and ice cream, maybe a puppy or pony or something, dance with him all morning, whisk us all away to an island and never make him go to school.

Instead I called to him that it'd be okay. That he'd be fine, and that I'd be back to pick him up soon. And I watched him scream his way into the school, tugged along by the teacher. "I want my Mommy!" "I want Daddy!"

I'm sure he was soon fine. Probably sooner than me.

I had to yell at the cigarettes that I was not going to smoke because I was stressed out. I called them names and said I was not going to smoke them. Stupid things. Then I yelled a bit at me, some junk about Pavlov and his dog, and my dumb dog response to stress. Then I went upstairs and checked my email.

I read Sarah Hilary's story. Check it out here: Tuesdays and Thursdays . It's excellent, as her writing tends to be. It brought me great memories. You should all go read it if you haven't already.

So I didn't smoke. I haven't really wanted to. I'm not going to. I take a pill in about a half an hour, it'll block up my nicotine receptors, maybe make me a little sick, but it'll help me not smoke. So I won't be that dumb dog anymore.

Which will help when cigarettes cost ten bucks a pack, and money is hard to come by, or not worth the paper tobacco is rolled in.

In order to manifest a happy, unfucked United States, I won't state that I'm worried. But, I have been paying attention, and I'm really having to use my imagination to project any sort of good feeling about the state of this union.

I'm thinking about how lucky I am to have chosen the entertainment industry as my career path. Everyone needs to hear or read a good story, especially if they're Depressed. Actors thrived in the early 30's, as did novelists, radio personalities, musicians, artists, all those good jobs I can do. I'm also thinking about how I can grow food, and make things or fix things if they need fixing. I'm handy to have around if there's no electricity or running water, I've lived that way before. I'm thinking how I have useful skills, and an able body.

I'm not thinking about bread pudding, or any of that nasty shit my grandmother ate, having been 28 years old with a couple of kids, living in the dustbowl in 1929. Not thinking about that...

I'm thinking I get to go pick up Zane in fifty minutes.

I'm thinking that no matter what, there's love and laughing.

Now I've gotta go hug my wife.