Quitting – Day 8 – The Weekend and Beyond

Cigarettes Smoked:  One  (Not bad, considering we’re talking three days)

Days spent feeling sick:  Two

Time wasted playing Farmville on Facebook:  Not that much

Time wasted playing Zuma on Facebook:  Way too much

Time spent on other writing:  A few hours here and there.

Attitude of the Lung Spiders:  They are getting surly.  Apparently, when you quit smoking you start coughing up a lot of things that I guess cigarette smoke weighs down.  No spiders, as yet.  I believe those guys are stuck in there good.  But we’ll get them.

Overall attitude about quitting:  Improving.  I have found that my sense of taste is going through weird fluctuations, which I’m not sure I spelled right.  Occasionally I can really taste things good, the next, not so good.  Hoping this is a good sign and that my tongue is not permanently broken.

Other strange symptoms:  Still get weird hot flashes.  Either it’s the quitting smoking or I’m going through menopause.  Either way it’s really annoying.  I am also getting really weird fits of energy, like I feel like I could kick the ass of three separate things.  Not all at once, mind you.  I mean one at a time, like the bad guys in a martial arts flick, where if they would all just attack the hero at one time they could take him, but they line up and charge him one at a time and he kicks their heads off.  Than the next guy gives the hero five minutes to catch his breath, instead of doing the smart thing and running away because, hey, this dude just kicked your buddies head off!

Still chewing gum.  I’m going to have great muscles in my jaws.  I feel like a could bit a fence post in half.  RAWR!

That’s the sound you have to make when biting a fence post in half, by the way.

So, the fight goes on.

Quitting – Day 4 and 5 – 12:16 pm

Cigarettes smoked – 1 on day four

Had a pretty stressful day yesterday, and broke down and smoked a cigarette. Just one, but it still makes the day overall a failure in the quitting game.  Going strong today, so far.  Patch is on, but feeling awfully jumpy for some reason.  Not the most comfortable feeling in the world, but doing my best to maintain composure.

Quitting – Day 3 – 10:39 pm

Cigarettes smoked – Zero

Emotional State:  Jitters beginning to slightly subside

Physical state:  Weird hot flashes have appeared.

Sleep cycle:  Decided to leave the patches on overnight.  Dreams seem to have calmed down, and I don’t really, REALLY want a cigarette in the morning.

Morning Commute:  Not bad.  The driving works well as a distraction, I think, and I’m not really missing it.

Coffee consumed:  I believe the proper, government standard of weights and measures would place the amount of coffee I have consumed at an English shit-ton.

Gum Chewed:  Lots.  Lots and Lots.  And it is chewed with vigor, like a wildebeast gnawin away at a particularly tough blade of grass.

The desire to smoke is still there, but I think the body has normalized to receiving its nicotine from the magic patch rather than a ciagerette.  The urge is fading.  Very, very slowly.

Tomorrow is another day.

Quitting – Day 2 – 11:08 am

Cigarettes smoked today:  Zero

Distractions Used:  gum chewing – two pieces

Overall feeling:  Kinda twitchy.  Not missing the nicotine, but just twitchy about not having a cigarette.

Attitude:  Not too bad.  Temper seems pretty even right now, though my eyes feel like I haven’t slept very well.

Things I have learned so far:  It is possible to make the daily commute without smoking.  Coffee is your friend.  It is possible to chew gum really, really hard.

Things I have learned not to do:  Leave the nicotine patch on when sleeping.  Man, that just gives you some crazy, crazy dreams.

Songs that are, for some reason, stuck in my head:  “In the Name of Love” by U2.  Didn’t even hear it on the radio coming in, but there you go.

So here we are on Day 2 of the quitting smoking saga.  So far so good.  Haven’t lost my temper in a serious way.  Little things that might normally annoy me are still doing that, but we are squashing those feelings as counterproductive.Ahh, poor, poor angst.  Crushed under the cartoon weight of justice.  squish

Not sure why squishing angst is equal to justice, but hey, your looking at the guy that came up with the idea of “lung spiders”.

It’s entirely possible I’m not normal.

It’s now 12:30 pm.  Still not cigs.  The day trudges on.

Quitting-Day One – 12:03 AM

It’s stupid o’clock in the morning, and I just put out my last cigarette I will hopefully ever smoke.  The challenge, I know, will be, pretty much, the not smoking part.  I know, I know, all the good things that can come of it.  This was my one vice, my one dirty habit, that I could cling to.  I’m pretty sure I would have made a pretty awful alcoholic.  I’m just not that huge a fan of beer, and after two glasses of wine I’m ready for a nap.

Part of the problem may be that we apparently drink absolutely giant bottles of wine at my house.  I mean, look at the cork!  I must have used a back hoe to get that sucker out of the bottle.

But, as with all things, the nasty habit has to go, I suppose.  What I have found is that my friends, particularly those on Facebook that have seen the original post, are supportive. I don’t know why this surprises me.  After all, friends are supposed to be like that, right?  Supportive, especially if you’re doing something that at least resembles and intelligent act?  Man, imagine how much this would suck if everyone had just shaken their heads, or worse.

Yeah, I’m kinda an all-or-nothing kinda person.  If you don’t have friends, apparently your world is inhabited by green-skinned tentacle monsters that yell negative affirmations at you.  Real nice.

There is seriously something wrong inside my head.

So here will be the true challenge.  When I wake up at 4 in the morning, do, you know, what guys do when we wake up at four in the morning, remembering that I have quit smoking and not automatically reach for a pack of cigs and the lighter.  So, to help keep my inspired, other than threats from people at work of physical assault (yeah, you know who you are), I have decided to list the positives for quitting smoking.

1.  I won’t die a hideous, cancer-riddled death before the age of fifty.  Yeah, that kinda seems like a biggie, and you’d think that you really wouldn’t need another reason on the list.  Not dying would seem to be pretty good reason to not do anything, something anyone could get behind.  Ok, tomorrow we find out that Pokemon causes cancer.  Now try to take all those cards away from your ten-year old.

2.  Taking a deep breath could be a reasonable outcome.  I have discovered, over many, many years of sucking ash (ASH, you perverts!), that taking a deep breath was apparently something I took for granted.  There are occasions when it does still occur, and disturbingly, I am very conscious of my lungs inflating.  It seems like breathing deeply has become an unnatural act for my body.  That can’t be good.  Oh, that, and breathing deeply actually kinda hurts now.

Either that, or there is a nest of very bitey spiders living in my lungs.

3.  Maybe I’ll stop coughing up nasty crap in the morning.  Yeah, that’s pretty gross to read about.  Every morning though, cough up something icky, than reach for a cigarette.

Fucking spiders.

4.  Maybe I could actually start exercising and lose the damn gut without feeling like I’m going to have a heart attack.  Well, maybe not right away.  But, considering my weight, quitting smoking certainly can’t hurt

5.  Smoking is just stupidly expensive at this point.  It would probably actually be cheaper to switch to crack cocaine at this point.  Except for, you know, the whole go to prison for violating possession laws and having to be boyfriend to the biggest, meanest S.O.B. in the yard to avoid gang rape in the shower all the while honing my shiv-making skills so the bangers in the next block over, you know, the ones that started that riot a few weeks ago and think they’re so cool because they get to go outside once a week and pick up garbage alongside the highway and the only job my wing can get is in the kitchen, well, we don’t want those guys coming over and stealing our shit, not that there’s much to steal because, hey, it’s prison after all, and plus I’m right back on the damn cigarettes again because the only currency I have in the joint is my smokes and my ass and…..

I seem to have wandered off topic just a bit.  Plus, I’ve given this scenario waaaaaaay to much thought.

Of course, there are probably things that I may have to give up along with the smoking.

1.  Coffee.  Yeah, my other vice.  Of course, every morning, coffee and a cigarette.  Breakfast of champions.

2.  Fuck that.  I love coffee.  Not giving up coffee.  Back off man, keep away from my beans!

3.  Yeah, that was pretty much it.  Not really anything else that might cause problems.  I don’t go to bars or eat out much, plus you can’t smoke doing that anymore anyways, so hey, bonus there.   Plus I don’t drink a lot at home, and I don’t really smoke when I do that, so YES, bourbon is still on the menu!

Well, this post has successfully distracted me for 46 minutes.  Guess I should probably go to bed.  That’ll waste another good five or six hours, hours which I normally don’t smoke during anyways, since I’m asleep, but hey, who’s counting, right?

There’s a damn spider on the ceiling.  Where the hell did a spider come from?  It’s January, there’s snow on the ground outside, and there’s a spider on the ceiling.  Oh God, am I actually coughing up spiders?  That’s it, isn’t it?  Years of smoking have formed the perfect environment in my lungs for a nest of ceiling-spiders to breed, and the violent paroxysms my body goes through in the morning expel them so they can migrate to their final home, my ceiling.

Fucking spiders.

BELATED WARNING:  Oh, I feel I should tell you I swear in this post, and probably will in forthcoming posts as well, so, you know, if that kind of thing offends you, well, you’re probably pretty pissed I put this at the end.

I blame my lung spiders.

The Last Day of Smoking

Well, folks, it has come down to this.

The Pack Rat is quitting smoking.

Today I smoke my last cigarettes.  Tomorrow we put on a patch and cross our fingers.

So, we have stocked up on what we need to accomplish this task.  Namely, nicotine patches.  Already the patch will be saving cash.  One box is 53 bucks, plus change.  That lasts two weeks.  A carton of cigarettes last a bit under that, also at 53 bucks.  So, nicotine patches, in theory, should save me 53 bucks a week.

Plus, I won’t die of cancer, which is always a bonus.

So, to make this more entertaining for you all, because my devolution into a gibbering mass due to withdrawal may not be fun enough, each day we will post my progress regarding the quitting of the cigarettes, including how many, if any, cigarettes I have smoked that day.  Hopefully it will be zero, since smoking while on the patch really gives me a headache.  A really nasty one.

Oh, and try not to get too excited just yet.  I have tried to quit a couple of times before.  The fact that we are doing it again would imply that those two different times didn’t work.

But, third time is to charm, right?

Wish me luck, folks.  

Oh, some stats, for those that are interested.

I am 36.

I have smoked since I was 17, at roughly a pack a day.

At the current rate that I smoke, if I don’t quit, I will be lucky to live until I’m 60.

I know this.  I know smoking is stupid.  It is also terribly addictive, and this is what keeps me smoking.  I don’t blame the tobacco companies.  I blame myself.  It was my choice to begin smoking.

It is my choice to quit.

Flash Fiction Friday – January 14

This is a short vignette written during a prompt group for the Evanston Writer’s Workshop promp group.

I wish someone told me right from the start that this was going to be the last day of my life. There are so many things I would have liked to have taken care of. Sure, say goodbye to my wife and kids, maybe scratch the dog behind the ears one more time, all that sentimental crap. Nah, none of that is for me. I leave that stuff for some of the other schmoes out there, those that have a wife, or children, or a loyal dog that gives them undying love and affection. I don’t have any of those trapping of polite society hung around me neck. Me, had I known today was the end, I would’ve just gotten rip-roaring, off my ass drunk.

Yeah, yeah, I’m a shallow sonuvabitch. Get over it. I’ve been buying and selling people like you for almost thirty years. You got a business someone else wants, but you don’t want to sell because it supports your family? Too bad, sucker, looks like you just violated a health code, maybe failed a fire inspection, or, if I’m feeling really cocky, you just end up face-down in the gutter with your skull bashed in. Just came out with an invention that will cost the oil industry millions? Gee, looks like your plans and notes were all destroyed when your house burned down. Too bad about your fiance, though. I’m impressed she made it out that window but she really needs to learn to bend her knees when she lands. To bad about your plans for the new hybrid engine though. The money you could have made would pay for the prosthetics she’s gonna need for the rest of her life.

Yeah, I’ve bought, stole, borrowed, cajoled, threatened, and committed outright murder to get what was asked of me. I’m the guy you come to when you have a problem that need’s solvin. Hrm, what was that quote from George Clooney. Oh, that’s right. “I’m not the guy you kill, I’m the guy you buy.” Not really the kind of job you can put on a resume. More of a learn-as-you-go business, and reputation for getting shit done matters a hell of a lot more than what your former boss thinks of you. Of course, if you’ve done your job right, your former boss is feeding the maggots beneath the city docks and your sitting on a beach, earning 20 percent from the sale of his estate.

So, yeah, a big ol bottle of 18-year-old scotch, neat, just rolling down my throat like amber smoke, that’s how I wanted to spend my last day. Of course, it’s not all bad. When the bus hit me it snapped my neck, pretty much killing me instantly. We won’t talk about what it did to my body before the driver managed to stop. No, I didn’t do something stupid like cross against the light or step of the curb lost in a daydream. But I did make a rookie mistake.

I took on an apprentice.

What did I just tell you about former bosses?

You can probably figure out where I went. Yeah, no pearly gates for me. Saint Peter actually threw me the bird as he kicked my ass straight downstairs. Of course, a man with my talents could probably go far here, with the right motivation. I may owe the Devil his due currently, and I’ll play his little games for now.

But there is always a way to the top.

And if nothing else, I’m good at getting what I want.

Wisdom for the Ages

Things learned and wondered.

1. Count all of the Easter eggs before you hide them. Count the Easter eggs after the hunt for them is completed. Make sure the second count matches the first.

2. This is doubly important if the eggs are hidden inside due to inclement weather.

3. It’s too late if you slow down after you passed the cop.

4. Never lose the key to the padlock that secures your spare tire to your truck.

5.  It’s Friday night, the first day of your planned three-day weekend.  It’s about 6 pm.  Don’t answer the cell phone when it rings.

6.  Never, ever, start a conversation with a woman with the phrase “So when are you due?”

7.  Wives, when you look at your husbands, and they have a kind of blank, vacant look in their eyes, and you ask “What are you thinking about?” and we, the husbands, respond with “Nothing,” we’re not being glib.  We really weren’t thinking about anything.

8.   I will never understand why Playboy magazine is sealed in a plastic bag so kids can’t randomly browse it in a magazine shop, but Cosmopolitan is available at the supermarket checkout line.  Of course, Playboy has pictures of naked ladies in it.  On the other hand,  Cosmopolitan routinely contains tips on how to give better blowjobs.

9.  When it’s twenty degrees out, certain chemicals will melt the ice on your driveway.  When it’s 20 below zero, what are you doing out on your driveway anyway?

10.  Wind chill is God’s way of saying “Go back to bed.”

11.  Supposedly the direction you mow the lines in your yard says something about your personality.  My personality says “It’s not that long, it can wait.”

12.  Once you are married, the temperature will never be correct for both of you.  Simply accept this and move on with your life.  Oh, and put on a sweater.

13.  All of you folks on FourSquare that insist on posting your every move to Facebook, telling us where you are, and when, and how often you go there?  You’re really just telling the burglars when they should come by your house.

14.  The proper way to tell your spouse about the attractive woman you just saw:  “Look at her honey, she is very attractive, but still does not hold a candle to your evocative grace and beauty.”  The wrong way:  “Babe, I would totally tap that.”