#233 Good Morning Monday, July 13, 2015

Hello Everyone,

I’m still thinking about my encounter with Glennon Doyle Melton at Food Angels on Saturday.  Started me thinking about my “sober” life as I began re-reading her book:  Carry On Warrior:  Thoughts on Life Unarmed.  It is really a wonderful book and so appropriate for me in so many ways.  It validates my “blogging”.  I love the fact that I can journal and also add pictures of important things.  When I add pictures like this one:

New Scooter

It causes me to reflect on my life since I scroll through pictures in my Media Library in an order that reminds me of the chronological activities I’ve experienced.  I think I mentioned in an earlier blog that I started thinking about blogging after seeing the movie “Julie and Julia” about a blogger named Julie who was following Julia Childs (Played by Meryl Streep).  Of course Julie had many admirers and lots of followers – me not so much (thank you Steve for being my constant reader and commentor (is that a word?  I’m not sure I guess is should be “comment maker”), but you get my point.  However, a blog isn’t necessarily for others, it’s mainly a personal thing.   At least for me.  But getting back to Glennon….. I read this yesterday that I believe to be so true:

“Becoming sober is like recovering from frostbite.

Defrosting is excruciatingly painful.  You have been numb for so long. As feeling comes back to your soul, you start to tingle, and it’s uncomfortable and strange.  But then the tingles start feeling like daggers.  Sadness, loss, fear, anger, anxiety – all of these things that you have been numbing with the booze – you feel them for the first time.  And it’s horrific at first, to tell you the truth.  But welcoming the pain and refusing to escape from it is the only way to recovery.  You can’t go around it, you can’t go over it, you have to go through it.   There is no other option.  If you allow the defrosting process to take place – if you trust that it will work and choose to endure the pain – one day you will get your soul back.  If you can feel, you are not too late.”  That is POWERFUL!

So yesterday I wanted to ride my new bike.  I thought about taking it to The Greenway like Steve suggested.  So I’m in the garage trying to get the wheel back on the front end.  I’m struggling with the brake line to the front tire.  It’s hot in the garage and I’m literally sweating to death!  Sweat is rolling off of me and I’m swearing at the stupid thing.  I can’t believe it is that difficult to do.  There was NO WAY that little sucker was going back in place.  I gave up, hot, sweaty and really pissed off – my character defects rearing their ugly head!  So I called the Bike Route on 41.  They had Sunday hours.  Thank you God!  So I took my new bike to them and in two seconds they got the thing back together.  I think I saw what they did, but I’m not sure.  Anyway, to alleviate the encounter with the front tire thing, I decided to buy a bike rack – no the one I had from “downtown” must have been given away before the move.  So here it is:

Bike Rack Hanging

Funny story……I thought it looked so awesome on the back of my car that I figured I’d just leave it on the car so it looks like I’m a “biker”.  And I have to say, the bike looked pretty great on the back of TY.  But then I realized….duh… that the garage door would not close if it was left on the car.  So FUNNY!  So I had to take it off of the car and put it on the “bike hook” I installed to hang my bike on, but THAT didn’t work so I hang my back packs on it instead.  See above the bike rack.  And the bike looked really cool on the back of the car (I see I’m repeating myself here), and I didn’t take a picture!  So bad…….I’ll need to do that next time.  But with the rack, I won’t have to take the tire off of the bike ever again and I can carry the bike on the back of the car to The Greenway or out the East Trail to one of those cool places to ride bikes that I’ve always wanted to do.

I’m out of time today.  Started this a little too late today.  I’ll continue tomorrow with the exciting service we had at church yesterday.  So you’ll just need to come back again!  Thanks for visiting!