It Wasn't A Pretty Picture

Well it's pretty safe to say that the weatherman managed to get it right this weekend! After a bit of a break yesterday, Friday's snow squalls have returned to southwestern Ontario with a vengeance! With all of this snow, and the chaos that seems to come with it, such as early store closings, late running or near vanishing public transportation, pant legs that are constantly soaking wet and gross and a whole boatload of other nifty stuff, I am, at this very moment, thrilled that all of my shopping is completed, and unless I really, really want to, don't have to venture out until the spring thaw! While the rest of the world seems to be running backwards and in circles with little to show for their effort, I'm literally sitting pretty with nary a care in the world!!! Oh this would be amazingly sweet, if this were, indeed true of my entire life. At least, in regards to the upcoming holiday, I am, indeed, in a truly zen place.

Yes, I am still marveling over the fact that all of the Christmas presents have been bought, wrapped and put nicely under the tree. Apart from the obvious, this is no mean feat. Even before the chaos of being an opiate addict began disrupting our home and becoming all too familiar, I suffered from a very common trait that many other normal individuals also suffer, procrastination. In the prime of my youth, long before I even knew what opiates were, never mind having even ingested one of their beauties, I generally found myself in an all too familiar place two or three days before Christmas Eve. Until I could no longer put off the inevitable, I had to suck it up and get my shopping started and finished, all within a very brief window of time! As much as I loathed the ever growing hoard of frantic shoppers, I was simply incapable of doing much to change what inevitably happened year after year. Like clockwork, I waited until the last minute to get my shopping done.

I still seemed incapable of even changing this losing formula even after breaking my leg exactly a week before Christmas Day when I was 23 and hadn't even thought about what gifts I would be buying. Imagine my shame and embarrassment when I finally got discharged on the 24th sometime after 3pm just as the stores were closing up. I had bought nothing at all before my accident and while in the hospital all doped up on morphine for six days, I wasn't capable of doing much to change my situation. I vowed that never, ever again would I ever find myself in this position. I would strive to be more like my Mom, who thinks nothing of grabbing presents for the next Christmas holiday on Boxing Day. This plan just never seemed to work out that well.

So, even before I became an opiate addict, I had definite completion issues with regards to shopping and Christmas. Through in an addiction into the mix, and yikes, you've got a great recipe for disaster. About my only salvation other years was that both Jim and I were gainfully employed so I was somehow able to stretch our funds to include the requisite Christmas gifts and to feed that monkey on our backs. But even still, Christmas always seemed so chaotic, so unsatisfying. I guess I felt like I was cheating somehow, that my heart really wasn't wholeheartedly in it. Now, there is nothing to distract me from the task at hand and what is right in front of me. Whatever I do regarding this holiday, I know that I am giving 100%, my undivided attention and I have to admit that there is something so overwhelmingly satisfying in all of this! I never, ever want to change this again.

Even though I don't have to, I am going to head over to Loblaws in an hours time as they are open until 6pm today. With my extra money, I am going to buy some more Christmas decorations, lights, wrap and a few more stocking suffers for the girls. I want to make sure that this is a memorable Christmas for both of them as they will both be turning nineteen in March and April, respectively, and I kind of suspect that this may very well be the last Christmas that I have both of them living under our roof. I know that they are itching to stretch their wings and a lot can happen in a years time so I figure, I better grab on while I can.

Peace, love and happiness to each and everyone of you out there.

On the Second Day of Christmas.

Well grabbed some gift wrap and gift bags this evening so that I can get the rest of the presents wrapped up and put under the tree where they belong. The store that I was shopping at had all of their Christmas lights on sale at 50% off so I grabbed two more packages of 50 mini indoor lights in royal blue so that I could add them to the all clear mini lights that I've currently got on our Christmas tree. Now the tree looks utterly fantastic! Am just about to start finishing off the wrapping, etc before I go to bed so that when I get up in the morning, I can truly enjoy the holiday season as I'll literally have nothing more to rush around finishing off, so stress free. I'm literally still in a bit of shock regarding the fact that I am actually organized for the first time in my life as the holidays start. It sure doesn't feel right I must admit. I'm still not convinced that there isn't some little thing that I'm overlooking.

I actually ended up buying a few more presents for each of the girls tonight as I had a bit of extra money left over. I decided to really treat them for once. I ended up picking up a few tank tops each for them while I was grocery shopping of all things. Normally I divide my grocery shopping either between A & P or Loblaws as they are both about a five minute walk from my apt - in opposite directions! Which one I go to is all dependent on which of the two has the better sale, although tonight my decision ended up being made due to logistics and the fact that Jim and I just happened to end up closer to the Loblaws when I decided I needed to grab a few things before going home.

This Loblaws has just recently been renovated majorly and part of this reno was the expansion of their clothing section, JOE Fresh. They ended up increasing the floorspace of the clothes by a good 400% easily. They also had some kick ass sales happening so of course, I couldn't resist. The shirts that I managed to grab ranged in price from $1.94 to $5.94 so for less than $35.00 - tax included - I was able to buy each of them five new tops each! When Jim gets paid on Monday, I may just slip over there again to grab a half dozen more each if they are still on sale!

Happy holidays!

On the First Day of Christmas

OK, so here I sit, with a week still to go until Christmas and I find myself in a very unusual place. Not only is my Christmas tree back up and once again fully decorated, but there are now about a dozen presents all wrapped sitting beneath it. There would be another nine presents except that I ran out of gift bags, and need to run over to the mall to grab some more. Guess that I bought more presents than I realized! For a recovering addict, this is obviously a very good thing, as well as a very foreign spot. No complaints from this seat though! The fact that I've even been able to buy presents, never mind the fact that they are already sitting and waiting under the Christmas thing is a huge deal. For the first time in a very long time, I am entering the holidays literally stress free. No running from store to store as each one closes their doors Christmas Eve, as I struggle to throw together a semi decent holiday for my family.

Flip side of this is that I am doubly ashamed that I even allowed some of the past Christmas holidays to even occur the way that they did. Not ready quite yet to rehash stories of Christmas past, but maybe one day soon. Ready for another mind blower? I actually still have a few hundred dollars left in my savings account and some even in my chequing account. Jim and I know that we're getting some money from both sets of our parents for Christmas, so we plan on treating ourselves to a brand new laptop. Both of us have wanted one for quite some time so we're finally going to do it. This is going to be our Christmas present to each other. This is a new arena for us also, as traditionally two addicts tend not to buy each other Christmas presents, unless its more dope! The first year that we were in recovery we bought a new television set for the "house" while we bought a bunch of stuff - new area rug, new curtains, DVD player - for our home last year, our second year of recovery. Looks like this is our third. Congrats to us!!!

Jingle Bells...

Am taking a bit of a timeout because right now I need to catch my breath and count to ten about a half a dozen times! I am T-H-I-S C-L-O-S-E to throwing one of my daughter's cats from the balcony, but as its the season to be jolly, I'm sitting at my computer instead. Its bad enough that I spent seven hours shopping today, but now I come home to our Christmas tree having been mangled by one of the cats!

I know, I know, I can still hear my husband lecturing me about the lunacy of attempting to properly decorate the Christmas tree with six cats living in the house. Even though the tree has been up near three weeks, so far all of the hanging ornaments have had to be removed as well as ensuring that there was nothing at all hanging from about three and a half feet and below, I honestly thought that otherwise, the tree would get through the holidays unscathed. How very wrong was I!!! I've also had to remove some of the presents from underneath the tree as one of the cats was trying to unwrap them.

The youngest - and smallest - of the cats has learned to somehow climb up to the top of the tree and shake the heck out of the branches. Obviously, once he is all finished, the branches are lying all willy nilly, and all over the place with huge, gaping holes everywhere! So right now, I am sitting here looking at a near stripped down tree. Looks as if I am going to start decorating it all over again from the start. As it was, the only things around the tree were a few hundred clear lights and bows that I had crafted out of Christmas ribbon - varying in width from 1" to 3", in either royal blue, silver or white or various combos of these three colours. I've managed to return the branches to where it now looks like a normal tree. At least the tree is artificial and its wires are flexible so that the branches can all be reshaped. This was the easy part, now for the hard part!!!

Christmas Is Coming and the Goose is Getting Fat!

or something like that...

It's starting to look a lot more like winter outside now, as it has been snowing on and off for the past few days - I'm in southwestern Ontario, Canada for those that don't know. I guess that this also means that it is starting to look a lot like Christmas, especially as there is now less than a month left to go! Yikes. I've bought a few presents, but not nearly as many as I'll eventually need. I also bought a brand new artificial Christmas tree about a week and a half ago because I came across an amazing sale. I got a 7' artificial one with over 1200 tips plus a metal base at XSCargo for only $19.99 - the store clerk said that theirs were the best prices in the city, and I see no reason to disagree with him as I've been checking prices for artificial trees this past year as we were overdue for a new one. To say I was thrilled to find such a deal would be the understatement of the year.

Sara didn't want me to set it up yet, but this was almost two weeks ago, so I am now seriously considering putting the tree up this weekend. It will be the first of December in only a couple of days after all. I can't really put it up though until I buy some new lights for it anyway. Somehow in our two moves in the past year, I've managed to misplace a whole boatload of our Christmas decorations. I think that I may have put some in the Building Manager's storage room and as technically we're not really the Building Managers anymore, I can't really go and snoop around the building - at least not without feeling a bit on the guilty and uncomfortable side. I know that the Bargain Shop has sets of 50 clear indoor lights on sale currently for only $4.00 a set so I can easily grab a few sets without breaking the bank! Traditionally, I like to limit the number of different colours used when I decorate, and I plan on sticking to this. My colours of choice are royal blue and silver, and any of their variations, hence the clear lights. I think these colours used together end up looking very elegant and sophisticated, plus it is easy to add to my decorations each year if I stick to the same colours. I also need to buy some additional decorations because we are moving up in size from a 5' tree to a 7' one, so I've got that extra couple of feet to fill out on the new tree! Just have to be careful not to decorate too low down on the tree as the cats go mental trying to remove all of the shiny, pretty cat toys!

I reduced my methadone dose to 50ml a couple of weeks ago and am now finally starting to feel comfortable on this dose. This was by far, my most difficult reduction to date. The first ten days were utterly horrible and near unbearable, but I managed to stick it out and am glad that I did. I almost ended up returning to 55ml but in the end, didn't have to. If I didn't get to the clinic within twenty four hours of my previous dose, I would start to feel as if I were in major withdrawal. I had certainly begun to forget how awful opiate withdrawal could be, and am kind of glad that I was given a reminder as this will ensure I don't allow myself to become cavalier about treatment, etc and end up convincing myself that it wouldn't hurt much just to try one pill just one more time! Not that I had/have any intentions of doing this, but it doesn't hurt to be extra, extra careful. Anyway, if I didn't make it to the clinic within that 24 hour period, my body would start to rebel against me. My limbs would start aching so badly, I would start to grind my teeth as I got more and more agitated, my nose and eyes would start to run like mad, and my general disposition would change dramatically. Of course, within a half an hour to forty five minutes of dosing, everything would appear to return to normal.

Won't be taking my MMT for granted anytime soon that's for sure! 

The Emperor's New Clothes

Today was Jim's first day of his six week physiotherapy rehab and I guess all went fairly well. He said that he was pretty tired once it was all finished but is pretty optimistic about the whole program, which  is great to hear. I ended up going with him today, sort of...I took the bus with him there and back, but that is where any similarities end. I had a laundry list of errands that I had planned to do while he was in physiotherapy, but the moment that I saw Value Village all my good intentions completely disappeared!

I had so forgotten how much I loved to browse through Value Village for hours on end as I hunted and searched for the ultimate fabulous find and bargain! Today I made out big time! I ended up getting six items which totaled $34.00 tax included. I got a white 100% cotton Tommy Hilfiger Jeans boat neck sweater as well as a red cotton/acrylic Tommy Hilfiger Jeans mock turtleneck. Both of them are in mint condition and barely look as if they have ever been worn. Sweet. I also got a Beechers Brook black angora round neck sweater and a short sleeved cotton/spandex blouse with a very tiny black and white check to go with it. Finally I grabbed a handful of Old Navy Perfect Fit short sleeved t shirts in red, salmon, yellow, khaki and brown, cause these are my absolute favourite t shirts as they fit me exactly the way I want a t shirt to fit - I've never actually bought one at Old Navy either, only at Value Village! 

I find that at the best of times, shopping gives me a buzz, but I get an even bigger buzz when combined with killer deals! Now, this is one addiction I can easily rationalize and justify, not to mention get used to!