Day 10: Double-digit-dry-days! And PUPPY update

Day 10

Hello day 10! Yay for double-digit-dry me :-)

I got my hair done today - I might be old  but it still grows way too fast so the regrowth was well and truly up to skunk stripe stage after six weeks.

Before I went in I had this imaginary conversation with my hairdresser (Sue, I love her) in which she noticed something different about me and I would say, Why yes! I gave up the grog and I think it's starting to show!

But she was just her normal loveliness so it was left to me to continue the chat inside my head in front of the terrifyingly large mirror while she finished another woman's foils.

Me: is there something different about your face?
Me: yes I think it's changed since the last time I looked in this mirror
Me: not so bulge-y around the gills?
Me: I think that's fair. And what's that in your eyes: have your eyeballs started to go WHITE?!

It's true.  They might not be shiny white again yet but the burst blood vessels have beat a retreat and the dull jaundice smears are fading to at least an eggshell tone so far.

Let's hope my liver is looking a bit more cheerful too.  Not that it was more than 'a touch down' according to my GP, after my last blood tests, which I always try to dodge for fear of being diagnosed with kidney disease, or Type 2 diabetes, or some other vile alcohol-induced illness.

So my hair is pearly blonde and my eyes are going white again, and as I type this I'm in my favourite wifi cafe, noting they have got a liquor license now and not the slightest bit bothered that I won't ever be using it.

Bloglovin'

Mrs D (THE Mrs D) came to visit, because she is, it turns out, just a delightful in her post-book real-life as any of us could hope.  And being a gorgeously polite Kiwi lady, as are several of my friends, she left a comment that made my day (Day 9 was made, to be precise).

It reminded me how absolutely wonderful blogging can be.  Some of my longest adult friendships are in fact from my newish mothering blogging days.  I've met many of them IRL over the past 13 or so years and we still support and entertain each other although it's mostly on Facebook and Instagram these days because who has time?

Well I do, now.  I have the time that's not being drowned in wine. And it is making me a happier person.

PUPPY

If you (if there even is a you, apart from the delightful Mrs D) read my first post as Mrs Sobers, you will know that I pinned my launch to sobriety on the arrival of our new puppy.

Her name is Maggie, and I have been remiss in not sharing more of the puppy love she brings to our family.

So here she is.  Keeping my every-brightening eyes on the prize:

MTC

Day Five - what I'm reading (Clare Pooley, Lotta Dann et al)

A big part of my mindset is due to the reading I've been doing in the past week. The Sober Diaries and Mrs D is Going Without are the highlights.

The Sober Diaries

Seven days ago I downloaded The Sober Diaries and read it like it was water in the desert. I couldn't stop.  Clare Pooley's story was so much like mine, except I'm still working more or less full time (but I did leave horrible senior exec roles to be self-employed so I'm at home, ie, close to the wine fridge).

As I read through the stages Clare described I could see myself there. When she talked about visualisation I pictured myself where I wanted to be. I drew a mind map of everything I'm hoping to achieve in the next five years and what that would look like and feel like.

For the first time, when planning anything about my future, I added SOBER in a little cloud, along with FIT and ACTIVE - which are regular aspirations for me, and I didn't feel weird about it.

I turned 50 last August. It doesn't feel real yet and I didn't really mark it with any milestone activities, but I have had this feeling that something big needed to happen.  It never crossed my mind until Clare's book that the 'something' would be giving up grog.

Things that are me from The Sober Diaries

• Mother of three
• Former career high flyer (ish)
• Wine belly (how have I never called it that before? Of course that's what it is!)
• Good if quirky husband who drinks but can stop
• Wine-gulper (how do people take sips? I never could though I tried and tried)
• Wine-stasher (sometimes I'd hide how much I'd had from a bottle, sometimes I'd brazen it out with a big SO?! if the Prof was a bit shocked another bottle had disappeared while I made dinner).
• Embarrassed about the amount of wine-bottle-recycling that's gone on, especially because our son has to carry them out as his job.  It must stink - I never thought of that part much before.
• Regretful drinker - knowing it was too much and out of hand in the morning, pushing it all aside by wine o'clock to start again (and feel soooo good)
• Rarely has real hangovers any more (the Prof can't understand why I don't feel worse in the mornings but either I don't feel it, or I hide it from him)

Things that are not me from The Sober Diaries

• Her kids are still young. How I wish mine were and I had stopped sooner
• She has a social life. I used to have a bit of a social life when we lived in Sydney - both work and personal, but since moving north I've been a virtual hermit.
• She's more financially secure
• She's got a happy childhood/extended family
• I'm four years older than she was at the giving-up stage.  I'd like those four years back but a big part of the message I'm getting from the books I am reading is to just 'own' it and move on. 

Mrs D is Going Without

I love that Lotta is a Kiwi. There are so many stories out there from American but there's a different drinking culture there - it seems to involve more dependence on spirits and a lot more religion and I just can't identify.

The only time I've ever drunk too much hard liquor is when the wine ran out.

Oh dear. Yes, I see that too.

But back to Lotta for now.  She and Clare (a Pom) both guzzled wine, like me, and had three kids, and a husband who could drink and then stop.

Things that are me from Mrs D

• Journalist/writer who loves to blog (more later on my whole secret-blogging past)
• Antipodean! 
• wine guzzler and gulper (see note above)
• battles through hangovers

Things that are not me from Mrs D

• young children
• working husband
• likes reality TV (although I have a soft spot for cooking shows AND Say Yes to the Dress)
• has real hangovers, which are these days very rare for me because my body is a drinking machine
• goes to the gym
• has a massive social schedule of weddings, parties, etc

So what?

Well the reading is helping. A lot. 

I have picked up a couple of other books about going sober but I can't really identify with the extremes of being picked up by police or crashing cars.  I'm an alcoholic out of control drinker but I am definitely at the high-functioning end.  Keeping it all together is part of why I told myself I needed  to drink. 

Apparently that might turn out not to be true.

MTC