Thanks Peggy!

She probably knows the. brand, it's called 'world's best'. its made from corn and it is flushable which is soooo convenient.

Yeah...she is pretty funny. I have nicer pictures of her, but she is still pretty fun looking. Every now and then daughter trims her hair. I don’t like her to as I love the scraggly messy look she has going on. And I do wonder at times if she is part goat as she will eat all kinds of stuff. Earplugs included so Pat has to be very careful about that. 
Just got back from a lovely morning with an old friend. He was actually my Landlord back in like 2007 for a couple of years and he and his wife live in Santa Cruz. She is in a photography class in Eugene and he came up to PDX and we took his 2 beautiful  Belgian Shepards to the park and hung out. Arm is sore from throwing the ball and I am covered in mud as one of them kept taking it to this puddle and rolling it before bringing it back to me. Man...so much weed smoke around. So weird still to have it legal here though it has been for several years now. Never triggers smoking craves for me which is good. Can’t smoke in PDX parks, but people smoke weed. Whatever. I think you wrote something about what is called Spliffs, yes? That’s what we call it here when people mix weed and tobacco. What is the point in that? Do folks in Europe who don’t smoke cigarettes still do this with their weed? Anyway...was so good to have some social time with the right kind of person... He isn’t sure if his home will still be there when they get back. They were on the road up on Thursday and had gotten 2 hours North and got a text their neighborhood was evacuating due to the fires. He has such a lovely place there too. So they went back and got the dogs out of boarding, threw some mementos in boxes and got back on the road. Wow. 
Now I gotta go do laundry and wash my dishes before picking up Stepson from the train. Yay!! Am so excited to see him. Off to the Coast tomorrow so double yay!!! 
Hope you all are having a lovely smoke free weekend! 

Yea, people do smoke spliffs, and not cigarettes, or only rolled cigarets here and there. Sounds like you had a wonderful day.. and tomorrow even better. Here it has been a disgusting, humid oven of a weather. Can't wait to go upstate. That's crazy about the fire. I realize more and more how much of a addict I am , so no, I do not want to smoke again.

Yes  its terrible. I have problems accepting that I. Cannot save them all. My cats are also spoiled rotten!

I don't either. I feel like I went through the hell week and I don't want to do it again. I do see people smoking a lot here. You'd think people here would be super outdoorsy and healthy, but they aren't. Lots of smokers and tons of chewers. Most of my tobacco class were chewers. I almost wonder if its not harder to quit that because you can put a chew in anytime, anywhere. Anyhoo, I'm glad you don't want to go back, either. This has to be the last time for me and I hope it's the last time for you.

Thank you so much Tiny. I can't even imagine chewing but then none smokers cant even imagine smoking or vaping. I am determined its the last time, but time will tell. Day by day...

Yeah, I used to ask my shrink about there being a “switch” in my brain somewhere that I could just flip to off and then be a non smoker. I think I wasted a lot of time smoking looking for this one time flip or flick of a switch and when I couldn’t find it, I just kept smoking. It took a lot of acceptance really, of  being an addict to face what I see and know now of the fear of quitting. Totally irrational of course as there is way more to be afraid when one continues to smoke, yes? But that fear of stopping is very real and inhibitive as many irrational things in our lives are. Rationality of something has nothing to do with whether it exists or not. Look around at our world, right?  Debilitating really, the fear,  when it keeps you from where you can see in your minds eye the place you really want to be, which is basically just free of smoking. But the fear of all these things like missing it and how do I do this or that without smoking before or after, or how do I deal with this emotion without a smoke, etc. And just the fear of missing the “company” of it. It is very complex all this cross wiring in our brains! And we have over many years and smokes reinforced it to such a deep degree. Willpower is great...but it is very short lived and requires astute and constant, intense focus and...bam! Along comes Emotion and Willpower runs out the door with it’s  tail between it’s legs and leaves us there to stand and deal with our shame of not living up to the premeditated expectation that we placed on ourself and trusted ourself with when really it takes very little Willpower at all. Emotion will always win out over Willpower as our emotions are endless and unstoppable. It takes a ton of changing and creating new emotion around smoking for the addict to simmer down. The beauty of this is, that we are all capable creatures. We would not settle for someone telling us that we cannot learn something new in any other area of our lives, would we? I certainly will never! I love learning new things and trying new things and growing new things in my mind and heart and I love new physical challenges too. In every other way of my life these are things that excite me and spark me and spur me on. Yeah...I think we duped ourselves and learned a lot of rationalizations and fear around giving up not just the drug but for whatever reason what we came to view as the sexy slender deliver device of it. The feel of the smoke itself...we learned that to be a rewarding and satisfying thing. We were not born with an inherent need to smoke! We taught ourselves to smoke! And we can take a big slow sweet breath of clean air and say “welcome...come on in my new sweet friend” because we are so very capable of learning new associations right up until we die.
Miss the smell? Hell no. Not when up close and personal. Little waft of it on a slight breeze where the subtle faint scent becomes a trigger? Hell yes. What do I do with it? Recognize it and then associate it’s subtle lure with the dominating, controlling, abusive, destructive force that it is and see all of it. Then I lift my wrist and take a whiff of the mind boggling and senses stirring Patchouli or Lavender or Lemon Grass or Cedar Wood oil or whatever I identified with something lovely that morning and dabbed on there..,I take a slow sweet breath of that and let it course through my mind and take me so many places, and then I take a breath of fresh air and build a new effing bridge. Then I walk right on over that bridge, tall and strong and proud with all the emotions my scent on me triggers, and I carry on with the day.

What a lovely way to put it all. I think I am using a similar method of yours. I still struggle with the illusions of what cigarettes are, but It is slowly diminishing. I remind myself of the smell, the bad breath, and the fact that it will do nothing for me. I hope this will hold up on my trip and on the remote chance that I fell like i'm going to slip I will post here. I dint have great connection there but I will try.

You got time to build plenty of new connections before your trip! How exciting is that?? Oh so very. No doubt about it; this is all a mind —-. Turn that around from that raw and meaningless encounter into some sweet love making with the sheer physical and emotional healing and empowerment of a most tender and caring and intimate session with your mind. Face that fear with your arm outstretched and hand up in the stopping motion and keep it at arms length. It won’t go away, but you are in charge of how close and personal you let it get. It’s a bad and unsatisfying, self esteem defeating date... who wants another one those?? Lol!!

Me?? I’m taking my Stepson up that switchback trail and then down that once defeating rock slope from a month or so ago, and this time there will be no hesitation whatsoever as I defeated that fear demon once already. Had to drive back out a second day to do it but the end result was I conquered it. Oh yeah. Bring this day ON!!! And I will watch that glorious and singular Sun of ours fade onto the horizon of the Mighty Pacific and know it was the best day ever and the night is yet to come. What demons lie in that dark deep water waiting.... none big enough to dwarf the incomprehensible beauty and power that also lies within.

Haha! Oh X...man...I’m on such an excited roll waiting for the teenager and her brother to get their sleepy butts moving that I totally missed what you meant! You meant Internet connection, yes? Lol. I thought you meant Inner connection. Well. Either way. Get those inner connections built up a bit more before you go and then if the internet connection isn’t good...you will have something way more powerful to tap into.