the saga of the smoked

A brief review of the history of this blog: 1) it was started by accident, all I had wanted to do was comment on someone else's blog and I stumbled on a prompt asking me for the title of my blog. 2) it was all downhill from that point on.

I should reassure visitors to this blog that this blogger has not been vacationing in an Actual Nuthouse, just the closest thing: home, where stacks of ECE-related books covered with dust threaten to topple, where an adorable little black puppy chases cats and poops on the floor (always minutes after returning from a walk).

This blogger has been resisting the craving for a cigarette for ten days, and for ten days has not written a poem or a single solitary sentence of her ECE. In the past, frustration has led her back to smoking. Poetry is more important than health, right??? The new answer: NO.

But will this blogger experience the very strange experience she always has predicted when pondering giving up smoking: she will suddenly become so GOOD that not only will there exist a halo over her head that makes it hard to fit through doorways, more than this she will actually levitate, she will be so virtuous that gravity won't be able to hold her to earth.

Yeah, right. I think you can all tell I've become a Saint. Now, just don't go probing around in my thoughts, to see if they're pure, or be the fly on the wall when something makes me mad, so I borrow colorful curses from Arabic because English ones aren't strong enough.

Well, I hardly need to dig deep to uncover numerous flaws. Anyone who knows me well could make a list like the monthly grocery list for a family of five. It's just that smoking was so reassuringly obvious. I could put my best foot forward meeting someone new, speak of my accomplishments and credentials, then, because I couldn't help it, light up a cigarette, and my new acquaintance would take a mental step back: "Oh, how unpleasant, she's a smoker."

I went to my writers' group, Green River Writers, tonight, and when my smoking buddy winked and pointed to the door at break time I accompanied her outside and then broke the news. Smokers are "happy for" their fellow smokers when they quit, at the same time they feel betrayed, a tad resentful, even a little depressed at being left behind in the dingy stinky world of cigarette addiction.

In other news, the little black puppy is quite skilled in the fine art of removing insoles from shoes. He also has rows and rows of tiny razor-sharp teeth. I have shoes with no insoles and rows and rows of tiny red bite-marks.

In theory, I could go back to smoking any minute. Some would-be ex-smokers refuse to say "I've quit." Instead they say "I'm choosing not to smoke right now." What's up with that??? They want to leave their options open. They don't want people to be upset with them should they turn up sucking smoke again. "I'm choosing to smoke now, so what's your problem???"

Just as I didn't plan to create this blog, I didn't plan to stop smoking. I know, this makes it sound like I have little control over the events of my life. If this semester had gone as planned, I'd have no blog, my ECE would be finished down to the last MLA minutiae, and I'd be Puff the Magic Chain-Smoker.

In the past ten days, I've experienced weakness, dizziness, chest and other pain, hot flashes, disorientation, anxiety, anxiety, anxiety. I wasn't going to write about this in my blog, but perhaps an Actual Nuthouse is the place for all this. Anyway metaphorically.

Because really the world is not divided into smokers and non-smokers, but there is a third group: the smoked. I'm not a smoker, I'm not yet a non-smoker, I'm just smoked.

And I'm blogged. And you, my readers, must be about blogged-out by now. Please wish me luck getting my ECE, a battered old Chevy, off the shoulder and back on the highway, as I wish all of you the best in matters pertaining to writing and life.

--- Harriet.