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Tuesday
March 29, 2022
the first time i quit drinking, in 2003, i made it seven months... until offered a
free beer on an international flight and i said yes, giddy as a teenager when it
hit. then another sober spell in 2016, another 7 month run until while hosting
our annual absinthe party i decided to have just one... a few thousand drinks
later, on august 30 2021, i woke up feeling just done with it and it's been easy
ever since. until today. call it the 7 month itch. i wonder why that is. but since
i wasn't flying or hosting a party it was easier to skate past the sudden craving,
caught a nature buzz instead watching ducks twerk in the arboretum, where we
rendezvous'd with jesse, painting au plein air on a bench tucked way up among
tall trees. memory is slippery. maybe 7 months is how long it takes to forget that
drinking was making me generally depressed. or maybe there's something in me
that mistakes tranquility for stasis and seeks to disrupt the status quo. shake the snowglobe. stir the pot. upset the apple cart. muddy the waters. open pandora's box. as a kid, i'd organize my various collections to perfection, then scatter them
again for the pleasure of rearranging according to a new system, and likewise it's tempting to "derange the senses." then
i remember that i tended to take things apart one time too many, would never get around to putting them back together...